Mikel Arteta admitted that our Champions League semi-final defeat to Paris Saint-Germain has left him hurting, but he’s called on his players to bounce back even stronger.
After a European campaign full of some memorable highlights, we exited the competition following a 2-1 defeat in the Parc des Princes on Wednesday night, to go down 3-1 on aggregate.
He now wants the team to show resilience, and to use their pain as extra motivation to reach the next level.
“Yes, 100 per cent,” he said after the game. “You have to be prepared to take those difficult moments on the chin and get up and we have a really good example with Marquinhos in the other dressing room.
“I think it is 11 times he’s tried to win the Champions League and failed 11 times. For him, it’s to try and win the Champions League every single season and he’s still out there competing, with his head up and trying to make it happen again.
“We had an amazing performance, but it has to hurt a lot. It’s not enough to say ‘yeah we were very close, we competed so well, we were better than them for most of the game’.
“It has to hurt because if not it will happen again. We have to make more things and have more availability and we have to have more options. That's the next step.”
As for the game itself, we once again out-performed the French champions in terms of goalscoring chances, but as at Emirates Stadium last week, the PSG goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma was in inspired form.
“Congratulations to PSG for being in the final, and then I want to thank you, our supporters, for the incredible journey that we have had together.
“The amount of support, how much they tried to lift the team and how much belief there was that we could actually do it and it’s a very sad day, they're very disappointed.
“I think the team showed an incredible personality, quality to come here, after 20 minutes we should have been two, three nil up and these ties are won normally in the boxes and their best player in both games has been their goalkeeper, he’s made a difference for them and probably the scoreline.”
The celebrations were still echoing out of the home team dressing room as the boss reflected on the game, but he wanted to finish by thanking the Arsenal supporters for their part in a memorable European campaign,
“Honestly, it's been a fascinating journey together,” he said. “When we played at home, the atmosphere we created and when we played away - we're so grateful about that because we really sensed that belief. That it wasn’t just something - that it was a real belief, but unfortunately we couldn’t deliver it.”
Copyright 2025 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.