Declan Rice and Myles Lewis-Skelly spoke to TNT Sports after a 2-1 win at the Bernebeu secured Arsenal’s passage into the Champions League semi-finals.

Here’s what they had to say.

Declan with the MOTM trophy …

Yeah, back to back. Look, I think it’s just such a special night for this club. It’s an historic night for this club. We have an objective in this competition. We want to play the best teams and we want to win this competition.

And there was a lot of talk coming here about them coming back because they’ve done it so many times before, but we had so much belief and confidence from that first leg that we had enough to come here and win the game. We knew we were going to suffer, but we knew we were going to win. Yeah, we had it in our minds and then we’ve done it in real life.

Myles experience at the Bernabeu?

It was incredible. Honestly, when you see it on TV, it’s a lot different to when you come live. So, when I first walked out, it’s a lot, you know, but you’ve just got to take in the moment and have fun, you know.

What does making the semi-final mean?

Rice: It’s massive, you know. I sensed it before I signed to the club that we were on an upward trajectory as a club. And, you know, I felt it in the players we’ve got and the direction we want to go in. It’s been tough in the Premier League because we lost out last year by a point.

This year, it slipped away from us. But in this competition, we’ve done amazingly well. And this club’s going to do special things over the next few years. We all fully believe it. We have full trust in this manager. He’s unbelievable.

And we’ve got players like him [Myles] coming through, Ethan, other young lads who really want it as well. So we’ve got a real good mix. And like you said, semi-finals is massive for us.

And we just want to take tonight in because we want to take it one step at a time. Now PSG next, who are an amazing team. Well, let’s face it, guys.

An emotional first half and a 5 minute VAR check 

Rice: I knew it wasn’t a penalty. Look, don’t get me wrong. I had my arm on him, but you have to do that in a box. You have to try and stop him. Someone’s going to let him go.

But I knew it wasn’t a pen. I’m an honest guy. I said to him straight away, like, and I said to Vasquez, it’s not a pen. And I would admit, if I pulled him down, I would say. But he just fell to the floor. And it wasn’t a pen.

And then I was fully confident we’d get overturned. And we just had to stay calm. We were a bit naive again at times. We just had to control the game a little bit better. But in the end, we’ve got the job done. It’s a historic night for the club, and, yeah, honestly, I’m lost for words. It’s just very special.

PSG next …

Rice: We played them once already. We feel like they’re a different team to back then. We’ve seen what they can do. But also we see what Villa done to them last night and caused them a lot of problems. So, look, we’ll be working hard. We now have to go to Ipswich on Sunday, which is going to be a tough game because we want to secure that.

Keep going and keep winning matches in the Prem. And then also, like you said, focus on this competition.