14 players in Arsenal's squad have never appeared in the UCL.
Many are interested to see how the young team will fare, and thankfully for them they can call upon the advice of their manager who found himself in a similar position back in 2001 – making his UCL debut as a teenager.
‘I went from playing in the second division [in Spain] and a week later I was playing with PSG in the San Siro, looking at [Paolo] Maldini, [Alessandro] Costacurta – and I was scared,’ he said in his pre-match press conference. ‘I was in the tunnel looking at them, they all looked immaculate and I was just a 17-year-old boy [thinking], “I don’t know if I am ready for this!”‘The lesson probably is that you feel like this, [but] once you are on the pitch, just do what you do every single day and treat it in a natural way. Go for it, like we always do.’
Including qualifying matches, Arteta would go onto make 36 appearances in the Champions League for PSG, Rangers, Everton and Arsenal. And the PSV clash will of course be the 41-year-old’s debut as a UCL manager, and he is unsurprisingly thrilled to have bought the competition back to the Emirates.
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