Amid plenty of talk about the World Cup rule changes shutting down Arsenal’s corner tactics, Martin Odegaard provided an assist from a corner on Tuesday night.
Ahead of the World Cup, there was a lot of talk about changes to the rules around corner kicks, with many in the media specifically describing it as an ‘anti-Arsenal’ change.
AS reported that FIFA’s new anti-blocking rule could leave Arsenal needing to “exercise extra caution”, with FIFA attempting to prevent players gaining an unfair advantage through physical obstruction by empowering VAR to police them more aggressively.
VAR will also be permitted to intervene and disallow a goal even if the ball wasn’t yet in play when the offending block was made.
But rival fans hoping this will be the antidote to Arsenal’s corner-kick dominance got a rude awakening on Tuesday night, as Martin Odegaard provided an assist for Norway directly from a corner.
Odegaard was the very first Arsenal player to take a corner at the World Cup, and he only took one in his 81 minutes on the pitch against Iraq.
The result was predictable, with Odegaard floating a ball in for Leo Ostigard to head home for a goal.
So that’s one corner kick, one goal for Arsenal players at the World Cup so far.
Whilst Arsenal have used blocking intelligently in 2025/26, the reality is that the Gunners’ primary advantage on corners is having players capable of strong deliveries (namely Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka), and then big centre-backs and strikers attacking those balls into the box.
Anyone who truly believes that Gabriel Magalhaes will suffer from a rule change preventing blocking doesn’t understand what Gabriel is doing in the penalty area.
Arsenal use blocking to open up corridors for Gabriel to attack, but that same outcome can also be achieved by the rules disallowing players from blocking Gabriel themselves.
Time will tell what impact the changes will have, but the early evidence suggests it’s not going to make much of a difference.
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