Napoli vs Arsenal Prediction: Champions League Preview
We look ahead to this UEFA Champions League match at Stadio Diego Armando Maradona with our Napoli vs Arsenal prediction and preview. After stumbling at the final hurdle in last season’s final, can the Gunners make a strong start to their latest European campaign?
Napoli vs Arsenal: The Key Stats
The Opta supercomputer saw Arsenal defeat Napoli in 52.3% of its pre-match simulations.
Napoli have only lost three of their 13 home games against English clubs in major European competitions – but did lose their most recent such outing, against Chelsea (3–2) in the league phase of last season’s Champions League.
Arsenal were the only team not to lose a single match in normal time in the entire 2025-26 Champions League campaign.
Matchday 1 of the new Champions League campaign continues as the 2025-26 runners-up enter the fray, with Arsenal set for a trip to Napoli as they attempt to go one better than last season. They lost on penalties in the final against back-to-back winners PSG.
Napoli proved to be the worst of a bad bunch for Serie A in last season’s competition, failing to even get out of the 36-team league phase. They took just eight points from their eight matches, and lost four times, including defeats to both Manchester City and Chelsea.
Neither Inter, Juventus nor Atalanta made it beyond the round of 16 last term, but Napoli will be keen to buck that trend this time around.
However, despite winning their opening league game of the season, Massimiliano Allegri’s side have already hit a wall after back-to-back defeats to Como and Inter. They surrendered a 2–0 lead against the latter after Matteo Politano and Rasmus Højlund‘s early second-half goals.
Napoli’s defeats will strike further confidence into an Arsenal squad with a perfect record so far this season; they swept Man City aside to win the Community Shield 3–0 before successive victories over Coventry, Aston Villa and Chelsea in the Premier League.
Despite making it all the way to the 2026 Champions League final and playing 15 matches in total, Arsenal still conceded the fewest goals of any side in the 2025-26 edition (7). Their xG faced per game was also just 0.9, the lowest total of any team.
Arsenal kept clean sheets against Coventry and Villa, but had to bounce back from Morgan Rogers’ second-minute strike last time out, responding to beat Chelsea 2–1 via goals from Kai Havertz and Martin Ødegaard either side of half-time.
Ødegaard has already scored three goals in just four appearances across all competitions this season – after netting just once in 36 outings last term, the Arsenal skipper is getting back to his best.
As a result, Arsenal have won their opening three games of a top-flight campaign while also conceding fewer than two goals for only the third time: after 1924-25 (eventually finishing 20th), and their unbeaten season in 2003-04.
Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea xG shot map
Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea xG shot map
The Gunners will aim to maintain their early-season form on the continent having netted in their last 14 games across all competitions, albeit with the caveat that their top scorer in last season’s Champions League, Gabriel Martinelli, has since been sold to Al Hilal.
After making his full debut against Chelsea, Ezri Konsa is likely to start at the back in Naples, with injured defenders Jurrien Timber and Cristhian Mosquera still being assessed and William Saliba out long-term following his back injury at the World Cup.
Napoli too are missing a key man in their defence in the form of Alessandro Buongiorno, with talismanic midfielder Scott McTominay also out until October having undergone heart surgery.
Napoli vs Arsenal Head-to-Head
This will be just the fifth meeting between Napoli and Arsenal, and first since the 2018–19 Europa League quarter-finals. The Gunners have won three of the previous four encounters, keeping a clean sheet in all three victories.
Those most recent knockout ties ended 2–0 and 1–0 in Arsenal’s favour, respectively, with Aaron Ramsey and Alexandre Lacazette scoring in the first halves of each leg, either side of a Kalidou Koulibaly own goal at the Emirates.
Arsenal have only won one of their last six away trips to Italian clubs in the Champions League, losing four and failing to score in five of them. That sole victory did come earlier this year though: a 3–1 win over Inter in January, with Gabriel Jesus (two) and Viktor Gyökeres scoring.
Napoli vs Arsenal Prediction
Napoli vs Arsenal Prediction
Napoli vs Arsenal Prediction
Arsenal’s start to the season has provided plenty of confidence that Mikel Arteta’s side are set to compete on multiple fronts once again, and that’s reflected in the Opta supercomputer’s pre-match predictions.
Across 10,000 simulations, 52.3% ended with Arsenal coming out on top, as the Gunners gear up to reach the summit of the European game having gone so close last season.
Napoli came out victorious in 22.4% of the pre-match simulations, and with a draw slightly higher at 25.3%, it’s unlikely that Arsenal will see Stadio Diego Armando Maradona as a fortress they cannot breach.
Napoli vs Arsenal Predicted Lineups
Napoli: Alex Meret, Leonardo Spinazzola, Rafa Marín, Amir Rrahmani, Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Kevin De Bruyne, Stanislav Lobotka, Frank Anguissa, Alisson Santos, Rasmus Højlund, Matteo Politano
Head coach: Massimiliano Allegri
Arsenal: David Raya, Riccardo Calafiori, Gabriel Magalhães, Ezri Konsa, Ben White, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Declan Rice, Christos Tzolis, Martin Ødegaard, Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz
Head coach: Mikel Arteta
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 16,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world, and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
UEFA Champions League Opta Stats
UEFA Champions League Opta Stats