Rice Embraces Final Pressure as Arsenal Pursue Historic Double

Declan Rice has described himself as a player who rises to the occasion on football's grandest stages, speaking ahead of Arsenal's UEFA Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain. The England midfielder, who helped Arsenal secure the Premier League title this season, is targeting a historic domestic and European double when the two clubs meet in Budapest.

Rice pointed to a string of high-stakes experiences - both triumphant and painful - as formative to the temperament he brings into elite knockout competition. He won the UEFA Europa Conference League with West Ham, but has also suffered defeat in two UEFA European Championship finals with England as well as a League Cup final. Rather than treating those defeats as setbacks, Rice cited them as sharpening his hunger. "I've lost a fair few finals now: two EURO finals, the League Cup final. It hurts because when you get to a final, you want to win that trophy. But also, all the little losses that you take stand you in really good stead. It makes you hungrier to want to go and win stuff," he told uefa.com.

Arsenal are familiar with PSG from last season's Champions League semi-finals, a tie that eliminated the Gunners. Rice identified a clear lesson from that exit. "What did we learn from last season's semi-final defeat? That you've got to take your chances, because we had plenty of them," he said. The squad's collective capacity for big occasions, he added, would be central to their ambitions in the final. "When you play in the biggest competitions, you need your players to step up at every single point. There's a few of us that have got that in us, and we're going to need that going into the final as well."

Rice made 36 Premier League appearances this season, contributing four goals and seven assists as Arsenal ended a 22-year wait for the English top-flight title. The Champions League final represents the final club fixture of the campaign and, for Arsenal, an opportunity to claim the European trophy that has never featured in their history. "Champions League final - it gets no bigger than that. What a chance, what an opportunity. To go out on a high and give it absolutely everything," Rice said.