Super-sub Havertz strikes late as Arsenal beat Sporting CP in Champions League
Substitute Kai Havertz celebrates after scoring in the 91st minute - Armando Franca/AP There were times in Lisbon when it was necessary to remind one’s self that this underwhelming game was a Champions League quarter-final with everything on the line – until in the 91st minute Kai Havertz scored the kind of goal that made it all make sense for Arsenal . This was a game of little risk, and precious little jeopardy, until Gabriel Martinelli created for his fellow substitute Havertz the goal that changed the balance of this tie. Until then it was hard to see what Mikel Arteta was doing – caught somewhere between the safe harbour of a first-leg draw and his team asserting themselves as the Premier League giant.
Arteta had tried to change things in the game’s closing stages, and that included sending on the 16-year-old Max Dowman to do battle with experienced Uruguayan full-back Maximiliano Araújo. None of it was working until Martinelli, out on the left touchline, cut in from the right and clipped a ball over the Sporting CP’s backline that Havertz took down with a touch and finished. Havertz steals in to give Arsenal victory at the last - Armando Franca/AP By that stage, the team from Lisbon had fought Arsenal to a standstill, but the great indulgence of these Champions League super-squads is to be able to invite from the bench players who have won finals before.
Havertz has done so for Chelsea and this goal was taken with the confidence of a man who only needed one sight of goal. So much that had gone before then had been resolutely unspectacular but here was the game’s moment of great quality. This is a turbulent period in what might be yet one of Arsenal’s greatest seasons when Arteta will have seen a draw as some respite from the doubt that has at times engulfed his players.
To win this game after the defeats to Manchester City at Wembley and then Southampton in the FA Cup changed the mood entirely. That did not mean much of it any easier to watch – a Champions League quarter-final first leg in which it was hard to discern much urgency to take the initiative from either team. Arteta will feel that his side navigated it without calamity and that the stage has been set for the Emirates to overwhelm a team from outside the gilded elite.
The Sporting players were very close to making a point until it was taken away from them. Arsenal never truly cut their opposition open until the goal itself. With Declan Rice and Martin Ødegaard re-united in midfield, they settled for possession.
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