Barcelona happy after drawing Gunners in the Champions League
Football
By
Mirror
| Dec 15, 2015
Barcelona are celebrating after drawing Arsenal in the Champions League.
While the Catalan giants remained polite about the Londoners, publicly at least, there is no doubt Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain were the sides they wanted to avoid when the last 16 ties were set on Monday.
A Nou Camp insider revealed: “This is the draw we wanted.
"We did not want to play Paris or Juve – but this is more straight-forward. We feel we have dodged a bullet.”
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European Cup holders Barca's sporting director Robert Fernandez was more diplomatic about the Gunners, though.
He insisted: “They’re a complicated and difficult challenge, a ¬magnificent adversary.
“We have to get a good result in London. This will be very important.”
Yet for all the corporate double-speak coming from the Nou Camp directors, Barcelona-based newspaper Mundo Deportivo summed up Spanish opinion as it set its sights on the final at the San Siro in June.
“The road to Milan passes through London for Barca,” it said.
With Barca in top form, Arsene Wenger may have to pull off another Euro miracle after last week’s 3-0 sensation over Olympiacos in Athens.
Arsene Wenger's men were well beaten by Barcelona — 6-3 and 5-2 on aggregate — in the knockout stages in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
They also lost to them in the 2006 final in Paris and have beaten Barca only once in seven Champions League clashes.
Gunners legend Alan Smith admitted the draw was "the worst possible outcome. Wenger’s side must play out of their skins to stand a chance of reaching the quarter-finals.
“The obvious conundrum is: How can an Arsenal back four presumably featuring the less than nippy Per Mertesacker possibly contain the mighty threat of Neymar, Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi?
“The Gunners will need luck and every ounce of their quality to find a way past the reigning champions.”
Arsenal secretary David Miles told BT Sport: "It's not going to be easy and it's the team that most Arsenal fans would have wanted to avoid at this stage, but it's up to us to make a good fist of it.
"We've got our own world-class players and certainly we'll go in for this. It should be two fantastic games and we're very much looking forward to it."