Barcelona draw reawakens 2006 final agony for Arsenal's Arsène Wenger

Arsène Wenger will always have Paris, yet his memories hold a haunting quality. When his Arsenal team pulled Barcelona yesterday in the draw for the Champions League quarter-finals, the manager was carried back, inevitably, to that spring evening in the French capital four years ago, when glory in Europe's showpiece final beckoned only to be cruelly dashed. Arsenal had their goalkeeper Jens Lehmann sent off in the 18th minute for a foul on the Barcelona striker Samuel Eto'o and, although Sol Campbell headed them in front and Thierry Henry missed two presentable chances for 2-0, the Catalans came back to win 2-1. Wenger considers the defeat as his greatest regret in football and the passage of time has clearly done little to heal the wounds, which he continues to feel were largely inflicted by the Norwegian referee Terje Hauge. "You never forget completely about the game," he said. "I did an interview recently about my time at Arsenal and I was surprised at how much I remembered from every single little disappointment. I thought I had forgotten but every single little detail came out in my head. "It was the referee's fault, basically. When we went down to 10 men in a final that promised so much, it became a 'No' game. When a referee makes a decision like that, he has to be absolutely sure. You do not kill a final that one billion people watch if it's not really clear. "They [Uefa] always get referees from the north [of Europe] who played in 'No' leagues and they give them massive games. But they are not used to the tricks and the pace of countries like England and Spain. We have regrets. Thierry had two good chances but it was not the game that everybody expected. Eleven against 11, it would have been a fantastic game. I had to take Robert Pires off after the red card. He still hates me today. We took a great player out who could have contributed to the quality of the game." This season's tie is studded with sub-plots, not least those that involve emotional reunions. Henry, now at Barcelona, will face the club that turned him into a star while Cesc Fábregas, the Arsenal captain, was famously spirited by Wenger out of the Catalan club's youth system. Fábregas has been heavily linked with a return to Barcelona this summer. "What's interesting," added Wenger, "is that Cesc and Lionel Messi played together in the Barcelona youth team. "When I spoke with Fábregas's mother when she brought him here at the age of 16, she said that they always won six, seven, eight, nine-nil because they had in the same team [Gerard] Piqué, Messi, Fábregas. You are not surprised." Wenger is one of the game's purists, though, and he wants the focus to be on the exciting football in prospect, which, it is hoped, will deliver the spectacle that was merely promised in 2006, rather than the personality-driven storylines. "Henry comes back but do you really think we will be focused on how Thierry will feel on the day?" Wenger said. "Personality is part of it but it's not the main thing. What people sell now is the artificial part of the game. The main part is the quality of the game, that you might not see again for 10 years. Maybe it will be a crap game, nobody knows, but that is what will be interesting. It's like the other day, the Chelsea versus Inter game [with José Mourinho's return]. You get fed up with all these stories. Let's see a football game." Manchester United have also been given a rerun of a previous Champions League final. Sir Alex Ferguson's team will face Bayern Munich, whom they famously beat in Barcelona 11 years ago. "If we have everyone we need for the game, we have got a good chance," Ferguson said.