{"id":568455,"date":"2026-05-06T02:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T02:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/568455\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T02:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T02:13:12","slug":"wayne-rooney-and-daniel-sturridge-lavish-praise-on-arsenals-best-player-in-champions-league-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/568455\/","title":{"rendered":"Wayne Rooney and Daniel Sturridge lavish praise on Arsenal\u2019s \u2018best player\u2019 in Champions League win"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Wayne Rooney<\/a>, Daniel Sturridge<\/a> and Theo Walcott<\/a> all praised Arsenal<\/a> striker Viktor Gyokeres<\/a> for his role in taking the Gunners to the Champions League<\/a> final. <\/p>\n

Arsenal defeated Atletico Madrid<\/a> 1-0 at the Emirates Stadium<\/a> to record a 2-1 win on aggregate and reach their first Champions League final in 20 years. <\/p>\n

Gyokeres was the main target man for the Gunners and it was his run in behind which kickstarted the move that led to Bukayo Saka\u2019s winning goal. <\/p>\n

Sturridge spoke highly of Arsenal\u2019s \u2018drive\u2019 and \u2018tenacity\u2019 throughout the game but picked out Gyokeres as \u2018best player\u2019 on the pitch tonight. <\/p>\n

\u201cMyles Lewis-Skelly was brilliant, he was controlling the tempo and position of the play, [Declan] Rice was excellent.\u201d Sturridge said. \u201c[Viktor] Gyokeres, for me, was the best player for Arsenal.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went further by explaining: \u201cHe caused so many problems, took the stress off the defence. You launch it up top and you\u2019re thinking can it stick? Can he get hold of it for us? Can he advance us up the field? He did it all for them. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the performances that define top players, he\u2019s been questioned all season for the goals and all these types of things but the performance he put in tonight was a clear reason as to why he signed for the football club.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ViktorViktor Gyokeres’ centre forward play helped Arsenal reach the Champions League final (PA)<\/p>\n

Walcott was impressed with how Gyokeres worked the central defenders into different positions and made things difficult for them. <\/p>\n

He built on Sturridge\u2019s thought by adding: \u201cHe ran into the channels all day and as a centre-half you don\u2019t really want to go out there. He takes players into positions where they\u2019re uncomfortable. The centre-halves today will never have a harder game, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GyokeresGyokeres was praised for his work rate and performance against Atletico Madrid (Reuters)<\/p>\n

Rooney praised the \u2018dirty work\u2019 Gyokeres has done throughout the season and how his impact on the match played its part in Arsenal reaching the European final.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been under pressure this season, and he\u2019s maybe not as pleasing on the eye as some of the other centre forwards around the world but what he does is all the dirty work,\u201d Rooney said. \u201cThat\u2019s so important to the team and he didn\u2019t get his goal tonight but he played a massive role in Arsenal winning this game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta had the final word: \u201cHe was immense. You could see the reaction of the crowd. His work-rate and what he does in the team is incredible.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[33792,49,50,51,47,33794,52,48],"class_list":["post-568455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-bestof","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topix","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}