Arteta on the emotional state of his side after semifinal exit against Paris St Germain sees the Gunners go trophyless again.
Arteta on his side’s exit from the champions league said that his players were in tears after being eliminated.
But for the majority of their Champions League semi-final loss, he maintained that Arsenal had been the superior team.
Achraf Hakimi gave Luis Enrique’s team a dominating 3-0 lead on aggregate after a promising start that saw Gianluigi Donnarumma make a spectacular stop to deny Martin Ødegaard, goals from Fabián Ruiz, and David Raya save a weak penalty from Vitinha. After being denied another fantastic Donnarumma save earlier, Bukayo Saka pulled one back and could have added intrigue in the final ten minutes if he had scored another goal.
Arteta believed that the main difference had been the Italian custodian. He insisted, however, that Arsenal had been superior during the two matches.
“I think so,” he said. “Especially across 160 minutes. I’m saying that and they are saying that because they [the PSG bench] just told me that. When you analyse both games, who has been the best player, the MVP, has been the same player, the goalkeeper.
“And the Champions League is decided in the boxes and it’s won the game for them because obviously today after 20 minutes and what happened in London as well, the result should have been very different. It gives me so much pride but at the same time I’m so upset, so annoyed that we didn’t manage to do it.”
“Today I see how much they want it because they were in tears.
“This squad, two years ago, nobody believed that we could even probably qualify for the Champions League, not even think that we could finish second and compete in the league. Perhaps the amount of points that we had in any other year, you are champions. But the reality at the end is you need something to lose and that trophy with all the work that we do and the disappointment is we don’t have them.”