Havertz’s late goal sends Arsenal past Sporting Lisbon in Champions League quarterfinals

By  JAMES ROBSONWednesday April 8, 2026

Arsenal are one step away from a second successive Champions League semifinal after Kai Havertz struck late to secure a hard-earned 1-0 victory over Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday.

At Estadio Jose Alvalade, Havertz came off the bench to score in stoppage time and put Mikel Arteta’s side firmly in command of the quarterfinal tie before next week’s second leg at the Emirates.

The substitute fired past goalkeeper Rui Silva from close range to give Arsenal the advantage ahead of next week’s second leg at the Emirates.

In Tuesday’s other quarterfinal, Bayern Munich beat Real Madrid 2-1 at the Bernabeu.

Havertz settled a tense contest in Portugal after linking up with fellow substitute Gabriel Martinelli in the first minute of added time. The German took one touch to bring Martinelli’s incisive pass under control in the area before finishing neatly with a side-footed effort.

“To score a late goal is always nice,” Havertz told Amazon Prime. “We will take that result. There is still a lot of work to do next week.”

The win was a timely response from Arsenal after back-to-back defeats had halved their chances of completing a quadruple in recent weeks. Losses in the League Cup final and the FA Cup quarterfinals had piled pressure on the Premier League leaders before this trip to Lisbon.

They also had to survive an energetic opening spell from Sporting in a loud, intense atmosphere, with player-of-the-match David Raya producing a superb sixth-minute stop to tip Maximiliano Araujo’s shot onto the crossbar.

“It could have changed the tie,” Arteta said.

Arsenal themselves clipped the bar in the first half when Noni Madueke’s corner almost went straight in, but clear chances were scarce for both sides.

Martin Zubimendi appeared to have broken the deadlock after the interval with a curling effort from distance, only for the goal to be disallowed for offside.

Raya was called on again in the closing stages, first pushing away a header from Geny Catamo before making a double save to keep out Catamo and Luis Suarez.

“For me, the last two seasons, he’s the best keeper in the world. He has saved us so many times,” Havertz said.

Yet it was Havertz who supplied the decisive moment, leaving Arsenal within touching distance of another semifinal after they were beaten by eventual champions Paris Saint-Germain at that stage last year.

The forward, who scored Chelsea’s winner in the 2021 Champions League final, delivered another major contribution on one of the competition’s biggest nights.

“He loves the big occasion and the big games,” Arteta said. “And that’s what we need — the big players to turn up when we need them.”

The defeat was Sporting’s first at home since August. The Portuguese club has still never gone beyond the Champions League quarterfinals.

“A small lapse in concentration cost us dearly, and it’s frustrating because it happened in the 90th minute, but we have to lift our heads and move on,” coach Rui Borges told Sport TV.

For Arsenal, the celebrations in Lisbon stood in sharp contrast to the disappointment of recent weeks, which included the League Cup final defeat to Manchester City and Saturday’s FA Cup exit at the hands of second-division Southampton.

“We had to reveal ourselves today and I talked about identity and other things that we are as a team and that I definitely saw,” Arteta said. “It’s halftime. We are a step closer, now we need to finish the tie at home in front of our people, and if we do that, we’re going to start to dream.”