Kai Havertz says scoring the winner in Chelsea’s 2021 Champions League final against Manchester City is a moment he will never forget, and he wants to feel it again with Arsenal. The striker is looking ahead to Saturday’s final against Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest with the memory of Porto still vivid.
Havertz, now an Arsenal striker, said he has carried the emotion of that night with him since Chelsea beat Manchester City in the 2021 final. He scored the decisive goal and said that as a child he could not have dreamed of scoring in a final and winning it. That is why Chelsea Champions League wins still matter to him now: they are not just part of the club’s history, but part of his own career.
“It is something I will never forget,” Havertz said of the victory in Porto. He said he will always be proud of the goal and the win, and added that he hopes to take that feeling into another final. Havertz also said he watched all the Champions League games as a child and that being on that stage is “unreal.”
That 2021 run had the feel of a surprise from the start. Chelsea finished fourth in the league and Manchester City had won the Premier League by 12 points before the final, yet Thomas Tuchel’s team still came through as underdogs. Havertz said plainly, “We were the underdogs on that day, for sure.”
The contrast is part of what gives this story its pull now. Havertz is trying to help Arsenal reach the same summit again, but the road is not simple and the role of underdog has followed him to another club. Arsenal paid £65m to sign him from Chelsea two years after his Champions League final heroics, and he has since been forced through a long stop-start stretch that tested him far more than the night in Porto did.
Havertz missed the last three months of last season with a hamstring injury, then was sidelined for almost five months after hurting his knee on this season’s opening day against Manchester United. He had two surgeries, spent weeks in a knee brace and said he was “in a bad place” because he could not go out or walk. January brought his return, and he said staff and players kept him believing he would come back to his best.
That recovery has given him a chance to chase another defining night, this time with Arsenal instead of Chelsea. Havertz said the message is simple: getting to the final is not enough, because a team still has to win it. “You need to get there, and then you still have to make that step and win it,” he said. “It is going to be hard, but we are going to be well prepared.”
