Every word from Arteta’s post-Atletico presser | Press conference | News
After seeing his side reach the Champions League final, Mikel Arteta was a happy man as he tackled questions in his post-match press conference.
The boss navigated us to a 1-0 victory over Atletico Madrid to set up a Budapest showdown with Bayern Munich or Paris Saint-Germain, and spoke about his emotions, team selection, the atmosphere and the final few weeks of the campaign.
Here is everything he had to say:
on how proud he is of the whole club:
It’s an incredible night. We made history again together. I cannot be happier and prouder of everyone involved in this football club. The manner that we got to see outside the stadium was special and unique. The atmosphere that our supporters created, the energy, the way they lived every ball with us, it made it special and unique. I never felt that in the stadium. We knew how much it meant to everybody. We put everything in, the boys did an incredible job. After 20 years and for the second time in our history, we are back in the Champions League final.
on our Champions League campaign:
We know how difficult and challenging every opponent is at this level. (Atletico) are an incredible team. The way they compete, the solution they have, the answer they have to everything you try to do to them immediately. It’s incredible. That’s the reason they’ve been there. They’ve done an outstanding job there. The margins are so small and tonight they’ve gone for us.
on keeping the line-up the same as the weekend:
If you see my iPad, the amount of line-ups I’ve done and changed and turned it again, and what about this and the possible subs and if they do that, we do this. In the end it was my gut feeling. I had such a good feeling from what I saw a few days ago against Fulham. To do that, it was painful because it was difficult to leave important players out because they all want to be involved and start this kind of game. You saw all the finishers, the manner that they got into the pitch and how much they helped the team.
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on who he thought about at full-time:
The order was immediately my wife, my kids, my parents, my sister and then all the people involved at the club, because I know what it feels like. You can think and say it’s going to be a beautiful night but when you actually are looking somebody in the eye and they have that expression, and you look to the supporters and they are just immensely proud and happy, that’s when our job makes sense. Many other times it’s difficult to find the right reason why we do what we do, but when these things happen, then everything that we do is worth it.
on the club’s European journey since he arrived:
It’s very tough and difficult but again we’ve all been so aligned on the desire and ambition that we have for the club. Then you have to be sometimes lucky, things have to go your way. We put obviously so much work, passion and belief into what we do and today we got rewarded to have an incredible day in Budapest in a few weeks.
on the atmosphere inside the stadium:
That box is ticked now, now we have to maintain it. Now we go to the level that I think a top club that wants to be fighting consistently for the highest trophies, that’s a must. We’ve got it now, now we have to maintain it.
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on the excitement for an historic season:
The high is not too high, the low is not too low, my job is to be quite stable. I really will enjoy it, everyone is enjoying this moment now. Tomorrow we have to start to prepare for Sunday, we have an incredible game now to play against West Ham, a really tough one and we’re going to have four days to do that. It’s great, let’s enjoy the moment.
on the difference within the squad now:
It’s down to them, at the end of the day it was that they had to put on these kind of performances. I can try to convince them and give them love and clarity on what is, in my opinion, the most important thing. To be competitive and give us the chance to win what we want to achieve but then they have to do it. It’s an incredible group of players and staff, in elite sport, in football in particular, you can live a really difficult day but if you keep working maybe you get rewarded and we’ve certainly done that in the last few weeks.
on having strong momentum:
It’s great, everybody can feel a shift in energy, in belief, in everything. Let’s use it in the right way, understanding the margins and the difficulty of what we are trying to achieve. It’s huge but we have the ability and the conviction to do that for sure.
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Highlights: Arsenal 1-0 Atletico Madrid (2-1 agg)
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