Morten Hjulmand, captain of Sporting Lisbon, found the quarter-final second leg of the Champions League against Arsenal (0-0) particularly boring on Wednesday. He also tackled the Gunners’ approach from set pieces.
Arsenal will compete in the semi-finals of the Champions League for the second season in a row (against Altético Madrid). And that should be enough to delight supporters previously deprived of such happiness for 15 years. But the atmosphere was frankly monotonous at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday during the quarter-final return against Sporting Lisbon (0-0), eight days after a narrow victory in Portugal (0-1). It must be said that not much happened on the pitch with only two shots on target (one on each side, plus a post for Sporting). The match even ended with the starving total of 0.93 expected goals, the lowest of the season in the Champions League.
“It was boring”
On the pitch, the players didn’t have much fun either. This was revealed by Morten Hjulmand, captain of Sporting. “I think the match was balanced today,” Golazo told CBS Sports. “The defeat in the first leg made it more difficult for the Emirates, especially since they don’t often lose at home. We knew it would be difficult here. But the match lacked intensity and rhythm, no goals, and I would even say it was boring. There were a lot of interruptions during the match, which prevented us from finding our rhythm. A bit boring, in short.”
The Danish international regretted seeing his team fail to put their game together. But he also criticized the Gunners’ big losses of time on set pieces, one of the strong points of Mikel Arteta’s men.
“If I had been a spectator, the score of 0-0, as in the first leg (1-0), does not reflect the image that Sporting wishes to project,” he lamented. “We want to score, we want to create chances, and we didn’t manage to do that today. During the game, I noticed a lot of stoppages in play, especially on set pieces, which slowed down the pace considerably. When we finally found our rhythm, we created chances, especially in the first half. But in the end, honestly, we weren’t able to create enough chances to get the victory.”
Leave a Reply