Arsenal dispatched Slavia Prague 3-0 in the Champions League on Tuesday, securing a fourth straight win to open the first stage and tying the English club’s record for successive clean sheets stretching back 122 years.
Bukayo Saka converted a penalty in the 32nd minute and Mikel Merino scored twice in the second half for Arsenal, whose brilliant start to the season also sees Mikel Arteta’s team atop the Premier League by six points.
Arsenal’s miserly defense is the foundation for its run of victories in the Champions League. The Gunners have yet to concede a goal and also have eight straight shutouts in all competitions — matching their best-ever streak recorded in 1903 in the second tier of English soccer.
Max Dowman, aged 15 years and 308 days, entered as a second-half substitute to become the youngest player in Champions League history.
Stalemate
In the other early match, goals were expected but none arrived in a 0-0 draw between Napoli and visiting Eintracht Frankfurt.
Napoli was coming off a 6-2 loss to PSV Eindhoven two weeks ago but was without its most creative player in Kevin De Bruyne, who has just undergone surgery on his right hamstring.
It marked an end to Frankfurt’s remarkable run of 5-1 results in this season’s competition, with the German team having been on the receiving end of two of them.
Still to come
The seven later kickoffs include two blockbuster matchups: defending champion Paris Saint-Germain vs. Bayern Munich and Liverpool vs. Real Madrid.
PSG-Bayern is a meeting of the top two in the 36-team standings heading into the fourth round of games. They both won their first three matches and are the top scorers in the competition, with 13 and 12 goals, respectively.
While PSG has been spreading the goals around, Harry Kane is undoubtedly the main scorer for Bayern — netting 22 for a team that has won all 15 of its matches in all competitions.
A subplot to the match at Anfield is the return of Trent Alexander-Arnold, who left Liverpool to join Madrid during the offseason.
Some Liverpool fans were unhappy the right back ran down his contract, therefore not letting the club get so much money for one of its star assets, though Madrid did end up paying 10 million euros ($11 million) to acquire Alexander-Arnold slightly earlier ahead of the Club World Cup.
A mural of Alexander-Arnold, located near Anfield, was defaced ahead of the game, with the word “rat” repeatedly daubed over the artwork.
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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
By STEVE DOUGLAS
AP Sports Writer
