{"id":2017,"date":"2026-04-29T05:33:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T05:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2026-04-29T05:33:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T05:33:25","slug":"arteta-now-is-the-moment-to-make-a-statement-quotes-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=2017","title":{"rendered":"Arteta: “Now is the moment to make a statement” | Quotes | News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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After returning to the Champions League semi-finals for the second successive year, Mikel Arteta is urging his players to seize the moment and make history for our club.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twelve months on from our defeat to the eventual champions Paris Saint-Germain in the last four, we are back at the same stage and head to Atletico Madrid hoping to continue our year-on-year progression through the competition, now aiming to book our spot in the final for just the second time.<\/p>\n

Mikel admits that is quite the transformation for a club that watched on from afar for so long in the recent past, but now wants us to head to the Metropolitano Stadium and lay down a marker for the rest of the competition, and indeed our season, as we aim to finish off the hard work this season with two massive trophies in our cabinet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a massive privilege to be here again, two years in a row at the same part of the Champions League, representing our club,\u201d he said in his pre-match press conference. \u201cWe have an opportunity, we’re going to grab it with both hands. You’re going to see a team that wants to be dominant, that wants to win it, and they want to start to decide the tie tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the status that we want, and we have earned it through incredible work, passion and quality in the last nine months. Now is the moment to make a statement, and show how good we are, how much we want it, and make it happen. It’s clear, the opportunity is in front of us, and we have to attack it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t take it for granted because a very short time ago, this club had seven years without Champions League. So, in that very short period of time, what we have achieved is remarkable. We know the difficulty of it, we know how much we worked for this, so enjoy it, take the opportunity, embrace it, because it’s very tough to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n

Every word: Arteta’s pre-Atletico Madrid presser <\/span>
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Like Atletico, we are one step away from reaching the final and having the opportunity to win the European Cup for the first time in our illustrious histories, and Mikel admits that their pedigree in this competition means they\u2019re a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n

They have reached this stage seven times in the past, but after we have beaten some of the continent\u2019s biggest names across the past three campaigns since our return, Mikel feels that we have the know-how and experience ourselves to navigate our way through the game to record the fifth successive win on Spanish soil.<\/p>\n

On our opponents, he added: \u201cThey\u2019re a team that has so much experience in the competition, that have every right to be here, because what they’ve done is remarkable. We know the difficulty of the match, but I think we have shown in Europe, in any ground, what we are capable of. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been very consistent, and tomorrow we have to play with that confidence, with that desire and that will, to come here to win the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have prepared the game to win it – there’s no question about that. We have to be ourselves and do what we do constantly with our opponents. And then, let’s see what the game throws, the level that we can show, the quality that we can show, and hopefully that’s going to be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n

Everything you need to know about Atletico Madrid <\/span>
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Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After returning to the Champions League semi-finals for the second successive year, Mikel Arteta is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}