Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta didn’t hold back in his praise for Paris Saint-Germain, calling them the best team on the planet after his side fell to a penalty shootout defeat in the Champions League final on Saturday. The match ended 1-1 after extra time, with PSG winning 4-3 on penalties to claim their second straight European crown.
Arteta, whose team won the Premier League this season, was blunt about the pain of the loss. “All I feel is pain,” he said in Budapest. He admitted his squad couldn’t match PSG’s quality, especially their ball control. “What they can do with the ball, with individual actions, I haven’t seen before,” Arteta told reporters. “It’s not a plan to play without the ball, but they force you into that. That says a lot about their players.”
Arsenal had less than 25 percent possession, fighting hard to hold off PSG’s relentless attacks. The French champions matched a record 45 goals in a Champions League campaign, with Ousmane Dembele’s second-half penalty canceling out Kai Havertz’s early opener for Arsenal. Arteta was frustrated that winger Noni Madueke didn’t get a penalty when the score was 1-1, but he acknowledged his team needs to step up to win Europe’s biggest prize.
This was Arsenal’s second Champions League final, 20 years after their first, which ended in a loss to Barcelona. In nearly seven years at the helm, Arteta has revived the club, ending a 22-year wait for the English title. But he insisted more changes are coming. “We have to go through the same progression again,” he said. “The level keeps rising every season. You have to take this pain, digest it, and turn it into fuel to reach a different level, because the quality across Europe demands it.”
