The first leg of our Fairs Cup semi-final against the emerging Dutch side remains a largely unheralded and forgotten victory, but it provided the first hint that Bertie Mee and Don Howe had sculpted a side with real potential. In front of 46,271, North Bank favourite Charlie George rifled home the Gunners\u2019 first on 17 minutes.<\/p>\n
In true George fashion, his shot had virtually no backlift and his display prompted young Ajax star Johan Cruyff to predict: “Charlie can become as good as Di Stefano.”<\/p>\n
Jon Sammels, whose controlled passing was a feature of the match, bundled home a crucial second, and late on, after George Graham was fouled, Charlie George blasted home a penalty past Gerd Bals. <\/p>\n
With the Apollo 13 saga dominating the headlines, Arsenal lost 1-0 in the Amsterdam return to progress to their first European final with a 3-1 aggregate win.<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n April 12, 1994<\/strong> After grabbing a hard-fought 1-1 draw at the Parc des Princes, George Graham\u2019s side went into the Cup Winners’ Cup second leg at a raucous Highbury with the away goal advantage. <\/p>\n A shimmering display of red and white cards greeted the sides as they ran onto the pitch. PSG pushed hard in the opening stages, with midfielders Rai and Valdo looking dangerous, but Arsenal\u2019s attacking approach paid dividends on six minutes. <\/p>\n From Lee Dixon\u2019s measured cross, striker Kevin Campbell\u2019s superb reflex header hit the near post and went in past a surprised Bernard Lama. It was a tense evening, but PSG rarely looked likely to break down Arsenal\u2019s stubborn backline. There was relief all around when the final whistle confirmed that the Gunners had won 2-1 on aggregate.<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n April 6, 1995<\/strong> The five-goal Cup Winners Cup first leg in N5 against the Serie A side was an instant, heart-stopping classic. Central defender Steve Bould proved to be an unlikely two-goal first-half hero as he slammed us ahead after a scramble in the Sampdoria box, then his looping flick on from a corner sailed all the way over Walter Zenga to put Graham\u2019s side 2-0 up. <\/p>\n If we needed a reminder that the tie was far from done, it came when, just before half-time when Vladimir Jugovic pulled a goal back after a defensive lapse. <\/p>\n Ian Wright lobbed us back into a 3-1 lead, latching onto Paul Merson\u2019s through ball, before Jugovic once again pierced the Arsenal net, to set the scene for an epic return leg in Genoa. We ended up on the wrong side of another 3-2 result on the night, tying the score up at 5-5, but thanks to David Seaman\u2019s penalty heroics, we reached the final for the second year in a row.<\/p>\n April 6, 2000<\/strong> The Gunners may have been playing in their yellow-and-blue away kit, but they looked very much at home in N5 for the UEFA Cup semi-final first leg against Lens and were unlucky not to score a flurry of goals. <\/p>\n Our kit change came about because Lens play in red shirts and yellow shorts. As it was, Arsene Wenger\u2019s men broke through when Emmanuel Petit\u2019s through ball found Dennis Bergkamp, who eluded his two markers, controlled the ball, and slammed his shot home to score a crucial goal. In France, Arsenal (now in their traditional red and white) won a 2-1 thriller to progress to the final in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Copyright 2026 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.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The stage is set for the UEFA Champions League semi-final second leg as we take…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Watch our new Charlie George documentary <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n
Arsenal\u00a01-0 Paris Saint-Germain<\/strong><\/p>\n Smith on PSG in 1994, and Campbell’s crucial goal <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n
Arsenal 3-2 Sampdoria<\/strong><\/p>\n
Arsenal 1-0 Lens<\/strong><\/p>\n