“He entertained me with his style of football throughout the 90 mins. I wish I played with him”- Arsenal Ex player Santi Cazorla reveals ONE Arsenal player he was excited to see play Vs Ipswich
Santi Cazorla: The Arsenal player he longed to see play against Ipswich.
The former Gunners has visited Assonerosema for the first time since 2018 and is coming in on the best player he was most excited to learn about.
In six seasons of playing under one of the then-great managers of the game, Arsène Wenger, Cazorla landed on Arsenal in 2012 and was bought for £10m (€12m) from Malaga, a La Liga club, which, at that time, went through crisis times.
He was playing for the first time against the Virgin Emirates on Friday, December 27 – between those hopeless Arsenal hopes and Ipswich Town, and a game with major consequences on either side of the league table.
Before the Gunners took on the Tractor Boys, the now-40-year-old Santi Cazorla told Amazon Prime Video whom he was most excited to see play in the current team: “It’s difficult to choose one! I love to see Martin Ødegaard because I played against him in Spain. Gabriel Jesus, [Kai] Havertz – we have a lot of good players.”
Reacting to the Cazorla comments, one Arsenal fan reminisced about his time at the club and posed the question that had Cazorla not been injured that particular 2016/17 season, what would have been: “Still to this day I still think how different that season 2016/17 would have looked if Santi had not got injured. Just Imagine him with Laca [Alexandre Lacazette] and Auba [Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang],” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
It was not just through his excellence on the pitch; he also endeared himself to the fans with his behavior on and off the pitch.
And the Gunners’ head coach, Mikel Arteta, also reflected on this before the game: “He’s one of the best players that I have played with. But then it also comes to the person, and he’s a very special character. He was loved by everybody in the dressing room, [and everybody] at the club. Even without speaking English, he was loved by all the crowd, which is a compliment of him.”
