The real first goal of 2022 in global men’s football fell on Saturday morning – Dutch time – in China, where Liuyu Duan opened the score for Shandong Taishan (final score 2-2). At half past two, Arsenal and Manchester City started their hunt for the first goal of the year on European soil. City started well with that hunt, but Arsenal soon took over and that resulted in the 1-0 after half an hour. Bukayo Saka shot the opening goal against the ropes on a pass from Kieran Tierney.
After the break, however, things quickly went wrong for The Gunners. First Riyad Mahrez was allowed to moor from eleven meters after a foul on Bernardo Silva. The Algerian did that successfully. Gabriel was then booked twice in a few minutes. Still seemed The Citizens unable to bring this dozen from Arsenal to their knees. But in the third minute of stoppage time it was finally Rodri who managed to get the winner on the scoreboard.
The late win put Manchester City now 11 points ahead of Chelsea and 12 points ahead of Liverpool. The competitors have played one and two games less respectively.
At Arsenal, the Dutchman Albert Stuijvenberg was on the bench as the trainer with ultimate responsibility because of a positive corona test from Spanish manager Mikel Arteta.