Atletico Madrid captain Koke has revealed that the team gave everything in their semifinal first-leg clash against Arsenal on Wednesday and is confident they can still improve ahead of the second leg.
Los Rojiblancos played out a 1-1 draw with the Premier League leaders in their UEFA Champions League last four first leg clash on Wednesday night, leaving all to play for in the second leg.
Despite their poor run of form, they produced a better performance in the second half and could have even come out of the clash with a win.
Reacting after the match, Spanish midfielder Koke expressed satisfaction with their performance and now looks up to next week’s second leg at the Emirates Stadium.
“We tried, we started losing with that penalty, which was doubtful, but the team recovered and we could equalize with a penalty ourselves. We had the opportunities to win, but it will all be decided in the second leg. I think we played a good match”, Koke said.
The first leg at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano on Wednesday had left very little to separate both sides and leaves the tie hanging in the balance.
Both sides had chances to break the deadlock, but Arsenal were handed a massive opportunity when a penalty kick was awarded to them.
David Hancko had brought down Victor Gyokeres clumsily in the area and the Swedish forward struck home past Jan Oblak to break the deadlock.
Arsenal took the lead into the interval, but Atletico were an entirely different team in the second half as they mounted pressure on Arsenal’s goal in search of an equalizer.
They were handed a lifeline when Ben White handled the ball inside his area, with Julian Alvarez scoring from the spot to make it 1-1.
Atletico passed up many other chances to score, while Arsenal had a late penalty call overturned by VAR as the game ended in a fulltime draw.
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