Captain Laurent Koscielny and goalscorer Alex Lacazette faced the BT Sport cameras after Arsenal beat Napoli 1-0 at the San Paolo to secure a place in the Europa League semi-finals.
Here’s what the duo had to say about a superbly executed tie, the goal that won the game and what lies ahead…
On the performance…
LK: We came here with ambition. We wanted to win here and to score some goals. We did it with Laca and we kept the clean sheet as well, which is good for the confidence. We did it on Monday [against Watford] as well. It’s good for the confidence for the rest of the season. We know each game in front of us is a final. We’re happy tonight with qualifiatoin to the semi-final and tomorrow we switch [focus] to the Premier League.
On his goal…
AL: I’ve been practising free-kicks in training. All my teammates believe in me and Lolo. I’m happy, I wanted to score tonight and that’s done.
On beating Napoli…
LK: We know Napoli played in the Champions League this season, we know they’re a good team, a good squad with good players. We did the job at home, to keep the clean sheet and to score some goals. Today we knew if we scored one goal they’d need to score four. We respect them, we tried to play. After the goal we were more sitting down in front of our goal, but we fight as well to defend. It’s good for the spirit of the team.
On playing Valencia in the semi-final…
AL: It’s exciting, we will play against Francis Coquelin who used to be a Gunner, so I can’t wait to play against him.
Kos bossed it tonight
Say what you want about our shakey defence but that’s 4 goals conceded in 12 games with eight clean sheets. Not bad for a team who let in goals for fun!
Well there have been iffy moments but its 3 clean sheets plus two big away wins at Watford and now Napoli, neither easy.
We must take this and add a bit more belief over remaining away fixtures.
They held the gate
For the most parts but not entirely.
Got his positioning wrong first half and played a host of Napoli players on side which almost led to a goal but for the fact they could not hit the target much over both legs.
…that’s if I were to be nitpicky like some would on say Mustafi.
Monreal wins tonight’s “respect the opposition” award by going for a shit during the second half ?
Almost scored for them too. Got tired of watching them missing tried to school them.
The Pizza musta been dodgy last nite
Haha apparently the Pizza was delicious. Turns out, we learned how to defend resiliently and dominate confidently! Great show of maturity and control on our part
The one negative is Ramsey’s injury. Still hope it’s not too bad.
Would love to see him score the customary winner in the EL final.
don’t forget gabriel…….. if we really had any foresight we would have shipped Mustafi off to them (back to them..) …..
if i had a time machine and could change one thing……
That was soo massive to win back to back
Solid marshalling by Le Boss today. No panic back there. We rode our luck a bit still one chance in second half for Milik but it took him it seems by surprise. Then Monreal tried to score for them or at least show them how it was done. In the end what really helped the defense was the Lacazette goal. They were a bit too heated up for the game and with our away goal, they started to panic with the mountain ahead of them. But we’ve conspired to do ourselves and our defense a disservice before by not being… Read more »