‘The Champions League is my obsession’

The match against the Athletic, last before Everest, and the Metropolitan began to roar. No, it was not because of the victory against Valverde’s team. Nor for moving Betis away in the standings. He looked at the stands at tonight, at Arsenal, at the Champions League semi-finals, at the forbidden dream. They did it, as has been happening for a long time, with a now legendary chant: “The Champions League is my obsession.”

Meanwhile, the staff looked at the background and applauded. All. Without exception. Knowing that, having cruelly lost the Copa del Rey, the Champions League is the only way to glory. And Neptune, of course, the fountain ‘abandoned’ in the last five years that hopes to put on its best clothes. And the path is marked, it is called the Champions League and there are only three games left to reach the precious goal.

But before arriving in Budapest, on the dreamed May 30, It’s time to measure forces with Arsenal. Current leader of the Premier, he signed a total of victories in the group stage that allows him to decide the return in London. It is true that he is not at the level he reached at the start of the season, just when he beat the red and whites 4-0 in the blink of an eye, but underestimating the potential of Arteta’s team would be a gross mistake that, surely, Simeone will not allow.

Cholo, precisely, will focus on his battle with Arteta, one of Europe’s emerging technicians.. He has been raising the level of some Gunners who still long for Wenger for years, but he still lacks that great achievement that will help him overcome his homesickness for an era, that of Arsene, who also did not win an orejona that they cherished in 2006… against a Spanish team, Barça led by Ronaldinho while a beardless Messi took his first steps in the elite.

They have never won it

And, although the song with which this preview started speaks of the red and white obsession, it is no less so for an Arsenal that has not raised the orejona in its history either. Last year they reached the semi-finals, but their 13 League championships and 14 English Cups They look for company in the form of the great continental band with which Arteta would finally banish the Wenger era.

In fact, For the English it will be their fourth semi-finals. It is said that they lost their only final in 2006, as well as the 2009 semifinals, against Manchester United, and those of last year, against a PSG that threatens again on the other side of the table and that will elucidate the pass to Budapest with Bayern that eliminated Real Madrid in a quarterfinal round in which Atlético ended the favoritism of Flick’s Barça.

Troubled moments

It is striking that two of the four semi-finalists arrive at a ‘bad’ moment of results. While Atlético has barely had two wins in the last nine games (its continental defeats against Tottenham and Barça, of course, did not prevent it from qualifying in both continental rounds), Arsenal sees the Premier League in danger, which it has dominated with a heavy hand with two victories in the last seven games. Despite this, they are in a position to win the league-Champions double but to do so they must first overcome a red and white team that, as the song says, has one obsession: winning the Champions League.

It’s time, now, for hope, to get a favorable result before paying, in just six days, a visit to the London Emirates. Win or win, there is no other way, against an Arsenal with a fearsome defensive potential but who knows that, with Simeone, they will play in their fourth semifinals, seventh in total. Reaching the summit on May 30 is the goal of two teams that can boast of being among the four best teams in Europe. One step before the prize in the form of a grand final. l