Thierry Henry regards Manchester City and Real Madrid as the top contenders for the Champions League, just before the quarter-final draw where Arsenal is a participant.
Under Mikel Arteta’s leadership, Arsenal secured their spot in the quarter-finals by triumphing over Porto in a penalty shootout on Tuesday night.
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The draw for the Champions League quarter-finals this Friday will include Arsenal alongside notable teams such as City, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, and Paris Saint-Germain.
Henry holds the opinion that at this juncture of the tournament, there are no straightforward matches, and he considers both City and Madrid to be the most formidable opponents for Arsenal..
When asked if he sees Dortmund as a ‘weaker’ team in the Champions League quarter-final draw, Henry said on CBS Sports: ‘I’ve been in both situations as a player where sometimes people didn’t want to play us with Arsenal and we didn’t go really far, and we had a team when we went to the final I don’t think was our best team at Arsenal.
‘I remember when we drew Real Madrid everyone laughed because they said, ‘Arsenal are the team you want’, and we Juve and everyone said, ‘that’s a good draw for Juve’, then we played Villarreal, who were a good team at the time, then they aid, ‘it’s good to play Arsenal’, then obviously we couldn’t win the final.
‘I’m just saying, you can never disrespect anyone in Europe. ‘There are two teams there who can be cocky – it’s Real Madrid and Man City, that’s about it. The others, you just take who you can play.
‘Man City are the team to beat still, for me. I know Pep, it’s not how he’s going to take it, I was just putting it out there.
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE QUARTER-FINAL TEAMS
Arsenal
Atletico Madrid
Barcelona
Bayern Munich
Borussia Dortmund
Manchester City
Paris Saint-Germain
Real Madrid
‘Me as a player, I’ve been in too many situations to know that sometimes the so-called team who was easy to play against is not the case, you arrive and people think, ‘you’re going to win it easy’, no, that’s not really the case.
‘So the champions can talk – Man City – and then Real Madrid, we already know they have 14, other than that, let’s see what’s going to happen.’
