Martin Odegaard's Resurgence: Key to Arsenal's Success

Martin Odegaard is not just back. He is reborn.

Arsenal’s captain settled another big European night on Wednesday, crashing in the only goal in a 1-0 Champions League win at Napoli and extending a blistering start to the season that has transformed both his numbers and his aura.

Four goals in five games across all competitions. The same player who found the net just once in an injury-ravaged 2025/26 campaign now looks like the sharpest blade in Mikel Arteta’s armoury.

Arteta’s new Odegaard

Arteta did not dress it up. Fitness and freedom have changed everything.

“First of all he needs to be available and last year he missed so many games through injuries,” the Arsenal manager said after the game, pointing straight at the foundation of this resurgence.

Now Odegaard is not only present, he is everywhere.

Arteta has nudged his captain into more advanced areas and surrounded him with fresh combinations. The relationships are different. The picture around him has changed.

“He's got that edge and different relationships around him as well and that helps,” Arteta explained. “He can start to go by different heights in the team, especially in the attacking phase, and when we get him into those positions he's a really dangerous player.”

The numbers back him up. Odegaard’s touches in the opposition box have leapt from 2.5 per 90 minutes last season to 4.3 per 90 this term. That is not a tweak. That is a repositioning of responsibility.

Arteta credits the players behind and around him for making it possible.

“We have a lot of players that can take the ball there and progress the ball much better than we did in the past,” he said. “When that happens, [Odegaard] needs to take different heights and angles and positions in order to disorganise the opponent and he's done that really well.”

New partners, same conductor

Christos Tzolis is at the heart of that shift. The summer signing already has four assists, three of them laid on for Odegaard, including the decisive pass in Naples.

But this was not a one-man axis. Arsenal attacked down both flanks and through the centre with a relentlessness that overwhelmed Napoli at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.

They racked up 26 shots, their most on record in the Champions League since data began in 2003/04. An expected goals figure of 4.05 underlined the scale of their dominance. On another night, this could have been a statement scoreline.

Instead, it was Odegaard who separated the sides with one thumping finish.

“That’s what we need,” said Arteta. “The players with the mindset to decide a game and play with personality. To keep taking chances and risks.

“He's getting into those positions much more in recent games and now you feel he has the emotional state that he knows the ball can go in, and he scored an incredible goal tonight.”

Freedom, flair, and a 29-pass punch

From the first whistle in Naples, Odegaard looked like the best player on the pitch.

He demanded the ball. He dictated the tempo. He found pockets between the lines and pierced Napoli’s defensive shape with those trademark threaded passes. Attacks flowed through him almost by default.

His goal captured the entire performance in one sweeping move. Arsenal stitched together a 29-pass sequence, dragged Napoli across the pitch, then watched their captain step onto the ball at the edge of the box and lash it home. One touch to set, one to finish. Clinical, cold, decisive.

He now has four goals in five games this season, a staggering turnaround from one in 36 last term. Freed from the shackles of injury, he looks like a different footballer.

The influence extended far beyond the goal. Odegaard finished the night with more touches, more passes and more chances created than any other player. Napoli could not get close enough to disrupt him.

One scooped pass over the top to release Ben White carved open the hosts again, only for Piero Hincapie to waste what should have been a golden chance. It was just one example among many of the Norwegian’s imagination against a packed defence. He played with a looseness, a swagger, that Arsenal have been desperate to see again.

“Martin is contributing goals,” Arteta said. “That is obviously impacting results which is what we want from our attacking players, to be decisive, and certainly he was that today.”

Arsenal are riding the wave of that decisiveness. If this is the version of Odegaard they keep on the pitch, how far can it take them this season?