🎙️🇧🇷 Gabriel Paulista: "We are preparing well to come back better and achieve our main objective: Qualifying for next season's Champions League" ⚽️

A ‘new look’ Gabriel Paulista, hair lifted from his face with a headband as he trains at the Ciudad Deportiva, is prepared to get back into the swing of things in LaLiga when the competition returns this Friday. A man who always has something interesting to say, the Brazilian talked on Tuesday about the final run-in for the season and the objective of Champions League qualification.

“Just coming back after such a long pause in the season is a joy for us all. We are preparing well to come back better and achieve our main objective: Qualifying for next season's Champions League,” said the defender, who has been pleased with the return to some semblance of normality at the training ground.

“First of all we have to work well. We've been doing some good training all week. I'm sure that it's going to be a good game. The team are preparing well for the upcoming game, and for the 11 matches that we have left.

“We're treating it like a final. I'm trying to transmit that there isn't long to go, and that we want to enjoy ourselves a lot next season playing in the Champions League. I don't think that there is anything that gives you more desire to play. Just thinking that we are 4 points off the Champions League spots, with many games to go, makes us very motivated to get there next season.”

There is no margin for error in the final 11 games, but Paulista has experience of a strong close to a campaign: With Arsenal, he was part of a team who lost just once in the last 11 fixtures of the 205/16 season.

“That was a season in which I was breaking through at Arsenal. It was a very good season for gaining experience. I think that I can transmit to my teammates what I learned in that season - which was very difficult. I'm trying to pass on what I learned from that experience in the Premier League,” he emphasised.

First up is the derby against Levante UD on Friday night, in a 10pm CEST kickoff.

“It's a very important game. It's a derby and the fans don't want us to not win any game -and neither do we. I want to face it like a final and I want to come back better than we left off. We are going to do everything that we can to win this derby and achieve our objective.

“The fans aren't going to be inside the stadium, but I think that everybody -not just me- reads messages on Instagram or other social networks telling us that we can do it. It helps you. It's a little different to having them in the stadium and feeling their presence, but it gives you something. We're going to try to give them some joy, because they deserve it a lot as well.”