Martin Ødegaard - Welcome to Arsenal

really coming into form now... let's hope the injury bug stays away so that it doesn't get in the way

imagine if we had a competent striker this whole time

he's been at his best i've ever seen since the restart... his next challenge is to maintain this form till the end of the season

i don't think he has it in him to consistently control entire games like the likes of prime Fabregas, Ozil and De Bruyne... but he can spring into life at any moment and make something happen out of nothing, and that's more than good enough

So happy for this guy.

Seemed destined to be another one ruined by Real Madrid, was on the path to be Canales, no disrespect to Canales. But he managed to turn it around.

Strange that someone is blaming Real Madrid for destroying Canales.

1. They didn’t develop him, that was done at Racing!

2. They or rather Mourinho didn’t play him.

3. His trajectory took a downturn with a torn ACL.

4. He went on with a damaged leg to a good not spectacular career with Betis.

I literally said no disrespect to Canales. Respect, in fact.

But he did not become what he could have and the Real Madrid machine ate him up like many others.

I mentioned him because Odegaard reminds me of him as a player and he managed to turn it around at a big club, and even though Betis and Arsenal are similar level clubs recently, or even Betis has been a bit better over the last two, three years, historically Arsenal is a huge club with the greatest ambitions.

What did Madrid do, other than sign him as a project, with a coach that would not play nor develop him? He literally did not play at Madrid. His ACL tear was with NT youth team. His development was at both Racing and on NT youth teams. He played with and was better than Thiago and Isco. Nothing to do with Madrid at all.

Hazard
Jović
Odegaard
Reinier
Illaramendi
Lucas Silva
Kaka
Sahin
Gago
Canales
Pedro Leon
van der Vaart
Drenthe
Sneijder
Robben
Huntelaar
Julio Baptista
Woodgate
Cicinho
Emerson
Cassano
Samuel
Owen
Cambiasso

In like 20 years, these careers were either ruined by Real Madrid or had a reneissance after leaving the club. I mean ffs, and who knows all the players I forgot, like Perica Ognjenovic or Elvir Baljic.

Adjusted for inflation, the value of these transfers is 1.1 billion euros. On average, Real Madrid ruins 1.1 career a season.

Also it must be said that this has improved recently, Real are nurturing talent a lot better this days, but still ruin a career or two here and there.

Lol, that is a list of poor acquisitions nothing to do with ruining careers or not developing. Every club has such a list!

Hazard lol, shows up fat and out of shape, his career was over before arriving.
Kaka shows up with career ending injury. His career was finish at Milan. Should I go on!

If you’re trying to say Madrid doesn’t develop youth, I would agree with that until recently. But to say Madrid is destroying these players that plain and simple wrong!

Ok, for direct comparison, here is Barcelona list:


Coutinho
Griezmann
Arthur
Firpo
Alcacer
Malcom
Afellay
Chigrinskiy
Hleb
Quaresma

Not even half as long, and some of these are a stretch.

Vibe wrote:Ok, for direct comparison, here is Barcelona list:


Coutinho
Griezmann
Arthur
Firpo
Alcacer
Malcom
Afellay
Chigrinskiy
Hleb
Quaresma

Not even half as long, and some of these are a stretch.

I don’t get what you are on about. You say Madrid has ruined careers, yet you post a list of transfers and youth acquisitions that didn’t make it at club and as has been detailed almost all just weren’t good enough. Normally you write these off as poor acquisitions, but how you can say club destroyed them, just doesn’t make sense. And some on the list such as Sneijder and Robben were great before and after Madrid! So how in the world did Madrid destroy them!!

The environment is competitive and thus it is difficult to succeed at Madrid. You may perceive this as bad, but the result is more trophies than any other club by a large margin. Plus the coach has absolute say as to who plays and who starts. In the cases you mentioned, Odegaard and Canales, both Zidane and Mourinho didn’t buy into their role was to develop youth players (yet they had them with first team). I personally wanted both to play, but it wasn’t to be.

Up until recently, youth prospects were not developed on first team. There were issues with that in that Castilla is 2 levels down from first division and quite frankly are not even making it near the top of that level. So the approach has been to loan them out to develop and that’s exactly what happened in both cases you referred to. When they come back, if they do, there has to be an opening for them to fit in and that is actually rare and thus club tend to purchase and as your list showed, a lot don’t work out. The other alternative i.e. in Odegaard’s case, they are told to be patient. Odegaard decided he was better off elsewhere were he would get to play, and he was right! But I still don’t get he was destroyed by Madrid. He left on his own and he is anything but destroyed. In Canales, he didn’t play. His torn ACL was the end of his time in Madrid and that injury wasn’t even the result of Madrid. He certainly was not destroyed by Madrid.

name a bigger upgrade from Ozil to Odegaard