Key events
15 min: Napoli spend some time patiently passing around the back. Suddenly Di Lorenzo is released down the right. He rolls infield for De Bruyne, who pearls a shot straight at Raya. It’s too hot to handle. Raya spills, but Santos can’t get to the rebound. White pings it off the Napoli man and it’s a goal kick.
13 min: Eze is clipped out on the left and Odegaard sends the free kick diagonally into the Napoli box. Gabriel doesn’t win the header. Napoli clear. Politano acrobatically keeps the ball in play out on the left, but only manages to set Arsenal off on the attack again. The ball’s sent into the middle, where Saka bicycle kicks straight into Meret’s arms. Arsenal full of confidence.
11 min: Arsenal continue to stroke it around nicely, and after a few triangles down the right are completed, Saka releases Rice into the box with a sliderule pass. Rice’s attempt at a cutback is no good, and hacked clear.
9 min: One corner leads to another, and from the second, Napoli tear clear on the counter. Hojlund bombs up the inside-right channel and feeds Santos on the overlap. Santos enters the box and slices a cross over the bar and out for a goal kick. That was a good opportunity for Napoli.
8 min: It’s all the all-reds of Arsenal in these early exchanges. Eze has a whack from distance and the ball deflects out for the first corner of the match. Rice to take, with Napoli having left four players on the halfway line, Chelsea-at-the-weekend style.
7 min: Some more action for White down the right. He chases what looks like a lost cause and digs out a cross. Easy for Meret, with no Arsenal player anywhere near the keeper.
6 min: Odegaard and White combine neatly down the right and find Saka in a small pocket of space inside the Napoli box. Saka has nanoseconds to shoot, and his effort is easily and effectively blocked. Nice move, though.
4 min: De Bruyne finds a little bit of space out on the right, and curls a low cross into the Arsenal box. There’s no Napoli presence within, and it’s easy for Raya.
2 min: Arsenal are wearing red shorts. Full marks for considering those with colour blindness, and acting with compassion. It doesn’t look good, mind. It’s just not Arsenal.
After a moment to remember the victims of the devastating floods in Nepal, Arsenal get the ball rolling. A blistering atmosphere at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona; did anyone expect anything else?
The teams are out! Napoli wear sky blue, with a fancy gold crest that celebrates their 100th anniversary. Arsenal sport their first-choice red shirts, and would do well to change their underwhelming modern badge back to the Victoria Concordia Crescit version, or perhaps the Art Deco hexagon from the 1930s, but good luck getting that past the copyright lawyers. Anyway, I’ve gone off piste. Massimiliano Allegri and Mikel Arteta are hugging. We’ll be off in a minute.
Arsenal’s Ben White and Napoli’s Amir Rrahmani and teammates head onto the pitch. Photograph: Ciro De Luca/ReutersBring it in big guy. Photograph: Ciro De Luca/ReutersShare
Updated at 15.10 EDT
Mikel Arteta speaks to TNT Sports. “We were lucky [regarding the flight over] … I am sure it was much worse for many tourists … [Hincapié, Eze, Gyökeres and Merino] deserve to play … they train really well … every time they have been on the pitch as finishers they have made an impact … they fully deserve to start the game … I could not wait to start playing in the Champions League again … after the last days we had in Budapest, to lift ourselves up and go again … start the journey again … [Napoli] have a lot of experience and quality … a coach with massive experience in the competition … we are ready … to be ourselves and win the game.”
Pre-match postbag. “Why have such a stacked squad if you can’t make Saka and Rice the ones rested? The fact that it’s early in the season doesn’t really work because their summer was a bunch of extra work” – Zach Neeley
“Although Kai won’t feature among the starters, your chosen pic does offer plenty of food for thought, prompting one to wonder how much expert consideration has gone into crafting all the various hair zones on his head, or how it is that someone with a bag can have so many loose items on his person?” – Dr Jordan Pickering
Fancy a deeper dive into Napoli’s dispiriting defeat to Inter last weekend? Nicky Bandini has all the details.
Arsenal make four changes to their starting XI following the 2-1 victory over Chelsea. Typically, having just posted a large picture of Kai Havertz, he’s one of four players stood down, along with Myles Lewis-Skelly, Christos Tzolis and the increasingly influential Riccardo Calafiori. Piero Hincapié, Eberechi Eze, Mikel Merino and Viktor Gyökeres – the latter making his first start of the season – are in.
Napoli have a few faces familiar to Premier League fans in their starting XI. Billy Gilmour, formerly of Chelsea, Norwich and Brighton; Manchester City legend Kevin De Bruyne; and erstwhile Manchester United striker Rasmus Højlund. Scott McTominay, also once of Old Trafford, is out until next month, having recently had successful surgery to treat an irregular heartbeat.
Updated at 14.07 EDT
The teams
Napoli: Meret, Di Lorenzo, Rrahmani, Marin, Olivera, Gilmour, Lobotka, De Bruyne, Politano, Hojlund, Alisson Santos.
Subs: Contini, Milinkovic-Savic, Favasuli, Badiashile, Neres, Lucca, Vergara, Beukema, Spinazzola.
Arsenal: Raya, White, Konsa, Gabriel, Hincapie, Merino, Rice, Saka, Odegaard, Eze, Gyokeres.
Subs: Arrizabalaga, Meslier, Tzolis, Madueke, Havertz, Calafiori, Zubimendi, Guimaraes, Lewis-Skelly, Dowman, Salmon.
Referee: Glenn Nyberg (Sweden)
Arsenal’s keeper David Raya makes a diving save during the warm up. Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersShare
Updated at 15.08 EDT
Worry not, people. While this …
… meant this happened …
… Arsenal are in the house. As proof, here’s Kai Havertz arriving at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. Not 100 percent sure the Louis Vuitton bag pairs well with the Adidas clobber. The lanyard definitely clashes.
Kai Havertz of Arsenal, Adidas and Louis Vuitton fame. Photograph: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty ImagesSharePreamble
Arsenal came so close last time round. But now they’ve got that Premier League monkey off their back, perhaps this season will finally be their moment to fill that conspicuous big-eared gap on their roll of honour. Because having slaked their domestic thirst, they’ve spent the first few games of this campaign with supreme confidence, swanning around like they own the place, which at the moment they kind of do. Spirits are at an all-time high …
… and that’s before taking into consideration that near miss last season. Because while Arsenal’s 2025-26 Champions League tilt ended in despair, the bare facts are nevertheless something to take pride in: a 100-percent record in the league phase, unbeaten in regular time over the whole piece with a W11 D4 record, and the best defensive record (just seven goals conceded, nine clean sheets) of everyone. And having gone toe to toe with PSG, the best team in Europe, there’s little left to fear. Apart from perhaps another penalty shootout, that is, but that’s a bridge to cross sometime in the future.
Napoli by contrast have won just two of their last ten games in the Champions League, and failed to get past the league phase last year. They’ve lost their last three Champions League matches against English teams, and three of their four previous fixtures against Arsenal. And while the Gunners have started their domestic campaign thrillingly, Gli Azzurri have begun Serie A miserably, following up a home defeat to Como by frittering away a two-goal lead against Inter and coming away with nothing.
So all signs point to an opening victory for last year’s runners-up. And yet Mikel Arteta won’t be taking anything for granted, partly because that’s just not how he rolls, but mainly because he’s already tasted defeat in Naples as a player, getting himself sent off in the process. Oh Mikel! Kick-off at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona is at 8pm BST, 9pm local. It’s on!