Mikel Arteta can brag with 62 percent possession, but Sergio Conceição can answer him the fact that Arsenal did not send a single shot into the opponent’s goal during last night’s clash. Arteta will then say that the referees tolerated the ‘tricks’ of Porto’s players too much, Conceicao will remind that the guests were tougher and committed 22 fouls against only 14 of his players.In fact, Conceição doesn’t even have to do that, because the scoreboard at the end states – 1-0 in Porto’s favour. The consequence of Galeno’s goal in the fourth minute of stoppage time. And above all, Conceição’s plan, which Arteta didn’t like at all, and which consisted of Porto’s players throwing themselves to the ground at every slightest contact as if they had been struck by lightning.At least that was Arteta’s impression.”Porto are very well organized defensively. And they break your rhythm all the time. Also, there were 35 or 37 fouls during the game. It seems to me that it is not good that the referees allowed it, every time we touched them they called a foul. But well, we’re only at half-time, and now we know what to expect,” Arsenal’s head coach lamented after the narrow defeat at the Dragao Stadium.UCL: Calamitous Arsenal crumble in final seconds at PortoBut he was mistaken if he thought he had annoyed a colleague from the opposing camp. Conceição calmly responds to the poisonous darts of a much more famous colleague.”That’s his view of the game. They wanted to play, we wanted to win. As a student of Guardiola’s football school in Barcelona, surely the coach of the opposing team thinks that possession of the ball is the best way to win, but it also depends on what kind of team you have available and what you do with the ball. In this game, we were the more dangerous team,” said Conceicao.This is where Arteta can object, because Porto wasn’t a very dangerous team either. In fact, it wasn’t really a ‘dangerous’ game, so much as a chess game. Then again, was his team naive?”If they didn’t do anything to us in 94 minutes of the game, then that might be a bit harsh to say. It was just the last ball. The result is fair, but we paid the price for that one mistake”.##NAJAVA_MECA_7892273##It wasn’t even a mistake as much as a perfect shot by Galeno.”If you don’t want to win, at least don’t lose! The result is 0-0, you look at the clock, you see that 93 minutes have passed. We had to be a little smarter at the end. We didn’t and we got hit in the teeth”, said Gunners’ midfielder Declan Rice.This is the round of 16 of the Champions League – only the best reach it, and Porto is certainly one of European top clubs. However, the second leg is yet to come, and Arsenal will not give up on the quarter-finals just like that.
