Martin Odegaard Shines in Community Shield Victory for Arsenal
Martin Odegaard walked off in Cardiff with the Community Shield in one hand and the man-of-the-match award in the other. The bigger prize for Arsenal, though, was something less tangible: their playmaker-in-chief looked like himself again.
After a season of stop-start frustration, this was a statement. A 3-0 demolition of Manchester City, with Odegaard at the heart of almost everything Arsenal did well, felt like the first real sign that the Norwegian is ready to reclaim his place as the side’s creative heartbeat.
From injury shadow to centre stage
Last year should have been a personal coronation. Arsenal ended a 22-year wait for the Premier League title, yet their captain spent too much of it watching from the sidelines. Knee and shoulder problems cut deep into his campaign. He started only 16 league games, finished with one goal and seven assists – his leanest return since joining permanently from Real Madrid in 2021-22 – and never truly found rhythm.
The numbers told one story. The debates told another. Former players questioned whether he should even keep the armband. His quality was never really on trial, but his influence was.
Cardiff offered a sharp rebuttal.
Odegaard ran the game with the authority of a player who has had enough of caveats. Of all Arsenal players on the pitch, he completed the most passes (55 of 58), the most dribbles (3 of 3) and won possession more than anyone else, nine times. He pressed, he probed, he set the tempo. Then he added the flourish.
The dummy that dropped Donnarumma
Arsenal were already in control when Odegaard delivered the moment that will live longest from this Community Shield. Bursting into the area, he shaped to shoot, sold Gianluigi Donnarumma completely with a dummy, watched the Manchester City goalkeeper hit the turf, then calmly rolled in the third goal.
It was audacious. It was ruthless. And it was the kind of execution Arsenal barely saw from him last season.
“Last year was really a big struggle with a lot of difficult moments. To miss so many games because of injury was really frustrating,” Odegaard admitted afterwards. “It is the worst thing for a footballer to not be able to be on the pitch and I had quite a lot of weird injuries, and bad luck.”
He spoke like someone who has already turned the page. He finished last season fit, helped Arsenal over the line to the title, then carried that form straight into the World Cup with Norway, starting five of their six games and providing four assists. The momentum has not gone to waste.
“It was good for me to end the season with a title, here, and then a good World Cup. Then I had my break and I feel good, ready to go again. What I have just worked on is to use that as motivation for this year and to come back stronger. And to use all of those experiences in a positive way.”
On this evidence, he has.
Arsenal’s midfield arms race
Odegaard was the first major pillar of Mikel Arteta’s midfield rebuild, the early emblem of the manager’s rejuvenation project. Now he finds himself at the centre of what might be the deepest engine room in the game.
Fresh from ending that 22-year title drought, Arteta has doubled down. Arsenal have paid £75m to bring in Bruno Guimaraes, adding yet another elite option to a department already stacked with Declan Rice, Eberechi Eze, Martin Zubimendi, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Mikel Merino and Odegaard himself.
Merino has called those midfield options “probably the best in football”. Looking at the list, it is hard to argue.
The competition is fierce. It might be exactly what Odegaard needs.
On Sunday, he and Guimaraes looked like they had been sharing a pitch for years rather than minutes. The Brazilian impressed in his 45-minute outing, knitting play together and offering bite and balance behind Odegaard’s artistry. The connection was instant.
“Sometimes you are just in the flow. You need to find that on the pitch,” Odegaard said. “All of us were flowing pretty good out there. I will just try to keep that up and keep going.”
If this is what Arsenal’s midfield looks like in August, the thought of it fully tuned by spring should worry the rest of the division.
Arteta senses a different Martin
Arteta has lived the frustration of the last 12 months alongside his captain. “Well, he missed five or six months for different things and it was extremely difficult for him to get any momentum,” the manager said.
That lack of continuity bled into his performances. The touches were there, the ideas too, but not with the usual sharpness or frequency. This summer, something has shifted.
“So I'm sure this year if we can maintain him fit, available with the players around him, we're going to see a very different Martin,” Arteta added. “And I sense from the first day that he joined [pre-season training] that he has something else on the belly that he wants to prove and show, because the team needs it as well.”
Hunger is not a metric you can track on a stats sheet, but you could see it in Cardiff. In the way Odegaard hunted the ball back. In the way he demanded it again seconds later. In the way he kept asking questions of a City side that never found answers.
The captaincy talk? That can wait. Right now, Arsenal look like they have their creator back, fitter, sharper and backed by the most competitive midfield cast of his career.
If this is the level he holds across a full season, he won’t feel like a returning player at all. He’ll feel like a new signing who just happens to wear the armband.
