Arsenal Back in Champions League Final: Arteta Reflects on Historic Win
Mikel Arteta walked into the press room with the look of a man who knew the scale of what had just happened. Arsenal back in a Champions League final. A 1-0 win over Atletico Madrid. Twenty years on from their only previous appearance. History, again.
“It’s an incredible night. We made history again together,” he said, the emotion still close to the surface. Pride poured out of him – not just for the players, but for everyone wrapped up in the club’s revival.
A night that felt different
Arteta lingered on the scenes outside and inside the stadium as much as on the football itself. The noise, the colour, the tension. The way every tackle, every clearance, every pass was lived in the stands.
“The manner that we got to see outside the stadium was special and unique,” he said. “The atmosphere that our supporters created, the energy, the way they lived every ball with us, it made it special and unique. I never felt that in the stadium.”
For a manager obsessed with details, this was about something bigger: a club reconnecting with its own sense of occasion. He knew exactly what it meant.
“We knew how much it meant to everybody. We put everything in, the boys did an incredible job. After 20 years and for the second time in our history, we are back in the Champions League final.”
Budapest awaits, and with it Bayern Munich or Paris Saint-Germain. Arsenal will not go there as tourists.
Surviving Atletico’s edge
Arteta did not dress up the scale of the task they had just overcome. Atletico Madrid, awkward, relentless, always ready with an answer.
“We know how difficult and challenging every opponent is at this level,” he said. “[Atletico] are an incredible team. The way they compete, the solution they have, the answer they have to everything you try to do to them immediately. It’s incredible. That’s the reason they’ve been there.”
This tie, like so many at this stage, turned on details. One goal. One moment. One set of margins.
“The margins are so small and tonight they’ve gone for us.”
A gut call on the line-up
The team sheet looked familiar. Same XI as the weekend. No grand surprise. But behind that decision, Arteta admitted, lay hours of internal debate.
“If you see my iPad, the amount of line-ups I’ve done and changed and turned it again, and what about this and the possible subs and if they do that, we do this,” he revealed.
In the end, he trusted instinct.
“In the end it was my gut feeling. I had such a good feeling from what I saw a few days ago against Fulham. To do that, it was painful because it was difficult to leave important players out because they all want to be involved and start this kind of game.”
The response from those left out told its own story about this squad.
“You saw all the finishers, the manner that they got into the pitch and how much they helped the team.”
The people behind the moment
When the final whistle went, Arteta’s mind went straight to home.
“The order was immediately my wife, my kids, my parents, my sister and then all the people involved at the club, because I know what it feels like,” he said.
He spoke like a man who has lived the brutal side of the job as well as its rare highs.
“You can think and say it’s going to be a beautiful night but when you actually are looking somebody in the eye and they have that expression, and you look to the supporters and they are just immensely proud and happy, that’s when our job makes sense.
“Many other times it’s difficult to find the right reason why we do what we do, but when these things happen, then everything that we do is worth it.”
From rebuilding to Budapest
Since Arteta walked through the doors as head coach, Arsenal’s European story has been one of slow, often painful reconstruction. There were no shortcuts, no guarantees.
“It’s very tough and difficult but again we’ve all been so aligned on the desire and ambition that we have for the club,” he said of the journey to this point.
Luck plays its part. He did not pretend otherwise.
“Then you have to be sometimes lucky, things have to go your way. We put obviously so much work, passion and belief into what we do and today we got rewarded to have an incredible day in Budapest in a few weeks.”
The work, though, is non-negotiable. That has become the hallmark of this Arsenal.
A new standard for the Emirates
Arteta has been demanding a different kind of Emirates for years. On this night, he got it. Now, he wants it every week.
“That box is ticked now, now we have to maintain it,” he said of the atmosphere. “Now we go to the level that I think a top club that wants to be fighting consistently for the highest trophies, that’s a must. We’ve got it now, now we have to maintain it.”
This, in his mind, is what a serious club feels like: players and supporters dragging each other to a higher level.
Enjoy the high, stay on the edge
The temptation after a night like this is to float. Arteta refuses to let his players drift. Not with a title race still alive and West Ham waiting at the weekend.
“The high is not too high, the low is not too low, my job is to be quite stable,” he said. “I really will enjoy it, everyone is enjoying this moment now. Tomorrow we have to start to prepare for Sunday, we have an incredible game now to play against West Ham, a really tough one and we’re going to have four days to do that. It’s great, let’s enjoy the moment.”
The message is clear: celebrate, then reset.
Players taking ownership
If Arteta is the architect, he is adamant the players are the ones who have built nights like this on the pitch.
“It’s down to them, at the end of the day it was that they had to put on these kind of performances,” he said. “I can try to convince them and give them love and clarity on what is, in my opinion, the most important thing. To be competitive and give us the chance to win what we want to achieve but then they have to do it.”
He called it “an incredible group of players and staff” and then pointed to the reality of elite football – the grind, the setbacks, the need to keep going when the reward feels miles away.
“In elite sport, in football in particular, you can live a really difficult day but if you keep working maybe you get rewarded and we’ve certainly done that in the last few weeks.”
Now the reward is a Champions League final in Budapest, a shot at the biggest prize of all. The question is no longer whether Arsenal belong back on this stage. It’s whether they are ready to finish the job.
