At a pre-match press conference, Bellingham was asked if Arsenal 'surprised' Madrid in the first leg, to which he replied: "Not really, no. We know the quality they have. I think the free-kicks were surprising! I've not seen Dec do that before, to be fair. I knew he could take set pieces really well, the corners and stuff, but I've never seen him do that with free-kicks. Fair play to him, that was probably the only thing though really, we knew they're a really good team."