Four-time Champions League winner Clarence Seedorf has explained what he thinks Arsenal need to achieve their own success in the competition this season.
Clarence Seedorf know plenty about winning Champions League trophies, having done so as a player once with Ajax, once with Real Madrid, and twice with AC Milan.
With Arsenal still chasing their first title in the competition, Seedorf was asked by Prime Video what he thinks they need to do to achieve success in Europe.
“I’ve been following Arsenal all these years, it’s a beautiful club, it’s a team that has generally produced attractive football,” Seedorf said. “But we also know that the criticism has generally been ‘you need to win more prizes’.”
“I think it’s a belief factor, I think the belief that you actually can win the Champions League, the belief that you can make it all the way. The belief will wipe away the ghosts, will wipe away the fear of losing, which sometimes can come up in the head.
“It has to be the belief strongly, from the players, from the fans, from the coach, from the club. Everybody needs to believe, because the desire for sure is there.”
It could be argued that we’ve seen the impact of belief on Arsenal’s chances in European competition over the last few seasons.
The Gunners had a team good enough to go the distance in the Europa League in 2022/23, but ended up crashing out in the round-of-16 after a nervous performance against Sporting CP. The team then reached the Champions League quarter-final in 2023/24, and the semi-final in 2024/25.
Each time, it seems the experience of having been at that stage before helped the side to go one further, but then they didn’t show quite that same confidence in the following round.
There’s no comparison between the way Arsenal played in the 2024 quarter-final against Bayern Munich versus the 2025 quarter-final against Real Madrid. Yet the semi-final against PSG was much more like the former than the latter.
With any luck, Arsenal can take two steps forward in this year’s competition, but there’s a long way to go yet.