With one of the biggest clubs in the world in Paris Saint-Germain heading to Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night, Mikel Arteta is relishing the prospect of seeing his side go toe-to-toe with elite opposition at Emirates Stadium.
After a draw at defending Europa League holders Atalanta two weeks ago, the big games keep coming as the Parisians cross the English Channel to face us, and the visit of the three-in-a-row French champions will ensure our home European campaign gets off to an eye-catching start.
Given their pedigree and the star power at their disposal, Mikel is excited for the clash and feels it will allow us to benchmark ourselves against the continent’s best clubs having only returned to the competition after a six-year absence last term.
“Everybody is looking forward to it,” he stated. “The group stage is a bit different this season and the opposition we are going to face tomorrow is probably at the highest level that you can face in European football. But it’s a good opportunity for us to see how we deal with these nights, how prepared we are and how we can impose ourselves in this kind of context.
“PSG are exceptional and they dominate every phase of play. They have a very clear intention of how they want to dominate the game through the ball and when they don’t have it, they want it straight back. They are really aggressive with it and they confront you.
“Of course, we want to win the game and we know after the draw in Atalanta, with the number of games we have left still, it’s going to be really important. Nothing is going to be decided tomorrow.”
The match will see Mikel go up against Luis Enrique in the opposite dugout, a midfielder he played alongside as a youngster at Barcelona trying to make his way through the famed La Masia academy in the late 1990s.
A fine playing career gave way to a successful stint as a boss, including winning the Champions League with Barca in 2015, and Mikel has stated his appreciation of everything his former teammate has accomplished wherever he has worked.
“I’m a huge admirer of him,” he added. “He has an unbelievable personality, huge character, huge energy, always very supportive with young players. What I love about him is wherever he’s been, as a player or a manager, his fingerprints are all over the place.
“You can sense it’s his team the way his players behave, the way they want to attack and dominate games. The spirit, the energy they have, he has this unbelievable power with all the clubs he’s been at, with the Spain national team. And then his approach to life, to his profession – it’s something to really look at and I learnt a lot of things from him.
“I admire his honesty. He’s straightforward – he will look in your eyes and tell you what he thinks. In the end, players appreciate that. They might like it more or less, depending on how it happens, but I have had two or three players here who were with him in the national team, and they always said the same thing, they all enjoy playing under him. When somebody can make you feel like that in this profession, it’s a big quality to have.
“He’s won pretty much every competition you can imagine already in his career, he has transformed a club that has a very clear identity. It’s a very good test for all of us.”
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