Arsenal star Ainsley Maitland Niles has admitted that his club teammate Alexandre Lacazette is one of the best strikers in the world after the Frenchman netted a wonderful free kick against Serie A side Napoli in the second leg of the Europa League quarter-finals to help Arsenal advance into the last four of the competition.
Alexandre Lacazette arrived at the Emirates Stadium back in the summer of 2017 from French side Olympique Lyon for a record £52 million but has proved to be worth almost every penny.
The 27-year old seems to deliver at the biggest of stages and once again did so when Arsenal needed him in the Europa League quarter-final against Napoli.
Despite taking a 2-0 advantage against Napoli in the first leg of the tie, Arsenal was on the brink of a collapse in a hostile environment. The poor away record would definitely have been playing on the minds of the Arsenal faithful but Lacazette eased the nerves.
The Arsenal center-forward won a free kick about 30 yards away from goal and fired in a superb strike and put tie virtually beyond Napoli. Lacazette has scored some absolutely crucial goals for Arsenal over the past two seasons and his teammate Ainsley Maitland Niles only has praised the attacker’s hard work in training.
After the win against Napoli, the Englishman said, “I was literally right behind it, at the midway spot and I just saw the keeper go the wrong way and the ball flew into the top corner. He is always practicing free kicks so I was pretty certain he would score one sooner or later, and he did it today in a big game.”
Maitland Niles further explained that Lacazette works on his game all the time in training and people can, therefore, see the results on the pitch, “[He works on it] all the time, he’s a player that wants to work and wants to win. He wants to win all the time, he is very passionate about his football and you could see today what the goal meant to him. [The result] feels like a weight off our shoulders, the team deserved it. It was a good defensive duty today from the top of the team where the strikers were all the way back to the keeper, everyone had to play their part and it was good.”
