Arsenal got the win their dominance deserved as they sealed a slender 1-0 win in their Champions League opener at Napoli.
Martin Odegaard got the only goal of the game relatively late on as the English champions got all three points on matchday one.
Bukayo Saka fashioned the first genuine chance of the evening, producing a terrific acrobatic attempt to meet a genius, prodded centre by Viktor Gyokeres. Sadly for Saka, Napoli stopper Alex Meret was right behind the shot.
Down the other end, Napoli were giving it a go and when you have Kevin de Bruyne on the field you always have a chance of carving up opportunities. The Belgian was regularly a tormentor-in-chief against Arsenal during his long spell at Manchester City and he tried his luck from distance in the early stages only for David Raya to repel him.
Arsenal then came close again to opening the scoring when Eberechi Eze and Mikel Merino – two of four changes from the starting XI that beat Chelsea three days earlier – combined. Eze kept alive a deep cross by heading to his colleague but from just a few yards out Merino’s diving header drew an even better save from Meret.
Piero Hincapie then had Meret scrambling as his cross-shot from the left almost caught out the stopper. Whilst that was a half-chance at best, just after the restart the Ecuadorian was guilty of an almighty miss from just a few yards out when he somehow blazed over with no Napoli player near him. The defender let out all his frustration and looked to the skies – emotions shared on the touchline by his manager Mikel Arteta.
Thankfully for all those of a red-and-white persuasion, Martin Odegaard was not about to just let this game peter out to a draw. The Norwegian let rip from outside the area to produce a thunderous shot that Vanja Milinković-Savić – on as a half-time replacement for Meret – had no answer to. Perhaps more impressive than the strike was the patience involved in the goal, given it contained no fewer than 29 passes in the build-up.
The relief was palpable among the players, staff and travelling supporters inside the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona and was another display of the world class ability Odegaard possesses.
The goal came at a vital moment too as it forced the hosts to take more risks and that in turn allowed Arsenal to exploit more space. One such time they did, with five minutes to go, should have seen them kill the game off.
They launched a counter after picking Napoli’s pockets inside their own half and Kai Havertz raced onto the ball with just one defender between him and the advancing Noni Madueke. Sadly, the England man appeared to have too much time and his dawdling allowed Milinković-Savić to dash out and smother his shot before the hosts’ defence scrambled back to block another shot from Christos Tzolis.
Thankfully for Gunners chief Arteta, his side weren’t made to pay for that profligacy as they got off to a deserved winning start on the continent.
The Spaniard observed post-match: “It was a fully deserved three points. The performance probably doesn’t reflect the result, the team was superb. We showed quality in a lot of moments to break them down and it was a shame because we missed so many great chances. On any other day the result would be different and we should have done it in a different way because of the amount of chances we created.”
