LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 02: Alex Iwobi of Nigeria during the International Friendly match between England and Nigeria at Wembley Stadium on June 2, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

Arsenal News

Round-up: How Arsenal players are doing at Copa America and AFCON

Jul 2, 2019

With this summer’s Copa America and Africa Cup of Nations still ongoing, let’s have a look at how the Arsenal players are doing in each competition.

lucas torreira v colombia — Uruguay’s Lucas Torreira (L) and Edinson Cavani celebrate after an own goal by Ecuador’s Arturo Mina (out of frame) during their Copa America football tournament group match at the Mineirao Stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on June 16, 2019. (Photo by Luis ACOSTA / AFP / Getty Images)

Copa America

Starting with Copa America, Arsenal’s participation in the tournament came to an end over the weekend, with both Uruguay’s Lucas Torreira and Colombia’s David Ospina crashing out over the weekend.

Torreira and Uruguay came through the group stage without much trouble, winning two matches and drawing the third.

Torreira made two appearances (one start) in those opening games. However, they then lost their quarter-final to Peru on penalties after a 0-0 draw, despite the Arsenal man scoring his spot-kick.

It was a very similar story with Ospina and Colombia. They had no trouble in the group stage with three wins, and two clean sheets in two appearances for the goalkeeper. Then they lost to Chile on penalties after a 0-0 draw.

AFCON

Mohamed Elneny has started all three of Egypt’s wins in the AFCON group stage, playing 90 minutes in the first two and 62 minutes in the third. He’s now waiting to find out their knockout stage opponents.

Meanwhile, Alex Iwobi started in Nigeria’s wins over Burundi and Guinea, but he was then dropped to the bench for their 2-0 defeat to Madagascar, making a second-half substitute appearance.

Fortunately, second place in the group is still enough to make the next round, so Nigeria’s slip-up won’t cost Iwobi the chance to feature in the knockout rounds.

Let’s hope Elneny and Iwobi don’t end up in penalty shootouts after 0-0 draws in the round of 16.

U21 European Championships

As for the u21 Euros, which concluded with a Spain win over Germany on Sunday, Matteo Guendouzi made the semi-finals with France, whilst Reiss Nelson and Krystian Bielik were eliminated at the group stage.