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Arteta, whose club has never won the Champions League, saw enough in the first leg to believe it is far from impossible for Arsenal to leave the Parc des Princes victorious. Mikel Arteta urged Arsenal to produce a “special" fightback against Paris Saint-Germain after Ousmane Dembele fired the French side to a 1-0 win in the Champions League semi-final first leg on Tuesday. Dembele struck in the fourth minute at the Emirates Stadium, and Arsenal were unable to haul themselves level in a tense clash featuring key misses from both teams.
PSG and Arsenal both squandered opportunities to score more through the remainder of the leg, as it drew to a 1-0 end. Arteta, whose club has never won the Champions League, saw enough in the first leg to believe it is far from impossible for Arsenal to leave the Parc des Princes victorious. “We are at half-time, and my message is exactly the same as it was after we beat Real Madrid 3-0 in the first leg of the quarter-final," he said.
“We have to go to Paris and win the game, and we are more than capable of doing it. “If you want to win the Champions League final, you have to do something special, and we are going to have to do something special in Paris to be there. We still have a lot of chances to be in that final.
" In the first half, Arsenal were in danger of becoming the latest English team to be blown away by PSG. But Arteta made an unspecified tactical switch that he said helped regain control against a PSG side who had already eliminated Liverpool and Aston Villa, as well as beating Manchester City in the league phase. “We had one issue.
We corrected it after 15 minutes, and we turned the game around. There was something very specific with the way we play that we had to get right," he said. “We had two one-on-ones with Donnarumma, and if they go in, it is a different story.
“But he made the saves, and that’s the difference in the Champions League. The margins are so small, and it didn’t go our way." The Gunners will now head to Paris for the second leg on May 7, knowing an epic performance is required to book a place in their first Champions League final since 2006.
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