Mikel Arteta calls on Arsenal to grasp opportunity to reach Champions League semi-final

OPPORTUNITY: Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta during a press conference at the Allianz Arena, Munich. Photo credit: Nick Potts/PA Wire.

MIKEL ARTETA has called on his Arsenal players to create their own history ahead of the biggest game of his managerial career.

The Spaniard took his side to a Wembley FA Cup Final victory in his first season in charge four years ago, but the chance to avenge a series of defeats by Bayern Munich and reach the club’s third Champions League semi-final ever feels like a greater occasion.

That is partly because the Chelsea victory of 2020 was a behind-closed-doors Covid special. There will be 75,000 baying Bayern fans here in Munich’s Allianz Arena on Wednesday – all used to winning at this time of the season.

Arteta explained what he has asked of his players when he said: “I have asked for a performance that puts us in the Champions League semi-final.

"All the preparation has been to achieve that. We have earned it. We have earned it for ten months and everything we did last season, to start our journey in the Champions League after so many years. We have an unbelievable opportunity to make it happen.

“To win here would be unbelievable. If we make it happen and we’re in the semi final, we’ll be in a really high emotional state with something that we haven’t achieved in 15 years and that’s the opportunity.”

Arsenal have only progressed from two of their seven quarter-final ties in the European Cup/Champions League to date. They come here after recovering to record a 2-2 draw in London last week. But their record in Munich is poor; they have only won one of their six away games against Bayern at this level.

Bayern will be looking to qualify for the Champions League semi-finals for the 13th time. Since the Gunners reached the semi-final for the last time in 2008-09, the Bundesliga giants have progressed on eight separate occasions in UEFA’s top club tournament.

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta with his team during a training session at the Sobha Realty Training Centre. Photo credit: Adam Davy/PA Wire.

The first task for Arteta has been to pick his players up after their surprise home defeat by Aston Villa on Sunday.

Believe him or not, he claimed it has been a straightforward task.

“Regardless of that result, it is going to have no impact on what’s going to happen here. We have refocussed and started to build the confidence, the trust and understanding the performance that we are going to have to put in to beat them and go through in the tie.

“Emotion in football is tweaking it, tweaking, tweaking and touching the button at the right time for the team to be always stable, be hyped when it has to be hyped and I think we did that really well in London.

"After scoring the first goal, we had a big chance to score the second one. Suddenly in five or ten minutes they were ahead and we were really controlled, really mature not to throw everything away in that moment, find our rhythm, our moment to score a really good goal. The reaction of the team was to try straight away to score the third.”

It is widely agreed that a defeat of Thomas Tuchel’s side will be Arsenal’s best European result since they won away at defending champions AC Milan in 2008 – the first English team ever to win at the San Siro. Others might stake a claim for Paul Vaessen’s header to secure a 1-0 victory at the previously undefeated Juventus in 1980.

Either way, the task ahead of Arteta, as inexperienced as most of his players at this level, cannot be underestimated. He is hoping the lack of scars of defeat on his young side will be of more to their benefit than their naivety of such a weighty tie.

“Most of our players haven't experienced a night like this,” he conceded.

“This is going to be the first one, they are super-motivated, they are prepared, they feel confident and it is something that tomorrow we are going to have to show against an opponent that has this experience but we want to make it happen.

“I cannot control that people are saying we might fade. I cannot take their phones and TVs away or the people around them. We didn’t lose anything last year because we didn’t win anything. First of all you have to win it and then you can lose it.

"What we had was an unbelievable journey against the best team in the world here and in Europe in the last seven years and this is where we want to be. We are not satisfied and we want to be better and that’s the level we are competing with. We will try again our best until the last day to win those cups and be successful.

“There are lots of things we can do to write our story very differently here, we know that and it is going to be about putting in a very, very strong performance collectively and individually to earn the right to be in the semi-final.”