Mertesacker happy with Arsenal switch

Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker says he is happy with his decision to move from Werder Bremen to the Emirates last year.

The German admitted he was forced to rush the massive decision due to Arsenal’s last-minute approach, yet despite this Mertesacker said he is still very happy at his new club.

“I’m glad I made this step,” he told reporters. “It came pretty sudden and I had to decide quickly. I was looking forward to a lot of things that came true. It was very important to me that my family feels well, and that is the case.”

Mertesacker will represent Germany at Euro 2012 and is hoping the side can use their recent matches with Group B rivals Portugal, in particular, to their advantage in Ukraine and Poland.

“We had some encounters against Portugal,” he said. “We’ll try to avoid 1-to-1 situations. I think Portugal had very good individual players in the last years, also when we played against them. But we always responded as a team. We showed that we can confront the individual class as a team.

“We didn’t play often with the squad from 2010, but one could see in the past years, that we are able to replace players. It’ll be important to defend as a team, so we don’t get in problems.”

Germany have the youngest squad at the European Championship and Mertesacker insists that what they lack in experience they will make up for in talent.

“We will try to be confident and cope with the situation,” he said. “We’re very young, but we have a very good squad and that makes us confident.

“We have so many young boys who played a good season in the Bundesliga, like Marco Reus or Mario Goetze. These players are very young, with high potential, and we want to see them in a good mood, and good shape, in the summer.

“We have learned a lot from our disappointments – we have always reached second or third place but we want to win trophies. There is a lack of this, but with a young generation (coming through) that is very good, we will try to reach our target now.”