Saliba gives honest reaction to Rice free-kick as Mbappe fired message (2025)

William Saliba has revealed he was surprised to see Declan Rice score a free-kick in Arsenal's 3-0 win over Real Madrid. The 26-year-old midfielder fired the Gunners to victory at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night, securing a healthy lead in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinal.

Rice broke the deadlock shortly before the hour mark with a brilliant free-kick – the first of his career. Then, the England international doubled Arsenal's lead a few moments later with another sensational set-piece, beating Thibaut Courtois from range.

Mikel Merino piled on the misery in the final quarter of an hour, bending the ball into the bottom corner. Speaking to reporters in the mixed zone after the game, Saliba was asked for his thoughts on Rice and his performance.

As quoted by Hayters TV, the 24-year-old defender said: "I didn’t know [he could do that]. It’s his first free-kick here so I didn’t know but today he scored two amazing goals so I’m so happy for him and I hope he can score again.

"We don’t score a lot of direct free-kicks and today he scored two in a big game like this so we are so proud of him. We are so happy with his performance. He was amazing today."

On stopping Kylian Mbappe, his childhood friend and international teammate, from scoring, Saliba added: "It was good for me because we won and he didn’t score. In a game like this, you have to be focused. We did well and we have to do the same next week.

"We wanted to win today but of course, we didn’t know we will win 3-0 at home but we wanted to win and we are so happy to score three goals today in front of our fans and to not concede.

"We are so proud because we know that they have the best player in the world so we are so happy to keep the clean sheet in front of our fans and we have to take it as a lesson to do it again next week. It’s one of the best [days of my career] and I hope it won’t be the last one."

At the post-match press conference, Arteta was also quizzed on Rice's brace. The Arsenal boss said: "He's been very determined because we have talked in the last few months that we haven't scored a direct free-kick since September 2021, Burnley away, Martin Odegaard.

"So it's been a long time. And to score two goals in 12 minutes of that magnitude of that quality from the same player, a player that has never scored a free-kick before in his career.

"I mean, what are the odds? He's done it tonight. I'm a big believer that the crowd played something with the energy that they put in and it helped us massively in the game."

Arteta added: "I'm very proud, we had a very complete and big performance collectively and you need that in the organisation and what we had to do to dominate the game and to create Madrid problems.

"This night is all about two factors, one is the atmosphere that we created 15 minutes before kick-off is something I haven't seen before, so playing with that energy, with that commitment with your crowd makes a huge difference.

"And then magic moments, individual moments that decide all matches and the first two goals of Declan sums up the night..."

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