After their record-breaking feats last year in the Champions League, Arsenal are at it again. But having been delayed along with hundreds of travelling supporters by travel chaos on Tuesday, Mikel Arteta’s side had to bide their time against Napoli until Martin Ødegaard continued his rich vein of goalscoring with the crucial strike 15 minutes from full time.
Perhaps it was the fact that, at Uefa’s insistence, they were forced to wear red shorts for the first time since a Premier League game against Watford in 2022 that Arsenal were not quite at their flowing best here and missed a hatful of chances.
Yet they were deserved winners in the end and the substitute Noni Madueke should have made the victory more comprehensive late on.
Having come so close to breaking their duck in this competition last year after becoming the first team to win all eight of their league stage matches, Arsenal look capable of going one better this time if Ødegaard can keep up this sparkling form.
He now has four goals in his last five games after scoring once in all competitions last year and it was the Norway captain whose name was being chanted by the fans who were kept behind more than an hour after the final whistle.
“That’s what we need – players with that mindset to decide the game and to play with that personality,” said Arteta. “He’s getting into those positions much more in recent games and I feel he has this emotional state that he knows that the ball can go in. He’s got that edge and he’s now got different relationships around him [in the team] as well. That helps.”
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Arteta has bad memories of this stadium after being sent off in a 2-0 defeat during the Champions League group stage in 2013. But Arsenal’s most recent match here ended in victory as they qualified for the Europa League semi-finals under Unai Emery in 2019. Both clubs have been crowned domestic champions since then, with Napoli ending their 33-year wait in 2023 then doing it again two years later. Yet Champions League success has continued to elude them after finishing 30th in the league phase last season.
That was in stark contrast to Arsenal, who were unbeaten over 14 matches before falling at the final hurdle. It was telling that Arteta kept faith with four of his back five that started against Chelsea on Sunday, with Piero Hincapié replacing Riccardo Calafiori at left-back but failing to match the Italian’s finishing ability with one glaring miss. Mikel Merino, Eberechi Eze and Viktor Gyökeres also made their first starts of the season but largely disappointed, with the Sweden striker making way for Kai Havertz just before Ødegaard’s winner.
Those Arsenal supporters that did make it to southern Italy had no problem making themselves heard throughout, with plenty of empty seats in the home sections despite Max Allegri’s attempts to rally Napoli’s fans beforehand. The game quickly settled into a pattern as the visitors set up camp in Napoli’s half and the hosts attempted to hit them on the break. Kevin De Bruyne – no stranger to facing Arsenal after a decade in the sky blue of Manchester City – forced David Raya into a rare mistake after a typically driving run through the midfield but the ball was scrambled away to safety.
That came just after a spectacular overhead kick from Bukayo Saka at the other end had been saved by Alex Meret. Merino should have scored when he was set up by Eze’s clever header across the face of goal before Ben White drilled a shot straight into Meret’s grateful gloves.
Matteo Politano managed to test Raya again as Napoli continued to find gaps in Arsenal’s normally watertight defence. Saka blazed over after a brilliant through ball from Ødegaard on the stroke of half-time, with replays confirming the assistant had been wrong to raise his flag.
Meret did not return for the second half and was replaced by Vanja Milinkovic-Savic, once on Manchester United’s books. The Serbia goalkeeper was a mere spectator for a flowing Arsenal move featuring a sumptuous scooped pass into the area that ended with Hincapié missing the target after being picked out at the far post by Ben White’s header. Suddenly Napoli found themselves suffocated by a blanket of red. Allegri, who knows what it feels like to have lost in a Champions League final after suffering that fate twice in three years at Juventus, responded by switching to a back five and trying to hang on.
Arsenal’s pressure eventually told when another substitute, Christos Tzolis, exchanged passes with White and teed up Ødegaard, whose shot flew in off the post despite Milinkovic-Savic just getting his fingertips to the ball. Havertz had a goal disallowed for offside in injury time, but the mission was already complete.
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