How Arsenal have turned Martin Odegaard into a World Class midfielder
Despite Martin Odegaard being currently out of action till after the October international break reportedly, he has come a a long way since his first days at London Colney.
The midfielder was signed originally on loan by Arsenal in 2021 from Real Madrid during the January Transfer Window for the rest of the 2020/21 campaign. The Norwegian was far from special the season, where in 14 matches he scored once, after having only been picked nine times to play for the La Liga giants before joining the North Londoner’s unexpectedly.
With Arteta liking what he saw Odegaard was signed permanently at the end of the season on a four year deal for roughly £30 million.
In his first proper season (2021/22) at The Emirates Odegaard scored seven times, rounding up five assists in 40 matches. However, with his strong vigour and unwavering work ethic he was awarded the captains armband at Arsenal in July 2022, after having been made skipper on the International stage for Norway in March 2021.
Following his captaincy in North London Arteta declared: ”Odegaard is more humble and more hungry” for success.
His second year saw him improve where he reached double the number of goals and nearly assists. He secured 15 Premier League strikes and gathered seven assists with his captains armband paying off more so than ever!
Last season Odegaard formed a special midfield relationship with Declan Rice witnessing him collect the most Premier League assists (10) in the side at the end of the 2023/24 campaign with eight goals to his name.
In 156 matches for Arsenal he’s scored 35 times as well as pulling off 25 assists, let’s hope he gets more once he comes back from injury!
Liam Harding
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Very good👏 World class? Again, what has he won. Workd class players win things.
He can’t win anything by himself.
Name me a world class player, who has won nothing?
But that depends upon the team he happens to be playing for when the spotlight falls on him. To take the reverse scenario, not every member of the Real Madrid team is world class, but they’ve all won tons of trophies between them because their overall strength – world class players and “just” very good ones – is more than sufficient. It’s the collective over the individual.
Likewise, you can be an excellent player in an otherwise fairly mediocre club team. I would suggest that in a club scenario, Gordon Banks is an example here. Over his 20 seasons of club football, he won precisely two League Cups – no titles, no FA Cups, no European trophies – but he was still considered to be one of the greatest keepers for many years, nevertheless.
Harry cane
“Saliba”, who is better?
“Declan Rice” perhaps?
“Harry Kane” who won nothing and was considered best striker in the world before Haaland and he was up their before Mbappe as well.
The majority have won trophies but it’s not necessarily individually rather than world class team they have moved to. Trophies are normally team awards, but I can see your argument has legs.
A bit like what came first the chicken or the egg or in this case the world class player or the trophy winning club that brought him. World class players tend to move on to world class clubs that win trophies not the other way around.
Let’s hope Arsenal win the league and European trophy and elevate all their players to world class status.
Saliba and Rice are yet to prove they are world class but have potential. What have they achieved that can prove they are? Harry Kane is a good one but he has won the golden boot many times over a long period. Golden boot at big tournaments for England. He probably outside of England, doesn’t (you maybe surprised) get mentioned much as a top striker. But yes there could be an argument for him.
Can I add, I am a massive fan, pleased and smug, we have Rice and Saliba in our team but they have not proved they are world class yet.
I’m not ready to call him world class as, imo, he lacks *a little* potency, particularly in the big games/moments. I do see that he’s continually growing, is key to how we play and *does* turn up in the big games (just think he sometimes doesn’t take his chances in the big moments). I think he will get there.
That dreaded phrase again, “World Class”. We had enough arguments about Raya yesterday – and we couldn’t agree he was the best in the EPL currently, let alone anything wider than that.
Is Odegaard “world class” or not? I think not. However, I would suggest that a definition to use in these discussions’ is could he (or any other player) get into a “World” squad if there was such a thing? I think a definition of a literal “World XI” is too narrow here, but a usual size squad is fairer.
Is Harry kane world class or not?… I think this player is a perfect example for those that always think trophy is the only factor that classify a player as world class.