Arsenal won the FA Community Shield for the 18th time with a 3-0 victory over Manchester City at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on Sunday, a result confirmed in the Football Association’s official match report. Riccardo Calafiori, Kai Havertz and captain Martin Ødegaard scored for the 2025-26 Premier League champions, who collected the trophy for the second time in three years.
Calafiori needed only 24 seconds to open the scoring, meeting Myles Lewis-Skelly’s pass on the edge of the area and sliding the ball into the bottom corner. The FA’s report confirmed it as the fastest goal in the competition’s history, beating the 35-second mark Bobby Owen set in the 1968 edition. BBC Sport’s key-stat breakdown added that it was the first goal scored in the opening minute of a Community Shield since Owen’s strike 58 years earlier, and the quickest of the 668 goals Arsenal have scored under Mikel Arteta.
Havertz made it 2-0 before the half-hour, finishing from close range after Christos Tzolis headed Ødegaard’s cross back across the face of goal when Abdukodir Khusanov failed to attack it. On his full Arsenal debut, Tzolis became the first player to assist two or more goals in a Community Shield game since David Beckham in 1996. Bruno Guimarães, signed from Newcastle United last week, also started, making his first competitive outing since the club confirmed his arrival earlier this month.
Ødegaard settled the contest three minutes into the second half, getting past Josko Gvardiol and goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma before rolling into an empty net on the way to the player-of-the-match award.
A record that stood since 1968
Calafiori’s strike overshadowed a match Arsenal controlled from the first whistle. The Italian left-back, signed from Bologna in 2024, now has three goals in 45 appearances for the club, and Arteta said afterwards that he hopes the early goal gives him lasting belief. “I think he can be a total player,” the head coach told the FA after the game. “We ask him because he’s capable of doing it and knows how to do it.”
The margin was Arsenal’s biggest in a Community Shield since 2014, when they beat the same opponents by the same scoreline, and it was a fifth Shield honour for Arteta, two as a player and three as a manager.
Maresca’s first test ends in a heavy defeat
City steadied themselves after the early shock in what was Enzo Maresca’s first competitive match since taking over from Pep Guardiola. Phil Foden forced David Raya into a low save from 25 yards, Erling Haaland was a step behind new signing Elliot Anderson’s inviting first-half cross, and Jérémy Doku ran into the most dangerous areas of the opening period. Gvardiol’s goal-line block kept the score at 2-0 at half-time, and Antoine Semenyo drew the best late save from Raya with a shot from 12 yards. Goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma could do little about any of the three goals.
BBC Sport’s analysis of what it called a nightmare start noted that Maresca suffered the joint-heaviest defeat by a Manchester City manager in their first game, a fate shared with Harry Newbould in 1906, the only previous City boss to lose his opener by three goals or more. Havertz, meanwhile, has now been involved in seven goals against City in his club career, more than against any other opponent.
A trophy before the title defence
The win gave Arsenal silverware before the new league season begins and capped a week of curtain-raisers across Europe, from PSG’s UEFA Super Cup success over Aston Villa to the EFL’s opening weekend, which saw Notts County hold Leicester City on their League One return at Meadow Lane. Guimarães and Tzolis have raised the competition for places in Arteta’s strongest side, and the early-season form of Calafiori and Ødegaard suggests the champions intend to begin the defence of their title with the same tempo they showed in Cardiff.
