Gabriel Jesus believes he is feeling the benefits of a full pre-season after getting his campaign up and running with a goal against Manchester United.
The Brazilian striker tucked in a pinpoint delivery from Ethan Nwaneri to cancel out Rasmus Hojlund’s opener, paving the way for his compatriot Gabriel Martinelli to bag the winner late in the second half to clinch the first win of our pre-season tour.
And now he’s off and running in the goalscoring stakes, he can feel the confidence growing already as he aims to hit his peak when the Premier League season gets underway in three weeks’ time.
Speaking post-match, he said: “My last pre-season was not good because I was feeling my knee, so I had to have surgery and missed all of the pre-season. So, I was trying to force it during that pre-season, but at the end I couldn’t and had surgery.
“That was a little bit difficult after to come back, but this season is different. I could enjoy my holidays and then I trained a lot, and I was focused to come back well and do a good pre-season. Now I’m in different shape and can play football again.”
Wins against Manchester United are always cherished, and this one definitely will be by those in attendance at SoFi Stadium, especially as we battled back to snatch the victory our performance deserved.
Gabby was proud of the work he and his teammates put in to turn the result on its head, and prove that even if the game was a friendly, we were desperate to win it and get the momentum building.
Reflecting on the game, he said: “It’s always difficult when you concede first. We came back and won the game, so that’s the most important thing. It shows that our team tried to win in any contest. Everyone today deserved [to win], I think we deserved the win, and it was a good performance from the team.
“It’s a derby, it’s a difficult game, it’s a Premier League game, they have a lot of quality and it’s tough. At the end, we won, that’s the most important thing. Obviously, we are preparing for the season, so I think everyone is happy today.”
It was another special occasion to be playing in Los Angeles in a stadium owned by our sister club the LA Rams, and we extended our record to two wins from two in SoFi Stadium after last year’s win over Barcelona.
The atmosphere was awesome, and that wasn’t lost on our striker. “It was amazing like last year. It’s a different pitch, it’s a different stadium and they don’t play football here.
“It wasn’t new for us because we played here last year, but it was difficult. We have to try to win in any context, because football is like this, you have to try to win and that’s what we did.”
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
