Twenty-four hours after Arsenal peppered Napoli’s goal at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium, winning 1-0 through a late Martin Odegaard strike, Thierry Henry chose to talk about somebody else.

“You see how PSG press? They’re unplayable,” Arsenal’s record scorer told The Athletic.

A caveat to the Naples dominance

Henry’s timing is pointed. Arsenal’s opener in Italy produced 26 shots, their highest total on record in a Champions League match, with an expected-goals figure of 4.05 that made the 1-0 scoreline look almost embarrassing. Odegaard’s low, curling finish in the 75th minute arrived after a 29-pass build-up that ran through most of the visiting side.

“The performance doesn’t reflect the result. It should have been much bigger,” Mikel Arteta said afterwards.

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Napoli had to shuffle at the interval when goalkeeper Alex Meret went off injured. Vanja Milinkovic-Savic came on in his place and could do little about Odegaard’s shot off the inside of the post from the edge of the box.

Henry’s read on the champions

The Frenchman’s assessment of the reigning European champions rests on how Luis Enrique rebuilt after the departures of Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Lionel Messi. Rather than lament the missing star power, Henry pointed to the young forwards who took over.

“Then they got Bradley Barcola, and then they got (fellow attacker) Desire Doue,” he said. “Because Luis Enrique is so sound on how he likes to play, they have done it.”

Henry was equally blunt about the timeline. Luis Enrique, he said, needed “a good five to six months” to get his system running, a warning to Arsenal fans who see a perfect opening night and assume the gap has closed.

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What Henry says Arsenal already have

“If you look at Arsenal, you don’t have an offensive midfielder or a striker that was in a [Premier League] team of the year last season. But they’re a team.”

Arsenal lost the Champions League final to PSG on penalties last season after a 1-1 draw, and the pundit’s pressing verdict, first delivered in a video-call interview with The Athletic, plants a marker before the sides can meet again in the knockout rounds.

Arsenal’s second league-phase fixture is at home to Lille on 13 October. PSG opened the defence of their title at home to Slovan Bratislava on 9 September.

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