Our Champions League encounter with Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty will see another club added to our ‘one and only’ encounters in Europe.
With the new format of Europe’s premier club competition, sides play each other only once in the league phase, rather than home and away, leading to more one-off encounters with some of the continent’s top teams.
Last season, we drew 0-0 with Italian club Atalanta in the first-ever meeting between the sides, before we added another to our collection when we beat Girona 2-1 in Spain, when Ethan Nwaneri’s expertly curled finish was the difference between the sides.
This season, goals from substitutes Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard completed an impressive 2-0 win against Athletic Club in Bilbao, and then we defeated Club Brugge 3-0.
But before the format change, in our 63-year European journey, there were only two other clubs that we’d faced just once in Europe, which came both in our run to a pair of Cup Winners’ Cup finals in the 1990s.
George Graham’s side navigated their way towards the 1993/94 final when Alan Smith’s superb half-volley saw off a Parma team which boasted superb attackers including Tomas Brolin, Faustino Asprilla and Gianfranco Zola, and we’ve never come across the Italians since.
A year later, we repeated the trick, but this time we were unable to retain the trophy as we were beaten by Real Zaragoza - one of 12 Spanish teams we have faced in Europe, but only they and Girona are on our one-and-done list.
However, there are of course plenty of other teams we’ve been pitted against once, albeit across two legs, and some of the most famous have come during our runs to the eight finals we’ve reached across the major UEFA tournaments.
En route to the 1970 Fairs Cup final, Bertie Mee’s side defeated Glentoran, Rouen, and Romanian side Dinamo Bacau, whom the Gunners hammered 7-1 in the home leg, with Jon Sammels, John Radford and Charlie George each netting braces.
In the 1978/79 clutch of intrepid Gooners ventured behind the Iron Curtain to see their team take on some of East German outfit Lokomotiv Leipzig, and our progress to the 1980 Cup Winners' Cup final saw us edge past another Oberliga side in Magdeburg, before we crushed Swedish side Gothenburg, managed by a young Sven Goran Eriksson.
Before the aforementioned 1994 success over Parma, Tony Adams’ headed winner at Highbury secured a 1-0 aggregate victory over Torino in the quarter-final, while a year later, we overcame Sampdoria in a thrilling, see-saw Cup Winners' Cup semi-final. A 3-2 win at Highbury – with Steve Bould scoring twice – was followed by a 3-2 reverse in Genoa before David Seaman produced heroics in the shootout to help us progress.
Our adventure to the 2005/06 Champions League final saw us pitted against Swiss side FC Thun in the group stages who were beaten home and away, while Rennes were defeated in dramatic circumstances during our run to the 2018/19 Europa League final, when we overturned a 3-1 first leg deficit to win 3-0 at Emirates Stadium thanks to two goals from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
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