Arsenal's Touré de force
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Article summary
If penalty saver Jens Lehmann was Arsenal FC's man of the match against Villarreal CF, then perhaps Kolo Touré was the man of the two-legged semi-final.
Article body
Unbeaten stretch
The Ivorian not only scored the only goal of Arsenal's two-legged victory against Villarreal CF, he was the anchor of a defence which has now gone more than 15 hours without conceding a goal in Europe. If penalty saver Jens Lehmann was the man of the match, then perhaps Touré was the man of the tie. "I feel proud because, in case anyone should be in doubt about it, Villarreal are a very good side and very hard to beat," said the defender. "Lehmann is my hero for saving the penalty because we had worked so hard to get to the final that not conceding a goal in the last few minutes of normal time was vital to all of us."
Questions answered
The 25-year-old, who shirked no challenge despite the fact a booking would have seen him suspended for the final, continued: "Villarreal asked some very important questions of us in the way that they played and what they tried to do and the great thing we have learned is that we were able to answer their questions. Now we have gone over 900 minutes without conceding a goal in this competition but the most important thing is that we are in the final. We took our chance and then we ensured that it was sufficient to get us to the Champions League final."
Other tie
As for Arsenal's potential opponents in Paris on 17 May, Touré acknowledged that FC Barcelona "have a slight advantage" over AC Milan following their 1-0 victory in Italy last week, adding: "But we all know that Milan are capable of winning at Camp Nou and that whoever we meet we'll have to beat a very good team if we are to win the Champions League."
'Intense disappointment'
One of the men blotted out by Touré and his Arsenal team-mates was Diego Forlán. The Uruguayan said: "It's an intense disappointment that we have failed to get to the final but we gave a huge effort in order to make it. It's a fact that Arsenal have had to work really hard in order to defeat us and I think you could see that there was not a great deal between the teams in terms of the football we played. As a team we have missed one or two chances and it hurts but we will just have to get over it."
