Martin Odegaard fires Arsenal past Napoli in Champions League

Arsenal controlled much of the first half without finding a breakthrough, while Napoli remained well organised and made life difficult for Mikel Arteta's side.

Bukayo Saka tried an ambitious overhead kick early on, but Napoli goalkeeper Alex Meret dealt with it comfortably. Kevin De Bruyne and Matteo Politano also tested David Raya from distance, although neither effort seriously troubled the Arsenal goalkeeper.

The visitors came closest to opening the scoring when Mikel Merino met Eberechi Eze's clever knockdown, but his header from close range was tipped over by Meret.

Napoli's goalkeeper was again called into action before half-time when Piero Hincapie's attempted cross almost caught him out, forcing Meret to race across his goal to make the save.

Meret was replaced at half-time because of injury, with Vanja Milinkovic-Savic taking his place.

Napoli continued to frustrate Arsenal after the break, although Hincapie missed a good opportunity when he fired over from six yards.

The deadlock was finally broken in the 75th minute.

After some neat attacking play inside the Napoli penalty area, Odegaard found space and drove a low shot into the far corner to give Arsenal the lead.

It was the Norwegian's fourth goal in his last five games and proved enough to secure another important victory for the Premier League champions.

Napoli struggled to respond and were unable to create the chances needed to rescue a point, leaving new manager Max Allegri facing a third successive defeat.

Arteta was delighted with Arsenal's performance but felt his team should have won more comfortably.

"We fully deserved the three points," Arteta told TNT Sports. "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. We should have done it in a different way because of the amount of chances we created but we got the win in the end."

Arteta was also pleased with Odegaard's growing influence in front of goal.

"Martin is contributing with goals that are impacting results which is what we want from our attacking players," he said.

"We want them to be decisive and certainly he was again today."

Arsenal have now won all five of their matches at the start of the 2026-27 campaign, following their run to last season's Champions League final and Premier League title.

Arteta praised his players for showing the character required to win at one of Europe's most difficult venues.

"I'm very, very happy," he said. "A really tough place to come and a really different environment to play football – a beautiful one, by the way – against a really good team.

"I love the way we attacked the game, the way we competed, the hunger that we showed, the desire to dominate, to come here, to own the pitch, and the quality that we showed against a team that it's so difficult to create chances against.

"We created a huge amount of them and the result doesn't reflect what we saw on the pitch.

"The players were immense, and to play with that personality, with that conviction and with that quality in the Champions League away from home, it's something that I'm extremely pleased about."

Arsenal's next Champions League assignment is against Ligue 1 side Lille after the international break.