\n<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta says Arsenal\u2019s players nominated Declan Rice as captain for their last two games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made the decision,\u201d Arteta told the media after the 0-0 draw with Sporting CP secured Arsenal\u2019s passage to the Champions League semi-finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made the decision because Declan has earned the status, the role, the way he\u2019s taken ownership in difficult moments. He\u2019s a great leader, he\u2019s a top player for us, and I love that the players take that ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the absence of club captain Martin Odegaard \u2014 and Bukayo Saka, who has frequently worn the armband as the Norwegian\u2019s deputy \u2014 Rice skippered the team in Saturday\u2019s Premier League fixture against Bournemouth as well as Wednesday\u2019s Champions League quarter-final second leg against Sporting.<\/p>\n
Previously, centre-back Gabriel has been next in line to wear the armband. For 27-year-old England international Rice to lead the team out suggests there has been a change in the hierarchy.<\/p>\n
Speaking to TNT Sports after the game, Rice was asked whether this closely-fought second leg was frustrating. \u201cWe just got to a semi-final, no frustration,\u201d he responded. \u201cPositivity all the way. Who cares what people think? All that matters is what this group think, what the manager thinks. We\u2019re in another semi-final. I\u2019m delighted.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sentiment was echoed by Arteta, who used his post-match press conference to express his \u201cgratitude\u201d to his players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the effort, the commitment that they put in,\u201d said the Arsenal manager. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work behind it. We\u2019ve done something that has never been done in the history of our club in 140 years, so that tells you the difficulty of that. We have to do it as well in a very special way, missing a lot of important players, big credit to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a reason why we are the only English team in the competition, because this league and this schedule takes the hell out of you and it\u2019s very difficult to do what we\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arsenal will face Atletico Madrid in the semi-finals, with the first leg taking place in Spain on April 29. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have two magical nights, one in Madrid and another one here in London against Atletico,\u201d said Arteta.<\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s attention returns to the Premier League on Sunday, when they face Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium in what could be a defining moment in the title race.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mikel Arteta says Arsenal\u2019s players nominated Declan Rice as captain for their last two games. \u201cThey made the decision,\u201d Arteta told the media after the 0-0 draw with Sporting CP secured Arsenal\u2019s passage to the Champions League semi-finals. \u201cThey made the decision because Declan has earned the status, the role, the way he\u2019s taken ownership […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}