Fiorentina 0 Arsenal 4

From Arsenal’s first Champions League outing for five years comes the reminder, as though it were really needed, that Vivianne Miedema is the elixir that turns them from elite to world-class. No one would argue, one game into a competition they last won in 2007, that Arsenal have cause to think they might be the ones to end Lyon’s four-year monopoly on this trophy, and to do so based on their performance against a side Chelsea defeated 7-0 on aggregate in the last 16 of the competition last season would be ambitious. But watching Miedema on nights like this, a 23-year-old still years from hitting the peak of her powers, is to quietly wonder just how far they can go with her at their heart.

The Netherlands’ all-time leading goalscorer of any gender had a hand in the first three of her side’s four goals and did so with that ludicrous, languid sense of ease that belies the venom laced in her every touch. Her teammates talk up her movement off the ball but there can be no doubt that inside the box is where she is most commanding, finishing each time with a kind of comical, irritated simplicity, as though football is a sideshow and that pass to her a distraction from something far more important that she can now resume having tapped home.