On Monday afternoon, both Olivier Giroud and Arsene Wenger spoke to the media ahead of Arsenal’s round of 16 UEFA Champions League tie against Barcelona.
The French striker told the media, as reported by the club’s official website, that he believes Arsenal have what it takes to end Barcelona’s incredible 32 match un-beaten run when the two sides meet at the Emirates on Tuesday evening.
Giroud believes that beating Bayern Munich in the group stage, who were in similar form at the time, will give them great confidence going into Tuesday’s game, and hope that they can progress to the quarter-finals for the first time since the 2009/10 season.
We are confident, we need to be confident and play the Arsenal way. We did well against Munich. We know that we can beat big teams but there is one thing for sure: we need to be at 100 per cent and be determined.
The Frenchman added that his team need to perform the ‘games of their lives’ in order to beat Barcelona, who’s front three of Neymar, Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi have already scored 91 goals between them this season.
We just need to focus and give 100 per cent all together with good team cohesion. After that we will put what we need into this game – a lot of commitment and determination.
Arsenal had looked like they would fail to qualify from their group after losing their first two games against Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiacos. The Gunners had to win by at least two goals against the Greek giants in the final group game to qualify and a Giroud hat-trick got the job done for the north London side.
We did very well against Olympiacos to qualify as it was very hard. We are looking forward to playing Barcelona who are maybe the best team in the world today. We are going to play our game.
Giroud and the rest of the Arsenal team are very much up against it considering the obvious quality of the opposition, but the Gunners will be hoping to cause a serious upset over the next two games against the defending European champions.
