After seeing his side beaten on penalties in the Champions League final by Paris Saint-Germain, Mikel Arteta attended his post-match press conference inside the Puskas Arena.
He was asked about his emotions, the penalty decisions, the shootout and next season's plans. Here is everything he had to say:
on his immediate emotions:Pain - that’s it. When you are so close in the competition and today you are a few penalty kicks away from winning the biggest club football competition, that’s the way we should feel.
on if he feels we’ll be back in the final soon:I don't know, we're going to have to earn that. The same progression that we had in the last few years, we're going to have to do that over again and the level is increasing every single season. We have had an incredible competition, we haven't lost a single match in the competition, but the reality is that when something had to go our way, especially in the boxes with the penalty that was given against Mosquera and the penalty to Madueke and the penalty kicks, those margins didn’t go for us.
on if his pain is mixed with pride:For sure. What I said to the players and the staff is that if I tell them one million times ‘thank you’, it's not going to be enough. It's not because we won the Premier League and it's not because we played the League Cup final, it's not because we played the Champions League final in the manner that we've done. It's because of the joy and the moments that we have lived together every single day and that's above anything else.
on if Gabriel asked to take a penalty:He wanted to take number five honestly. We have prepared and trained for this moment. Normally the penalty takers would be Bukayo, Martin, Kai for sure. We knew that if we got extra time on penalties, the penalty takers would be different players, still with the quality when you see Ebz take penalties in training, he doesn't miss any, but then you have to do in this moment. It's unfortunate not to have the same precision and efficiency that they had and that's the reason that we haven't won.
on using the pain to motivate us to move on:First of all, you have to go through that pain, digest it and turn it into fuel and improve to reach a different level. It will demand a different level with the quality around Europe. I want to congratulate PSG, Luis [Enrique] in particular, because in my opinion they’re the best team in the world. What they are able to do with the ball, with individual actions, I haven't seen it. It's not the plan to play in certain areas when you don't have the ball but they force you to do that, so even more credit to the players.
on if we should have had a penalty:I watched all the penalties in the competition in the last 72 hours to understand what is a penalty and what is not, and that easily can be a penalty.
on if we’d had the penalty it would have been a different result:If, if, if - it’s not what happened and that's it. We need to do better, we will have to improve and find different margins to get the outcome that we want.
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on if he’ll look to emulate PSG’s style of player in the future:Yes, and the individual action that they have for sure. Then you have to get into the competition with all the squad available in every moment, each player. We have had many more players than last season but not all of them in that condition for different reasons. That's something that we have to improve on as well.
on his plans over the next few days:First of all, I will take a few days with my family and then we will all start the process to review what we've done. We’ll start to make some very important decisions, we want to reach another level. We're going to have to show that ambition because they are more than capable of doing it but it's going to demand us to be very, very ambitious, very fast and very smart.
on what he’ll say to the fans at the parade tomorrow:To the people, I already know how the team feels about them. We are very grateful for the support they have given us throughout the season, in times of difficulty, as they have been with us, and it has been a real joy to win a league after 22 years. It hurts, it hurts a lot for them not to win, because I can't even imagine what would have happened. We all had a huge desire to win it and tomorrow will be a beautiful day for sure.
on his thoughts about our possible penalty:I’ve already given my opinion about that.
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