Striker Olivier Giroud believes that AC Milan were fully deserving of their passage into the final eight of the Champions League.
Milan brought a one-goal lead to north London and were hoping for another resilient defensive performance after the one at San Siro that kept a world class attacking trio in Harry Kane, Heung-min Son and Dejan Kulusevski quiet.
The same resilience is exactly what was on show in north London as they restricted the home side to half chances for the majority of the game, and only twice was Mike Maignan called into action. In fact, all the main chances went to Stefano Pioli’s side who should have put the tie to bed earlier, especially after Cristian Romero’s red card in the final 10 minutes.
Giroud spoke to Prime Video at the end of the game to reflect on a hard fought draw and a very memorable night back in London, a city he knows well, with his comments relayed by MilanNews.
“A lot of emotions. I told the lads that we deserved this Champions League last year, we wanted to have a good run this year. Last year we did well but we were in a very difficult group,” he began.
“Now we were in the round of 16 against a great Tottenham, in the first leg we deserved even if we could have scored one or two more goals. Tonight we saw that with our spirit and quality we could win, it’s a shame we didn’t score. We had the most concrete opportunities.
“I played a lot of balls away from goal to try and get behind my teammates, I didn’t have many opportunities to score. The victory was more important. A lot of stuff (laughs).”
We were too wasteful