Mehmet Ali was delighted with our under-19s’ 3-1 win away to PSV Eindhoven in the UEFA Youth League on Tuesday.
It was a brilliant performance for our first win of the competition, that unfortunately wasn’t enough to prevent us from finishing bottom of the group.
“It was the best possible outcome for the game, which was great for our boys to win,” Mehmet said after the game. “I’m pleased for them, they’ve shown good learning, but ultimately we’re disappointed in this competition because we wanted to qualify out of the group and we’ve failed to do that, but credit to the boys today.
“A good performance, some really good individual performances from our backline, through midfield, into our frontline, which was good to see, and I’m pleased that we won the game.”
One of those really good individual performances came from Amario Cozier-Duberry, who scored twice and frequently looked dangerous on the counter-attack.
“Him and Bradley Ibrahim were talking before the game and Amario said he’d never scored a hat-trick for Arsenal so I was hoping he’d get one,” Mehmet added. “He didn’t, but he scored two.
“His second goal was very good, and his attitude and mentality every single day is top. He’s had a bit of an injury coming back from international and he’s been a breath of fresh air since his return from injury, so really pleased for him, but all of the boys, I thought their performance, their work ethic considering we couldn’t qualify, they did it properly. They did it with quality and we deserved to win.”
Charles Sagoe Jr wore the captain’s armband against PSV and was involved in the creation of all three of our goals.
“We’re really pleased because as an academy we have three players who are on the bench for our first team this evening, which is great, and that’s what the job’s about,” Mehmet explained. “Reuell [Walters] has led the team in this competition, he wasn’t available. Again, Charles is a player who does everything properly every single day, works hard and deserved to lead his team and he did it well.”
On the experience that the Youth League has provided our youngsters, despite the mostly disappointing results, Mehmet said: “Our best two games have been against PSV because I think we’re both similar in terms of how we want to play, what our playing style is, how we want to dominate, and it leads for an entertaining game because you’ve got two teams going toe-to-toe, whereas in the other games we had, our opposition were very good at closing the spaces and then hurting us on the break and managing the game really well.
“It was a bit of a shock for our boys’ system and we didn’t deal with it well enough but you want those games, you want our boys to experience that and that will help them moving forward throughout their careers.”
Lastly, there a handful of academy players involved in Mikel Arteta’s squad for the first-team’s UEFA Champions League game against PSV on Tuesday night.
“Our job is to make sure that the boys are ready if they get a chance in Arsenal’s first team or get an opportunity elsewhere,” Mehmet said. “They need to be ready for it, so our job every single day is making sure that we push them, they work hard, and ultimately it’s down to them. We need to make sure that that’s their mindset.
“It’s not easy in under-19s football because there are a lot of ups and downs and one thing that I say to these boys all the time is that it’s the ones who have got the strong mentality to do the right things every day who end up having careers and that’s what we push for.”
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