\n<\/p>\n
We booked our spot in a second successive Champions League semi-final for the first time in our history, courtesy of a goalless quarter-final second leg against Sporting CP at Emirates Stadium.<\/p>\n
In a game of few opportunities, both teams hit the post either side of half-time, with a volley from Geny Catamo just before half-time causing us concern, while late on Leandro Trossard saw a header crash off the same upright.<\/p>\n
But while we couldn\u2019t quite find the goal to win the game, Kai Havertz\u2019s late strike in Lisbon eight days earlier coupled with solid defensive displays in Portugal and north London set up a final-four meeting with Atletico Madrid in a fortnight\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
History showed that when winning away from home in the first leg of a two-legged knockout stage tie in Europe, we have progressed on 19 out of 20 occasions – but this was far from routine. Despite us starting the game pressing with intensity and trying to play with speed, chances to double our advantage were hard to come by.<\/p>\n
In fact, it was Sporting who had the better opportunities in the opening 45, including the first sight of goal on 17 minutes when Francisco Trincao carved out a shooting chance just inside the box but sent it high and wide. Seconds later, Viktor Gyokeres blasted over our first serious attempt of the night – but that would be as close as we got to testing Rui Silva in the opposition goal before half-time.<\/p>\n
With a deficit to chase, Sporting grew into the game and looked to hit us on the counter, and after they swiftly repelled a free-kick inside their half, Gabriel Martinelli\u2019s pace was required to chase down Catamo and prevent the winger from speeding closer towards our box, while Pedro Goncalves was next to test his luck but again couldn\u2019t find the target from a similar position as Trincao earlier.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese champions, seeking a first-ever semi-final appearance in their illustrious history, continued to carve out chances and with two minutes of the first half left, they came within a whisker of taking a lead into the interval when they struck the woodwork. <\/p>\n
After some neat play around the box, Maximiliano Araujo clipped a cross to the back post which Catamo raced onto and hit it on the volley with the outside of his foot, but watch the attempt skim off the base of the post and away to safety.<\/p>\n
Having survived that scare, we came out after the break we renewed vigour and began to see our shot count increase, with Ebere Eze and Martinelli shooting over from the edge of the area before Noni Madueke struck the side netting after dribbling across the box.<\/p>\n
All that happened in the first 11 minutes after play restarted, but then the game became another cagey affair, with Sporting knowing that conceding at that stage could be terminal for their hopes of progressing, while we had an aggregate lead to protect.<\/p>\n
We reached the 80th minute with neither goalkeeper being seriously called into action with a pair of routine stops apiece up to that point, but in the 84th minute, we came so close to sealing a semi-final spot when a Declan Rice corner looped over everyone in the box and Leandro Trossard hit the post with a header from a tight angle.<\/p>\n
There would be one final scare with the last kick of the game as Sporting desperately tried to keep their hopes intact, and after a long throw was cleared to the edge of the area, Joao Simoes let fly and saw his shot ripple the side netting as all Gooners breathed a sigh of relief as they saw their side once again reach the semi-finals of Europe’s premier club compettition for the fourth time in our history.<\/p>\n
We head to Manchester City on Sunday for a crunch game in the race for the Premier League title, and then we host Newcastle United on Saturday, April 25. Then we head to Spain for the first leg of our semi-final against Atletico on Wednesday, April 29.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We booked our spot in a second successive Champions League<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}