Key occasions
A completely easy query for Arsenal fanatics
Premier League or Champions League? And why?
“Proper,” says Justin Kavanagh, “let’s have a pleasing quiet 0-0 draw with top-notch protecting and numerous secure, safe sideways passing this night. My previous center can’t take any other night time of racing palpitations and excitations like the day gone by’s. And as for Mikel Arteta’s center charge, properly, if he’d been training both staff final night time, I worry for his well-being nowadays.”
David Hytner
Martin Ødegaard has permitted that Arsenal will stay open to grievance till they shed their nearly-men recognition and is assured the membership are primed to do exactly that this season.
The captain reduce a resounding determine at the eve of Wednesday night time’s Champions League semi-final first leg at Atlético Madrid, insisting he and his teammates had been able to answer the teachings of the previous and ship silverware.
Ødegaard was once relating to the Champions League semi-final go out in opposition to Paris Saint-Germain final season however he may additionally had been serious about the Premier League runners-up finishes in every of the former 3 years. Arsenal are peak of the desk and chasing a primary league name since 2004.
“It’s all the time going to be there till we win and that’s one thing you must reside with,” Ødegaard stated. “We wish to take all our reports and the teachings and use them in a great way. It’s a part of soccer and a part of the adventure.
Atletico are famend as a decent, pragmatic aspect, however their id has modified slightly in the previous few years. Their 14 Champions League video games this season have produced a whopping 60 targets.
Arsenal’s video games had been so much tighter, specifically at their finish. In 12 video games they’ve scored 27 and conceded handiest 5.
The gamers on a yellow card
No one. Yellow playing cards are wiped going into the semi-finals.
Sid Lowe
At first of the general coaching consultation sooner than their greatest recreation in a decade, Atlético Madrid’s gamers covered up by way of the centre circle on the Metropolitano and waited for his or her trainer to come back. Diego Simeone arrived and ran during the heart of them, from Juan Musso and Jan Oblak at one finish to Antoine Griezmann and Ademola Lookman on the different. As he handed, head down, they cheered and hit him – if now not rather as onerous as they do when it’s a participant’s flip. Gauntlet run, applause echoed around the empty stadium. Satisfied birthday, mister.
Simeone grew to become 56 on Tuesday. He has spent nearly 20 of the ones right here: first because the captain who gained the double, then the trainer who lifted Atlético’s subsequent league name, 18 years on, and now leads them into his fourth and their 7th Ecu Cup semi-final, 9 years for the reason that final. What do you get the person who has all of it? “Buah! You’ll’t consider how just right it’s to be within the 4 preferrred groups in Europe,” he stated after the quarter-final; “I haven’t any birthday want,” he stated sooner than this semi-final, “simply natural gratitude in an effort to be with my 3 sons on my birthday, with my two daughters, my mum, my spouse, my lifelong pals.”
One of the vital sons was once hidden within the crowd someplace, hitting him. The day that Simeone bade farewell to the Vicente Calderón as a participant in December 2004, he carried his youngest son, two-year-old Giuliano, in his hands. The times sooner than he got here again to Madrid as trainer in December 2011, he stopped in a restaurant in Mar del Plata and, over a croissant and a tumbler of milk, requested Giuliano, then 8, what he concept. “You’re going to train [Radamel] Falcao?!” the child responded, pleasure giving solution to fact. “However … if it is going properly, you gained’t come again.”
David Hytner
It was once the night time when Arsenal made their first large observation of the season within the Champions League, after they marketed their want to head the entire manner in Europe’s maximum glamorous festival; to create membership historical past. They’d welcomed Atlético Madrid within the 3rd spherical of league section suits and it was a exhibit for all the preferrred bits about Mikel Arteta’s staff.
The bolted-door defence. The livid counterpress. The physicality. The velocity and ruthlessness. The set-piece productiveness. And, connected to the whole thing however trumping the lot, the whole self-belief. Arsenal had been not able to have the opportunity via within the first part or the early a part of the second one – it was once tight – however they didn’t panic as a result of they knew the target would come. It was once inevitable. They had been inevitable.
When Gabriel Magalhães scored it within the 57th minute, it was once the instructed for a devastating salvo, Arsenal raining in 3 extra by way of the seventieth minute. The sport completed 4-0, Atlético departing battered and bruised. It was once past due October and the efficiency and consequence had been very a lot of a work with the Arsenal of the primary part of the season.
Crew information
Mikel Arteta makes two adjustments, each in assault, from the nervy Premier League victory over Newcastle on Saturday. Gabriel Martinelli and Viktor Gyokeres, who scored 3 of the 4 targets when Arsenal trounced Atletico previous this season, exchange Eberechi Eze and the injured Kai Havertz. It’s the MGM assault – Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli – so we’re contractually obliged to hyperlink to a lion roaring.
Bukayo Saka isn’t but to suit to play a complete 90 mins; Riccardo Calafiori joins him on a robust Arsenal bench.
Atletico make 4 adjustments from their 3-2 win over Athletic Bilbao on the weekend. Julian Alvarez, David Hancko, Johnny Cardoso and Ademola Lookman are available in for Clement Lenglet, Pablo Barrios, Alex Baena and Alexander Sorloth.
Atletico Madrid (4-4-2) Oblak; Llorente, Pubill, Hancko, Ruggeri; Simeone, Cardoso, Koke, Lookman; Griezmann, Alvarez.
Subs: Musso, Esquivel, Sorloth, Mendoza, Baena, Almada, Lenglet, Molina, Vargas, Le Normand, Bonar, Julio Diaz.
Arsenal (4-3-3) Raya; White, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie; Odegaard, Zubimendi, Rice; Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli.
Subs: Arrizabalaga, Setford, Mosquera, Saka, Jesus, Eze, Norgaard, Trossard, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Dowman, Salmon.
Referee Danny Makkelie (Netherlands)
That is the fourth assembly between Atletico and Arsenal. The primary two got here within the Europa League semi-final of 2017-18, when targets from Antoine Griezmann and Diego Costa put Atleti via 2-1 on combination. The opposite was once within the league section of this season’s festival, when Arsenal ran rise up in the second one part.
Preamble
Historical past is made! Or relatively, it is going to be at 8pm BST this night, when Mikel Arteta’s oft-maligned Arsenal play back-to-back Champions League semi-finals for the primary time within the membership’s historical past. It’ll rely for little in the event that they don’t win both the Premier League or Champions League this season, but it surely’s an simple marker in their development from the Fifteenth-best staff in England to 1 Europe’s greatest.
For the second one yr in a row, Arsenal’s semi-final comes to arguably the 2 preferrred groups by no means to win the Ecu Cup or Champions League. Paris Saint-Germain’s superb triumph final season left a emptiness for Atletico, even though they’d argue they had been already within the peak two. Finally, no aspect has performed in additional Champions League finals with out profitable the object. On all 3 events, in 1974, 2014 and 2016, Atleti got here agonisingly shut.
Both they or Arsenal, who misplaced their handiest last to Barcelona two decades in the past, gets any other crack in Budapest on 30 Would possibly. It must be an enchanting combat between two groups preferrred recognized for his or her defensive excellence. Although the truth is extra nuanced, we’ll have none of that nine-goal nonsense this night.
Kick off 8pm BST.