Martin Odegaard sent a reassuring message to Gabriel Martinelli after his missed penalty sent Arsenal out of the Europa League.
In a thrilling game at the Emirates, Arsenal drew 1-1 (3-3 agg) with Sporting Lisbon after extra time to end the tie on penalties.
Martinelli played the full 120 minutes and was involved in his side’s goal when his shot was saved en route by Antonio Adan by Granit Xhaka, who fired on target to give the Gunners the lead.
But he was unable to repeat the magic in the shootout as the Brazilian striker was the only player to save his penalty, allowing Nuno Santos to convert Sporting’s fifth penalty and send the Portuguese side to the quarter-finals.
Martinelli looked nervous after his missed penalty and understandably dejected afterwards, but the 21-year-old will have the support of his teammates to help him recover.
We win and lose together. It doesn’t matter,” Arsenal captain Odegaard told BT Sport when asked what he and his team would do to help Martinelli recover from the loss.
When we win everyone is happy, when we lose we have to pull ourselves together. We win and lose together.
“We must not forget that it has been a great season, it is a big blow to leave this competition. But now we are looking forward to the game, that’s all we can do now.
“I think we did enough in some stages of the game, but most of the game we weren’t at the level we should have been. We didn’t play our best football. In the end it was an exciting game, it had can go in all directions.
‘She [Sporting] We are a good team, we knew that, we were prepared. It was more about us today, we didn’t play with the same energy as usual. Now we have to look ahead.”
Martinelli is having a great season so far with 12 goals and two assists in 27 league appearances.
Arsenal’s next fixture is a Premier League fixture against Crystal Palace, where a win sees them eight points clear of Manchester City at the top of the table.
Source: Subway
Source: Metro
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