Sometimes, a game-winning goal is worth more than just the advantage that it provides. That’s what Kai Havertz’s stoppage-time winner for Arsenal at Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday in the Champions League quarterfinal first leg feels like. Not only does it put the Gunners ahead 1-0 in their two-legged tie, but it also changes the narrative around what was shaping up to be quite a bad week for Mikel Arteta’s men.
Already losing the League Cup final and being knocked out of the FA Cup by a Championship side in Southampton, for 90 minutes, it seemed like the Gunners were going to go three matches without a win. But that’s why you play until the whistle, and they did just that with Havertz’s winner coming just when they needed it most.
It wasn’t a vintage performance by any sense of the term, but when Arsenal are at their best, it isn’t always pretty soccer. They’re able to grind out results and use defense to control the game in their favor, which is exactly what happened away from home in Portugal. It never felt like Sporting were going to get a goal, and looking at the xG race from the entire match, it reflects that as well.
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The return of William Saliba to the XI alongside Gabriel led to an impenetrable wall in front of David Raya, who can already win a game on his own. But while this match had quite a few positives for the Gunners, it also raises a significant question of whether they can actually win the Champions League.
Tuesday’s other game of Bayern Munich vs. Real Madrid featured free-flowing attacks and heroics by goalkeepers, and while Arsenal aren’t the type of team, it does bring up a question of whether they can keep up with teams like that. In the 2024-25 UCL campaign, Arsenal were pitted against Paris Saint-Germain in the semifinal, and if they win in this round, it will be a similar affair with Barcelona or Atletico Madrid awaiting them. The Gunners do have to make it that far to worry about this issue, but luckily, I don’t play for the team, so I can ponder possibilities.
Barcelona or Atletico Madrid may give Arsenal chances with their defenses, but they are three of the top five scoring teams in this campaign. Sporting CP and Bayer Leverkusen ranked ninth and 18th, respectively. While the Arsenal defense has still had things to do, frankly, these ties are nothing like what lies ahead, where each team has 2-3 attackers who can pose threats, and the last time that Arsenal ran into a such a team, they lost the EFL Cup final to Manchester City.
So far, even if Arsenal are in the driver’s seat in the Premier League, they’ve yet to prove that much has changed from last season, when they also got to this stage, leading the Premier League and pushing on to win the Champions League. The addition of Viktor Gyokeres was supposed to give them that next gear, but it’s still the old guard, like Havertz, who are raising the bar. If that doesn’t change, while Arsenal will like their chances get through this round, their time in the Champions League could be coming to a screeching halt quite soon.
