Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard has branded one former Gunners star as his idol’.
The Norway international is one of Arsenal’s most important players. He has been magnificent for them since he joined the club from Real Madrid in 2021.
Odegaard recently won Arsenal’s Player of the Season award for the second time. That is the same number that his ‘idol’ managed to win during his time at the Emirates.
What Cesc Fabregas said before Martin Odegaard called him his ‘idol’
Cesc Fabregas was one of Arsenal’s best players during his time at the Emirates.
The Spaniard joined the Gunners from Barcelona when he was just 16 years old in a £2.25 million deal in the summer of 2003 (Sky Sports).
He went on to become the captain of Arsenal and played 303 games for them, scoring 57 goals and providing 95 assists in that period.
Fabregas was absolutely unbelievable in his final few years at Arsenal, which is why Barcelona snapped him up in 2011.
He returned to the Premier League and joined Chelsea three years later and helped them win the Premier League title twice, first under Jose Mourinho and then when Antonio Conte was at the helm.
Odegaard was a kid when most of the above happened. He presumably grew up watching Fabregas and idolised him when he was pulling the strings for Arsenal, Barcelona and Chelsea.
Fabregas and Odegaard met each other recently and the former posted a picture of them together on his Instagram Story.
“What a player,” Fabregas wrote about the current Arsenal captain.
Odegaard reposted that on his Instagram Story and wrote: “Idol!”
The real reason why Fabregas left Arsenal
For years, many people felt Fabregas left Arsenal and joined Barcelona because it was his dream to return to his boyhood club.
The Spaniard came through the ranks at the prestigious La Masia academy but left Barcelona when he was just a teenager, before playing a senior game.
Many Arsenal fans understood his decision at the time, but years later, Fabregas revealed the real reason why he left the Emirates Stadium.
In a wide-ranging interview with Arseblog in March 2020, Fabregas revealed: “I was the captain, I always felt so much pressure on myself. I had to lead this team to win something. I gave everything. Sometimes, I used to go home after we lost and I used to cry.
“I used to suffer, I used to spend sleepless nights suffering. And then you lose a game, you’re in the bus like this, destroyed, and then you hear some players laughing, thinking about where they will be going out later.
“This was going on for a few years. We were playing beautiful football and I enjoyed that side of things but I was putting pressure on myself to lead, to do everything and at one point I felt kind of lonely.
“Especially in the last two or three years, I felt Robin (van Persie) and Samir (Nasri) were the only players – it’s not an arrogant thing to say, it’s how I felt at that time – were the players who were at my level mentally and technically.”
Fabregas finally added: “Seeing some behaviours from certain players or something like this made me feel I wanted to check something else. If it was not because of that, I would not have left Arsenal at that time.”