In the first set of World Cup qualifiers this International break, Arsenal had nine players involved for their country, across seven teams.
Takuma Asano was the only one of these players to score, as he played 89 minutes of Japan’s match against Australia. He scored a simple finish in the 41st minute after some nice movement to get free of the defence. The win was enough to secure World Cup qualification for his team.
https://twitter.com/JogaBonitoUSA/status/903235298318061574
Meanwhile, Sead Kolašinac started in Bosnia & Herzegovina’s match against Cyprus. He managed to provide an assist in the 44th minute to put his country 2-0 up, but Cyprus mounted a comeback to win 3-2, so in the end it was a disappointing night for Sead.
Kolasinac with a lovely assist for Bosnia pic.twitter.com/pJ3LxGDfGz
— Terje (@xArsenalTerje) August 31, 2017
Olivier Giroud and Laurent Koscielny started France’s 4-0 win over the Netherlands. Giroud assisted Griezmann for the game’s opener, before being subbed off after 75 minutes.
Koscielny was part of the defence that kept a clean sheet, but appeared to pick up an ankle knock during the game. Although he played on until the end, he didn’t seem to be moving completely freely.
Alexandre Lacazette also came on for France for the final 10 minutes, and had a shot well saved as well as having an open goal nicked off his toes by Thomas Lemar, for the young Monaco star’s second of the night.
Among the other appearances, Granit Xhaka started Switzerland’s 3-0 win over Andorra, although he was subbed off at 2-0 in the 66th minute. Ospina kept a clean sheet for Colombia against Venezuela in a 0-0 draw, and Elneny played the full 90 minutes as Egypt lost 1-0 to Uganda.
Finally, Alexis’ disappointing day got even worse. After failing to secure his move away from Arsenal, Chile got smashed 3-0 by Paraguay, and Alexis unsurprisingly played every minute.