Despite us heading to Paris for our Champions League semi-finals second leg 1-0 behind, Mikel Arteta is full of confidence that we can still make it to the final in Munich at the end of May.
We couldn’t recover from Ousmane Dembele’s early goal that settled the game at Emirates Stadium, despite carving out some big opportunities but finding PSG keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma in inspired form and having a Mikel Merino header ruled out by VAR.
However tonight’s display has kept Mikel’s confidence of progressing to a second-ever final intact, and he feels that some more luck in front of goal could be the difference in the French capital in eight days’ time.
“It’s just half-time, I said exactly the same message after beating Real Madrid 3-0 at home,” Mikel said post-match. “We go to Paris to win, and I fully believe that we can do it.
“We’re disappointed with the result because I think we merited much more than what we got. After having a difficult start, especially when they scored so early in a really good combination, they had the quality to open you up and finish the way they did. But after that, I think the team started to get better and better.
“The margins are so small – we have two massive chances, probably the best two chances of the game with Gabi and Leo, one v one with the keeper. He managed to save them and then obviously the goal was disallowed. That’s the margins and unfortunately we couldn’t score.”
It was only two weeks ago that we went to the Bernabeu and beat the reigning European champions Real Madrid in one of the toughest venues to get a result in world football.
That win, coupled with some other impressive results on our travels around the continent this season, will fuel us with confidence to do it again, and Mikel believes that winning in the Parc des Princes is the kind of statement a side dreaming of becoming European champions has to achieve on the way to glory. “That’s what we have to do,” he added. “If you want to win the Champions League or be in the final, you have to do something exceptional in the tournament at some point. That’s what we have to now plan and do when we get to Paris in a few days.“I know we’re facing a top team, and we did a lot of good things but unfortunately the result doesn’t show a lot of the good things that we did.
“It’s half-time, you see the margins. You see the level of the two teams. We’re going to have our chances and we’re going to have to be very clinical when we have them.”
