Arsenal open 2026/27 pre-season at Girona with Arteta's World Cup absentees missing from the squad sheet

Arsenal's 2026/27 pre-season starts in Catalonia on Saturday, and the squad sheet that Mikel Arteta sends across for the 7pm BST kick-off at Estadi Municipal de Montilivi will look almost nothing like the side that walked out at the Champions League final in May. Seven first-team players — Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, David Raya, Mikel Merino, Martin Zubimendi, Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke — are still on their post-World Cup rest window and have not rejoined group training. Three more — William Saliba, Jurriën Timber and Christian Norgaard — are unavailable for separate reasons. Arteta still has options. The shape of those options is the story of this friendly.

The match is the first of four scheduled Arsenal friendlies before the Premier League returns and is being streamed exclusively on Arsenal.com and the official Arsenal app. It is also a working dress rehearsal for a Girona side that finished the previous La Liga season near the bottom of the table on the back of an eight-match winless run and has been using July to rebuild match fitness with a 3-1 win over UE Olot, a 1-0 defeat to Deportivo Alavés and a 3-3 draw with Castellón. Quique Alvarez's first full pre-season has been judged, so far, on volume of minutes and absence of soft-tissue flags rather than results.

Arsenal's confirmed absences

The seven post-tournament absentees all played extended minutes at the World Cup earlier in the summer and are working to an individual programme that returns them to first-team training in the second half of August. Saka, Rice and Raya were the spine of England's run to the latter stages. Merino and Zubimendi were the midfield foundation of Spain's campaign. Eze and Madueke came off the bench for varying stretches of England's knock-out matches. None of them has been asked to fly to Catalonia.

The personnel gaps that matter for Saturday are the defenders. Saliba is out for months with a severe back injury that he picked up during the tournament and requires a structured rehab rather than a return-to-play window. The diagnosis and the long layoff were confirmed by Arsenal in early July and have not changed. Timber had minor summer surgery and is rehabbing in London. Norgaard, the new signing who has barely featured for Arsenal since his arrival, has been ruled out with a training knock and is not expected to be risked in any of the four pre-season fixtures.

The Arsenal side that will play

Without the seven absentees, Arteta's bench includes several first-team regulars who did not travel to the World Cup — among them Kai Havertz, Gabriel Magalhães, Gabriel Martinelli and Viktor Gyökeres. Kepa Arrizabalaga is expected to start in goal and is a useful reference point for how Premier-League-fit the back line is at this point of the summer.

The bigger development on Saturday is the first appearance in an Arsenal shirt of Christos Tzolis, whose non-competitive debut the club has scheduled for this fixture. Tzolis arrived in the close-season window as a depth wide forward and is being given minutes here rather than held back for the second or third friendly, which is the more usual pattern. His role against Girona will tell the coaching staff whether to start integrating him into the early-season matchday squad or hold him for the cup-tie rhythm of August.

The reported Arsenal XI has Kepa behind Mosquera, Salmon, Calafiori and Hincapié, with Lewis-Skelly and Copley as the central pairing, Dowman and Nwaneri in the wide midfield spots and Tzolis supporting Jesus through the middle. That is a side with two players who finished last season as under-21 regulars, two summer arrivals and a front line built around rotation minutes rather than settled chemistry. It is also the side Arteta has wanted to see at this stage of the window for some time.

Girona's view, and the Bryan Gil question

Quique Alvarez's approach to Saturday is simpler than his opposite number's because his squad has fewer moving parts. Girona want to use the match to extend the minutes bank of Bryan Gil, the former Tottenham winger who joined in the summer and is being lined up to start on the left of the front three. The published Girona XI has Krapyvytsov in goal behind A. Martínez, López, Yaakobishvili and Moreno, with Beltrán and Martin as the central pair, Camara and Misehouy supporting Gil, and Vanat leading the line.

The selection conversation that Alvarez is managing publicly is about Donny van de Beek. The Dutch midfielder is fit and with the squad after his summer move and has trained fully through the last week of July. The expectation shared by the Girona coaching staff and the local reporting is that he will begin on the bench. The reasoning is straightforward: he is the highest-profile summer arrival in central midfield, his minutes are being rationed, and his introduction to the home crowd is being staged for a moment in the second half rather than the first.

Azzedine Ounahi, the Moroccan international who arrived in Girona for the second half of last season, has returned from his post-World Cup break and is in contention for selection. His minutes this summer will be a useful indicator of where he sits in Alvarez's early-season midfield plans. If he starts, Girona look more like the side that ran at the top half of the table in the first half of the previous campaign. If he comes off the bench, the message is that the minutes are being managed rather than the position being contested.

