Arsenal’s Declan Rice calls for ‘magic moments’ to beat PSG

Arsenal’s Declan Rice calls for ‘magic moments’ to beat PSG

Declan Rice said Arsenal will require “magic moments” to reach their first Champions League final in 19 years.

The Gunners face Paris Saint-Germain in the French capital on Wednesday evening aiming to overturn a 1-0 first-leg deficit after Ousmane Dembele’s fourth-minute goal gave Luis Enrique’s side the advantage.

Only two teams – Ajax in 1995-96 and Tottenham in 2018-19 – have ever lost the first leg of a Champions League semifinal at home and gone on to reach the final.

Rice played a key role in Arsenal reaching this stage of the competition for the first time since 2009 after his two stunning free kicks set up a 5-1 aggregate win over Real Madrid in the quarterfinals.

“I think the manager calls them magic moments,” Rice said “He always talks about having someone delivering a magic moment. I think in that game against Madrid, obviously I was able to produce two free kicks, which were incredible.

“But tomorrow night, a semifinal is set up for someone else to maybe get that magic moment. Hopefully it’s me again, but you’re going to need a moment of magic to win a game, and as a team we’re going to need that.

“The way they move between the lines was really, really smart. But once we worked out how we could beat them, we missed a few chances, but in terms of how we were driving with the ball, giving our wingers one v one opportunities, chances started to open up.

“I think tomorrow night we need to do the same. We need to have big balls and we need to go out there on the biggest stage and show that we’re ready to play at this level.”

‘Arsenal psychological fear of winning’

Former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney claimed after last week’s first leg that Arsenal had a “psychological fear” of winning trophies after winning a sole FA Cup during Mikel Arteta’s five years in charge.

Rooney, who won the Champions League with United in 2008, said: “We’ve seen it, they’ve ran Manchester City close a few times in the league, they’ve ran Liverpool a little bit close, now they’ve beat Madrid, there’s a hurdle they have to get over.”

But Rice referenced October’s 2-0 win over PSG in the group stage and said: “It was the same team other than Dembele and [Khvicha] Kvaratskhelia. Everyone else started and we beat them.

“So there’s no fear. I think the goal inside four minutes probably shocked us a little bit, shocked the atmosphere a little bit.

“But once we found a foothold in the game again, we started creating chances. The goalkeeper [Gianluigi Donnarumma] made some amazing saves. We fully believed that we could beat them.

“Obviously it wasn’t meant to be, but we’ve seen enough and we know enough as a team that tomorrow night we can do something really, really good and we definitely believe that we belong at this level.”

Arteta urged Arsenal to take inspiration from their quarterfinal win in Madrid, when they beat Real 2-1 at the Santiago Bernabeu.

“We did it in a really convincing way against very difficult opponents,” Arteta said. “The last one is very recent, it’s Madrid against all the odds because obviously they were talking about all the comebacks and the history and what they did, and we proved something very different to what they expected and tomorrow we want to do the same.

“We are a win away from being the Champions League final. In the most beautiful city in the world, against a great opponent, it doesn’t get much better than that.”