Arsenal advanced to the Champions League semifinals for a second successive season despite an uninspiring second leg against Sporting CP. The Gunners held a slim aggregate advantage and produced just a single shot on target in the return match, but defended that lead to reach the last four.<\/p>\n
Sporting captain Morten Hjulmand described the game in blunt terms. \u201cThe impact of the first game that we lost made it more difficult to go to the Emirates and win, especially when they don\u2019t often lose at home we knew it would be difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the game had low intensity and no rhythm, zero goals and I would say boring. I think a lot stops during the game so we couldn\u2019t get the rhythm that we wanted to. A little bit boring.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tie provided a sharp contrast with the high\u2011scoring contest between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, a 6\u20134 aggregate thriller unfolding at the same time in Germany. For Arsenal, however, results mattered more than style.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrustrating? No, we just got to a semifinal, positivity all the way,\u201d stand\u2011in captain Declan Rice told reporters. \u201cWho cares what people think? All that matters is what this group thinks, what the manager thinks and we\u2019re in another semifinal. I\u2019m delighted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll keep going. Keep playing well. Keep getting over the line and bring it on. Bring on everything. This is Arsenal Football Club, there\u2019s noise with every game. If you don\u2019t play well, take it with a pinch of salt and keep moving. Nobody\u2019s going to hand you anything in this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta underlined that progression was the priority. \u201cI don\u2019t know [if the outcome was fair in Sporting]. I\u2019m the Arsenal manager, and I think it\u2019s very fair what happened over the last two legs,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to be better than the opponent. I think we had many periods in the game when we were there, but we didn\u2019t score the goal. We have many other things that are very important to get the result that you need in a tie.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the club\u2019s first consecutive Champions League semifinal run. Arsenal will meet Atl\u00e9tico Madrid on April 29 and May 5, beginning in Madrid with the decisive second leg at home. Arteta paid tribute to the work behind the achievement. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of work behind it, we’ve done something that has never been done in the history of our club in 140 years,\u201d he said. \u201cThat tells you the difficulty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal reached the Champions League semifinals again despite a second leg many called boring once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[1162,1047],"class_list":["post-11980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-analytics","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}