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Revealed: Arsene Wenger admits his biggest regret with Arsenal

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After 22 years of success at Emirates Stadium, former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger opened up about achieving European glory.

Arsene Wenger revealed that he would switch his all-time favorite Premier League season for a Champions League trophy with Arsenal.

The Gunners achieved the greatest milestone in England’s history in the season 2003-04. Subsequently, Wenger’s side won the Premier League without losing a game. Evidently, no other club managed to do so for over 100 years before that.

However, during Wenger’s 22-year run at Arsenal, he could not celebrate the Champions League title.

As a matter of fact, his closest miss was in the year 2006. Consequently, Arsenal lost to Barcelona 2-1 after receiving a red card early in the game.

Anything for the European glory.

Though, 14 years later, Wenger reveals that he would swap his greatest reward to win in that final fixture.

He told talkSPORT: “Yes, but what I mean is – in 2006, we got to the Champions League final and eliminated a big Real Madrid team, a Juventus team without conceding a goal.

“And in the final, we were down to ten men after a few minutes. My biggest regret is that, to win the Champions League in 2006, would have crowned that period and that generation and it is what they deserved.

“But it wasn’t to be and you have to live with that.”

Furthermore, the 70-year-old went into more detail regarding the game. Wenger disclosed that he did not apply the tactics correctly failing to switch the formation at the end.

Asked what went wrong in that game, he told the Guardian: “I ask myself this question many times. Maybe I would just play with two central defenders in the last 13 minutes when we were 2-1 down.

“But the regret from that Champions League year is that we’d beaten Real Madrid with Zidane and Ronaldo, we’d beaten Juventus with Ibrahimović, Trezeguet, and Vieira.

“And we go into the final and we haven’t conceded a goal in the knockout stages against these teams. When you play the whole game with 10 men, you know the last 20 minutes will be difficult, especially against a team like Barcelona. But we had the chance to score the second goal two times and we missed it.

“So it’s mixed feelings. Every defeat plays on my mind. And you have to think not what you should have done, but what could you have done?”

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