Why pre-season shapes more than match fitness

The wider context for an Arsenal friendly against La Liga opposition in early August is the contrast between two clubs on opposite sides of a World Cup cycle. Arsenal finished the previous competitive campaign with the Champions League final in late May — a 1-1 draw with Paris Saint-Germain over extra time before a 4-3 loss on penalties — and the recovery window for the players who played in that match has now fused with the recovery window for the players who went to the World Cup. The squad returned to training in stages. The first group reported on 21 July. The post-tournament group is being held back until mid-August. The four pre-season friendlies are being scheduled across that gap.

Girona's pre-season is a different exercise. The previous La Liga season finished poorly — eight matches without a win and a finish near the bottom of the table — and the summer has been about resetting the conditioning baseline rather than integrating a new manager. Alvarez's three friendlies so far have produced one win, one loss and one draw, and the minutes-load pattern across the squad has been the priority rather than any individual result. Saturday is the most demanding of those fixtures because of the opposition.

For Arsenal, the read-through from Saturday is tactical rather than results-based. Arteta has spoken through pre-season about the value of testing squad-fit combinations against a team with European-level passing patterns and a four-at-the-back defensive shape. Girona — even in a friendly, even with first-team regulars still on holiday — gives him that test in a way a lower-league Spanish side or a domestic under-21 side would not.

The broadcast plan and what it tells you

The decision to stream the match exclusively on Arsenal.com and the official Arsenal app is the operational detail that has drawn the most reader question this week. The reasoning is straightforward and matches Arsenal's broader media-rights approach. The friendlies at Montilivi are not part of the Premier League's international broadcast schedule, the La Liga broadcast rights for Catalonia are held by a Spanish network for domestic coverage, and Arsenal's in-house platform is the cleanest distribution channel for the global audience. There is no Premier League precedent to point at because English clubs are free to choose how they stream friendlies abroad.

For Girona, this is also a useful exercise. A broadcast on Arsenal's platform puts the Catalan club in front of the kind of global audience the La Liga broadcaster could not offer them on a Saturday in early August. The commercial angle is one the Alvarez staff will be conscious of even if the players are focused only on minutes.

What is verified and what is not

Verified for Saturday is the kick-off time of 7pm BST at Estadi Municipal de Montilivi, the absence list from the Arsenal side (the seven post-tournament players plus Saliba, Timber and Norgaard), the presence of Kepa, Havertz, Gabriel Magalhães, Martinelli and Gyökeres for the home side, the planned non-competitive debut of Christos Tzolis, the published Girona XI, the plan for Bryan Gil to start and Donny van de Beek to come off the bench, the availability of Azzedine Ounahi after his post-World Cup break, the three friendly results that frame Girona's July and the broadcast plan for Arsenal.com and the Arsenal app.

Not verified at the time of writing is the final shape of Arsenal's bench (which will depend on the morning's medical check), whether Van de Beek's first appearance comes at half-time or later in the second half, and the minute distribution for Gil in his first start since his move. Those three details will be settled when the teams are announced an hour before kick-off.

What to watch across the four fixtures

Three markers from Saturday will carry through to the next three friendlies and into the Premier League opener. The first is the minute-load pattern Arteta plans for the post-tournament returnees. If they are scheduled to come back into a starting XI at the second friendly rather than feature from the bench, the conditioning staff are aiming for an August return at full match intensity. If they bench, August is being treated as a reintroduction window rather than a peak window.

The second is the rotation pattern that Arteta builds around the Saliba absence. Calafiori and Hincapié are going to share minutes at left centre-back across the four fixtures. The pairing that settles fastest is the one that opens the Premier League. The third is the integration curve for Tzolis. Arteta gave him the first appearance of pre-season for a reason. The minutes he plays on Saturday will tell you whether the plan was a tactical message or a fitness message.

For Girona, the markers are simpler. Whether Van de Beek starts the second friendly or comes off the bench again will tell the local audience how Alvarez is using him. Whether Ounahi gets 60 minutes or 30 will tell the local audience how Alvarez is using him too. And whether Gil finishes the match as the left-sided starter will tell the local audience what the front three will look like when La Liga resumes.

For ongoing Arsenal pre-season coverage, team-sheet analysis and European-window reporting, follow the live updates on the football desk. The next verified marker on this file is the confirmed line-ups an hour before kick-off, then the post-match read on Arteta's minute plan and the La Liga-fit pattern of Alvarez's first serious friendly at Montilivi.