Martin Odegaard's Impact on Arsenal's Title Quest
Arsenal spent last season living with a nagging question. How much higher could they have climbed if their captain had truly been himself?
They still won a first Premier League title in 24 years. They still reached the Champions League final, losing only on penalties to Paris Saint-Germain. And they did it with Martin Odegaard hampered by knee and shoulder problems, short of rhythm, short of sharpness, and nowhere near the ruthless conductor he believes he should be.
Now he is.
And Arsenal suddenly look terrifying.
Odegaard unleashed
At 27, Odegaard has opened this campaign playing like a man released. The touch is back, the swagger too, but above all the conviction. Where last season he managed just one goal and seven assists in 36 games across all competitions, this version is hunting games down and deciding them.
Naples felt like a statement. Arsenal had dominated Napoli in their Champions League opener, piling up chances, pushing the Serie A side deeper and deeper behind a defensive shell that could have been lifted straight from Max Allegri’s handbook. Yet the breakthrough refused to come.
Then Odegaard took charge.
Fifteen minutes from time, the ball broke to him on his favoured left. One touch to set, one to explode. A stunning strike, arrowed beyond the keeper, finally cracked Napoli’s resistance and sealed a 1-0 win. On a night when Arsenal mustered 26 shots – their highest tally in a Champions League match since records began in 2003-04, and the most Napoli have faced in that period – it was their captain who found the precision their profligacy had lacked.
He didn’t just win it. He shaped it. He pressed, harried, organised, and set the tempo, the embodiment of what Mikel Arteta demands from his leader.
“Martin is contributing with goals that are impacting results which is what we want from our attacking players, being decisive,” said Arteta. “We should have done it in a different way because of the amount of chances we created.”
Arsenal could – and should – have been out of sight. Odegaard made sure they still walked away with everything.
A different level
This is not a sudden explosion from nowhere. The signs were there.
Odegaard flickered back into life as Norway reached the World Cup quarter-final, where they lost to England, and he has carried that surge into the club season. The Community Shield in Cardiff felt like a curtain-raiser not just for Arsenal, but for their captain.
Against Manchester City, he finished Arsenal’s 3-0 win with an audacious final goal, sitting Gianluigi Donnarumma down before rolling the ball into an empty net. It was impudent, cold-blooded, the work of a player enjoying every touch again.
He backed it up immediately. He scored in the 3-0 victory over Coventry City. Then came Chelsea at Emirates Stadium, Arsenal’s perfect start under real threat as they trailed, the air thick with tension.
Odegaard sliced through it.
His winner came from a perfectly judged, intelligent run into the box, ghosting into space to meet Kai Havertz’s clever dummy before crashing an emphatic finish past Emiliano Martinez. Timing, movement, conviction – the hallmarks of a midfielder who sees the game a split second quicker than everyone else.
That goal, like the one in Naples, carried the stamp of a lavishly gifted player operating at the peak of his powers in a team brimming with belief after finally ending their title drought.
Former Premier League defender Nedum Onuoha, speaking on Match of the Day, summed it up: Odegaard, he said, “will want to have a bigger impact on the team this season,” adding that Arsenal have “unfinished business in the Champions League” and that the Norwegian “100% takes Arsenal to a different level when he is on form and playing like this.”
“When he is at his best, Arsenal are at their best,” Onuoha said. “I think there have been times when he's not been at his best and as a team they can still look good and win games, but the best version of Arsenal in my opinion comes when Odegaard is pulling the strings.”
Right now, he is.
Arteta’s standard-bearer
Arteta has been clear about what he wants from his captain. Risk. Responsibility. Personality.
“This what we need,” the manager said. “Players with that mindset to decide the game, to play with that personality and keep taking risks. He is getting into those positions much more in recent games. It was an incredible goal.”
Odegaard is responding like someone with a point to prove. He knows that while Arsenal’s season glittered last year, his own numbers and influence did not match his standards. Injuries restricted him to just 24 league appearances in that title-winning campaign. The team soared; he trudged behind, contributing but never quite dominating.
That imbalance has gone. This season he looks, as Arteta hinted, like a man almost offended by the idea that Arsenal can thrive without him at full tilt. He wants to be central to everything. He is playing like it too.
Onuoha highlighted his creativity on the right-hand side, his care with the ball, his constant search for the killer pass and his willingness to graft without it. “He looks after the ball so well,” Onuoha said. “He is always looking for that pass to be able to create opportunities and he even does the defensive work as well.”
In Naples, that blend of artistry and industry set the tone. He led the press, tracked runners, then, when the moment came, produced the game’s one moment of ruthless quality.
The road to the Holy Grail
Arsenal will need every ounce of that if they are to finally conquer Europe.
The Champions League has tormented them. Barcelona in 2006. PSG last season. Two finals, two defeats, the trophy still out of reach. It remains the club’s Holy Grail.
The route this time is brutal. A home date with Real Madrid looms. A trip to Bayern Munich waits on the horizon. These are the fixtures that expose any hint of fragility.
Yet Arsenal already look like a side intent on building, not basking. There is a calmness about the way they dismantled Napoli’s defensive block, a maturity in the patience they showed before Odegaard’s strike. This is not a team giddy from last season’s success. It is one hardened by it.
Arteta’s players carry themselves like champions who want more. Odegaard, fully fit and playing like silk, is the clearest expression of that hunger.
Onuoha believes he wants to be the first Arsenal captain to lift the Champions League trophy. Watching him now, driving a team that has already proved it can live with Europe’s elite, the question almost writes itself.
If Arsenal could win the league and reach the Champions League final with their captain short of his best, what happens now that Martin Odegaard is dictating everything at full force?
