Arsenal and Wolfsburg achieve perfect balance in Women's Champions League quarter-final - The Warm-Up

What do we really want from the first-leg of a big two-legged tie? Obviously there's all the usual stuff we want from any game of football: goals, own goals, drama, pettiness, the humbling of the transcendentally gifted by vicious and vindictive fortune. You know, football.

But two-legged football has its own shape and rhythms. And perhaps the most important thing for the neutral is balance. Not necessarily in terms of the score: a goal lead here or there still keeps both sides in it. But in terms of the teams themselves. We watched 90 minutes of Arsenal against Wolfsburg last night, and if you put a water pistol to our head and demanded we tell you which side was better, we'd just go "Hmmmmmm", "Mmmm", "Well", "Er", until all the water dried up and we could escape un-splooshed.

We weren't alone in that, apparently. Neither coach made a change until well past the hour, which felt like a vote of confidence. Wolfsburg were probably the better side in the first half; Arsenal were much improved in the second. Wolfsburg probably had the better chances: hitting the post twice in half a minute is a seriously good trick. But Arsenal had the better of the substitutions, and it was replacement Tobin Heath who drove the ball into Lotte Wubben-Moy's feet for the equaliser.

We need to make a formal apology to Heath here, by the way. At first blush we assumed that this was a total mishit; a shot so bad that it confused the hell out of the defence, as well as the Warm-Up, and only Wubben-Moy's quick thinking and incredible control saved the situation. But after watching it a few more times we've decided that it's a perfectly disguised fake mishit, and that everybody involved knew what they were doing. Well, except Wolfsburg's defence. (And the Warm-Up. But nothing new there.)

And so, balance, in the scoreline and in the performances. Arsenal coach Jonas Eidevall is "100% sure" his team will progress to the semi-finals, which is precisely 50% more certainty than the Warm-Up has. One moment we've persuaded ourselves that Arsenal's growth through this game will carry through into the second leg; the next we've swung back the other way and decided that Wolfsburg will be that little bit better at home. Arsenal have the stronger bench? Perhaps. But then Wolfsburg have that big win over Chelsea hanging on their wall.

No. We can't choose. Each of these teams has a clear path to beating the other, each of these teams would make a worthy semi-finalist, and each of them would, in the fullness of time, make a decent showing of getting thumped by Barcelona in the final. Exactly what a quarter-final should be, then. Well done everybody.

Your time is up. Did you get your declaration of interest in? Have you told UEFA you'd like to make a bid for Euro '28 and/or '32? Because if you didn't, it's too late now. Here at the Warm-Up, we got ours in with a couple of hours to spare, and we look forward to welcoming the continent's best to our local rec. It has some pretty good trees.

As expected, our main rivals for 2028 will be a joint bid from the four nations of the UK and Ireland, while Italy are in the mix for 2032. Turkey will also be submitting bids for both tournaments, having been overlooked for 2024, 2020, 2016, 2012, and jointly with Greece for 2008. Put all those bid books back-to-back and you've probably got a very useful resource on the evolution of international football: its changing priorities, its trends and fashions. Which is presumably a great comfort to the Turkish representatives. No tournament, but a very helpful presence in the archives.

And then there's Russia, mid-war, currently exiled from football at the national and international level; here's Russia, looking to the future, wondering if maybe UEFA might like to bring the party over. Not now, obviously. Now's a bit awkward. Maybe next decade?

UEFA have reportedly threatened further sanctions in response, pointing out that Russia's teams may be banned from competitions, but the Russian Football Union is still a member of UEFA. For the moment.

While we have no real sense of how things are going to go generally, we're pretty confident that if Russia do pursue this all the way to an actual bid, their bid will be getting fewer votes from UEFA's executive committee than ours will. And we're hoping to replace the group stages with dice cricket.

International tournaments take a month, more or less. Most other tournaments are contained within a single season. But international qualification is the real slow burner, unfolding over years, before coming to a messy conclusion in the last international break before the World Cup summer. Which is to say: right now.

Look at Africa. Ten teams, five matches, two legs: winner takes all. Mere months after they both met in the AFCON final in Cameroon, one of Senegal or Egypt will be eliminated. Qatar will get Ghana or Nigeria, Algeria or Cameroon… you can argue about the allocation, but you can't argue with the weight of it all.

Look at UEFA's shiny new playoffs, practically mini-tournaments in themselves. A one-off semi-final, a one-off final, and then somebody gets to slink off home feeling miserable. If, as expected, Italy and Portugal make it through their semis and line up a meeting on March 29th, we'll be getting a big-team smackdown of the kind generally reserved for World Cup semi-finals. We'll be getting one in March.

Years of work, years of hope, years of dreaming, all validated in one glorious moment; or all gone, smoke in the wind. This might be the best week of football in the whole calendar, you know. Or at least the heaviest. Half the planet's got something riding on the next few days.

As you may have heard, last weekend Arsenal scored their 2000th Premier League goal. And here is every single — no, only joking. Here are some of them: the first, and then every hundredth after that. Some are great. Some are funny. And taken altogether they amount to a flickbook cartoon history of How The Premier League Has Looked Through Time. The shirts get tighter, the stadiums get shinier and the moustaches disappear completely.

Incidentally, before you watch, see if you can guess the identity of the first player to score while wearing a No. 14 shirt.

To get you in the mood for the internationals, here's the i's Daniel Storey talking to Wales' Joe Morrell about his unusual path to the top — that's Morrell's, not Dan's — and what makes playing for Wales a special business. Which, sadly, Morrell won't be doing this evening, because he's suspended. Way to spoil the interview, UEFA.

Scotland-Ukraine has been postponed, and Russia-Poland has been cancelled. But the other four semi-finals of UEFA's World Cup qualifying playoffs are ready to go: Italy v North Macedonia, Portugal v Turkey, Sweden v Czech Republic and Wales v Austria. We also move into the last rounds of CONMEBOL qualification: Brazil v Chile, Colombia v Bolivia and Uruguay v Peru.