Arsenal have a number of incredible players in their squad.
The Gunners have been challenging for the Premier League title in each of the last three seasons, and they have come close to winning it.
That wouldn’t have been possible without world-class players, and Mikel Arteta has quite a few of them available at his disposal.
Liverpool star Alexis Mac Allister is a big fan of one of them.
Mac Allister has always been a talented player.
The Argentine joined Brighton and Hove Albion in January 2019, but it wasn’t until March of the following year that he made his Premier League debut.
It took a while for Mac Allister to get going, but it was after Roberto De Zerbi’s appointment that he became the player he is today.
The Italian completely transformed Mac Allister, and the midfielder has now revealed that De Zerbi used an Arsenal player as an example to make him better – Martin Odegaard.
Mac Allister became a lot better at scanning the pitch after studying the Gunners captain, and that put him on the plane to Qatar to join the Argentina squad at the World Cup.
He went on to win the competition, and his performances there convinced Liverpool to sign him for an initial fee of £35 million (Sky Sports).
Speaking about that in The Players’ Tribune, Mac Allister said: “When De Zerbi came in as our manager that next season, a few months before the World Cup, it changed everything for me.
“The main thing that he helped me improve was my scanning of the field – my “profiling” of the situation. Taking little mental pictures of the chessboard every two seconds.
“We looked at Odegaard as an example of this. For me, he’s one of the best in the world at scanning. His head never stops moving. De Zerbi gave me this gift, and it really elevated my game.
“Playing every week, with the manager’s trust, the idea of the World Cup started to seem not so distant. I will never forget, we were away at Wolverhampton, and I was in the hotel when I received the call of my dreams. My father was right. I was in the squad. I was actually going to Qatar. I immediately called him and my mom on FaceTime, and we just cried together.
“Two years earlier, I couldn’t get off the bench at Brighton. Now I was going to the World Cup with Argentina, trying to make history.”
Odegaard was nowhere near his best at Arsenal last season.
The Norway international suffered a serious ankle injury early on in the campaign and missed two months of action. He worked his socks off following his return, but things weren’t coming off.
That has led to a ton of criticism over the last few months, with some Arsenal fans even demanding that he be sold.
That is absolutely ridiculous. One bad season does not define a player – Odegaard is more than capable of turning things around, and we expect him to have a big season at Arsenal in 2025/26.
Arsenal take on Manchester United on Sunday, and if Odegaard has a good game, the Gunners will likely come away with all three points.
