6 players who chose to sign for Arsenal over Liverpool: Zubimendi, Odegaard…
Liverpool have reportedly been beaten to one of their top transfer targets by Arsenal – and it’s not the first time that the Merseyside club have lost out on a top talent to the Gunners.
They’re two of the biggest and most successful clubs in England, but the bright lights of North London just seem to have that extra pulling power.
We’ve identified six players who reportedly chose Arsenal over Liverpool.
Martin Zubimendi
…according to the papers.
Let’s wait and see with this one. But according to The Mail, Arsenal have everything in place to sign the Spanish midfielder from Real Sociedad at the end of the season.
That comes just 12 months after Zubimendi rejected Liverpool, who made their intentions to pay his full buy-out clause clear.
“I’ve said many times, our squad is really strong and it’s not easy to find player who can help us,” Liverpool manager Arne Slot told reporters.
“Zubimendi was one to be fair but he decided not to come so we go on with the ones we have. We tried everything but the player decided not to come.”
Dani Ceballos
“I was proud to have a club like Liverpool after me, but I chose Arsenal because of Unai Emery and how he was with me,” Ceballos revealed to Marca.
“Right now, I wouldn’t fit in at Liverpool very well. Unai was key to me being at Arsenal. I went to play at a club like Arsenal because, apart from the fact that it’s a massive club, Unai practically came to my house to tell me that he loved me as a player, that he’s been in love with me since I played for Betis.”
As it was, Emery only got to work with the Real Madrid loanee for a few months before he was sacked. Ceballos went on to feature prominently in the early days of Mikel Arteta’s tenure and returned to The Emirates for a second loan in 2020-21.
You can’t imagine that Liverpool have lost too much sleep over that one, given he was alright at best for Arsenal and has struggled to make it beyond the fringes back in Madrid.
Martin Odegaard
Strictly speaking, Odegaard never directly chose one over the other. There’s nothing to suggest Liverpool were interested in the playmaker when he signed for the Gunners, originally on loan and then permanently, back in 2021.
But when he was still in Norway, one of the most-hyped wonderkids in Europe, Liverpool pulled out all the stops.
“He actually grew up as a huge Liverpool fan,” journalist Graham Hunter revealed.
“Liverpool pushed the boat out to try to get him. They got Steven Gerrard to show him around the Melwood training complex, as it was at the time.
“They put a big effort into convincing him that this was the right environment, playing on how long he’d been a supporter.”
Even back then, Odegaard leaned more towards Arsenal than the club he grew up supporting as a boy.
“My dad handled everything with the clubs, and there were a lot. We went to Bayern, Dortmund, Man Utd, Liverpool, Madrid, Arsenal too. We got flown around in private planes and made to feel special,” Odegaard revealed in The Players’ Tribune.
“I’m not just saying this … I was actually close to choosing Arsenal. When we went there, I got to train at London Colney. I met Arsene Wenger. He took me and Dad out for dinner. That was cool, but strange too.
“It’s Arsene Wenger, you know? He’s this legend I grew up watching on TV, and now I’m sitting across from him eating steak. I was so nervous I was just sitting there thinking, ‘Is he analysing me right now? Is he going to judge me if I eat the fries? Maybe I should just leave them’. Hahaha!”
Real Madrid, of course, won the battle for the much-hyped teenager. But Arsenal got their man in the end.
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Alexis Sanchez
This one must’ve stung, given how brilliant Sanchez was for Arsenal and how disastrous Liverpool’s Luis Suarez replacements turned out.
“The huge blow was that we thought we were getting Alexis Sánchez and that he’d be a like-for-like replacement [for Suárez] in terms of how he pressed the game, his aggression,” Rodgers told Sky Sports.
“We thought he’d be perfect, it’d be a smooth transition and Rickie Lambert would come in and be an option if we needed something else in the game.”
Former Liverpool CEO Ian Ayre has since elaborated on why the Chilean attacker chose Arsenal instead:
“The only reason was that the player and his wife wanted to live in London,” Ayre told students at John Moores University.
“We couldn’t move the football club to London unfortunately!”
READ: 11 players Liverpool missed out on – and who they signed instead
Nicolas Pepe
Take this one with a pinch of salt, given that Liverpool already had Mohamed Salah out on the right wing when Pepe left Lille in 2019.
We can’t imagine that they’d ever have done as Arsenal did and broke the bank to sign the Ivorian winger for a mammoth £72million fee, given he’d likely have only provided competition for the Reds’ Egyptian King.
Really, that’s probably the reason this one was a bit of a non-starter. Credible reports from Get French Football News suggested that there were “concrete talks” with the player’s camp but they broke down due to an inability to guarantee minutes. Pepe had no such qualms with the Gunners.
Ian Wright
Given his status as an Arsenal legend and one of their most prominent supporters working in the media, it’s weird to consider an alternative timeline in which Wright moved to Anfield as opposed to Highbury back in the day.
In fairness, the former striker has stated he didn’t have much choice in leaving Crystal Palace and never got as far as outright rejecting Liverpool for his beloved Gunners. But the club were in the mix for his signature back in 1991.
“It was really strange how it came about,” Wright recalled on The Overlap.
“I wasn’t at any stage thinking about leaving or pushing for a move.
“Then one day I got a call saying I needed to see Steve Coppell. I went in to see him and he was pretty solemn and sad. He just said, ‘we’ve accepted a bid from Arsenal’.
“I didn’t have a clue. I never knew anything about it. There was never any link between me and Arsenal in the papers.
“After the 1990 FA Cup final, there was a lot of stuff with Liverpool, there was a chat about Tottenham as well and there was Man United.”
The Arsenal legend has also called himself a “closet Liverpool fan” and admitted he had a soft spot for them growing up, but switched to Arsenal when his childhood friend David Rocastle joined the club.