Sporting Lisbon central defender Goncalo Inacio has told A Bola that Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal are a “great” team.
Inacio made the comments about Arsenal after the Gunners played out a 2-2 draw with Sporting Lisbon away from home in Portugal in the UEFA Europa League on Thursday evening.
Sporting and Arsenal faced each other in the first leg of Round of 16 tie on Thursday.
The match ended in a 2-2 draw.
Inacio scored for Sporting in the 34th minute after William Saliba had given Arsenal the lead in the 22nd minute.
Although Sporting made it 2-1 on 55 minutes, Arsenal found the back of the net again on 62 minutes.
While Inacio has said that Arsenal are a “great” team, he believes that Sporting could have won the first leg.
Goncalo Inacio on Sporting Lisbon v Arsenal
Inacio said: ”We played against a great team, but I felt we may have won. We could have killed the game with 3-1, but we ended up suffering the draw.
“We got into the game well, we started to grow and have opportunities. They scored, then I tied…
“It was seen here that later we could have killed the game, but it didn’t happen.”
Advantage Arsenal
In our view, Arsenal will head into the second leg of the tie against Sporting Lisbon with a big advantage.
That the Gunners did not lose the first leg gives them a great chance of progressing further into the UEFA Europa League.
Arsenal have a very good support at the Emirates Stadium, and it is going to be extremely hard for Sporting to even score a goal in North London.
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