Arsenal and Chelsea have qualified for the Europa
League final, making it a remarkable week for English football as the two major
European finals will now featuring Premier League teams.
The London clubs will face each other in Baku on 29 May while Liverpool will
take on Tottenham in the Champions League final in Madrid on 1 June.
Arsenal beat Valencia 4-2 to win their semi-final
tie 7-3 while Chelsea sealed their place in the final by beating Eintracht
Frankfurt 4-3 on penalties after the match finished 1-1 after extra time, with
the aggregate score 2-2.
It will be the first time in the history of European
football that one country has monopolized the two finals and means that both
trophies will head to England.
“Here the level is very high,” said Chelsea’s
Italian manager Maurizio Sarri. “If you think that, to get to the final of the
League Cup, we had to play against Liverpool, against Tottenham – the finalists
of the Champions League – and then we played against, in my opinion, the best
team in Europe in the final, Manchester City, you can understand the level here
is very high.
“At this moment, the Premier League is the best
championship in Europe and, as a consequence, in the world. But it’s not easy
for an English team to arrive in the last month in a very good condition,
physically, because here we play more than in the other countries.”
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who scored a hat-trick
for Arsenal, was asked what reaching the final meant to Arsenal. He said: “It
means a lot. I think we have learned from last season [when they were
eliminated in the semi-finals]. This year we didn’t make the same mistakes, so
now we are through to the final and we are all happy.”
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