Morning.
A quick Sunday round-up, looking at which of our players were in action yesterday. Starting with:
Riccardo Calafiori: He played the full 90 on the left side of a back three in Italy’s 3-1 win over Estonia. It looked like he had a solid game defensively, and the Estonian goal from a big error by Man City keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma – watch here. Let’s hope he continues that form on his return to the Premier League.
Anyway, back to our man, and as the old saying goes: You can take the Calafiori out of Arsenal, but you can’t take the Riccy out of Calafiori.
Riccardo Calafiori has had four shots so far tonight, none with his left foot.
What a guy. If you missed it, I wrote about him a bit last week.
Karl Hein: Yes, he’s still an Arsenal player, on loan this season at Werder Bremen. The Estonian number 1 saved a penalty in the aforementioned game, but was beaten by goals from Francesco Pio Esposito, Mateo Retegui, and Moise Kean.
Fun fact: Hein has more international caps (42), than senior first team appearances for Arsenal (1) and his loan clubs Real Vallodolid (32), Reading (5), and Werder Bremen (2).
Mikel Merino and Martin Zubimendi: The former played the full 90 of Spain’s 2-0 win over Georgia, while the latter was replaced in the 81st minute by Bayer Leverkusen’s journeyman midfielder Aleix Garcia.
Fun fact: Garcia came from a family of travelling entertainers, not quite circus folk but not too far off, and had he not made it in football he would have been a trapeze artist of some repute.
Speaking of Zubimendi, there’s a typically great piece with Sid Lowe in The Guardian in which he chats about moving to Arsenal, turning down Liverpool the year before, and lots more. On giving the green light to our proposal, having rejected a move to Merseyside the summer before, he said:
“I had watched Arsenal and I liked everything I saw, in terms of passion, youth, the feeling you got watching them. And when Mikel Arteta called me … Well, if you’ve ever spoken to him you’ll know that he can be very convincing. He’s mad about football, crazy about having everything under control, trying to get something from every little detail. He’s very clear on everything and the proposal he had was the best for me.”
And on his role in the team, as the 6 (or pivot as it’s known in Spain), he says:
“The pivot has to be someone who is very complete; he has to have the best qualities with the ball and without it, plus the physical capability. He has to be able to do everything. It would be easy to stay in my comfort zone. But I wanted to leave that environment where I was with Real Sociedad and grow in a personal sense, to see another culture, another football. The more you come out of that, the more you develop.
“It’s in those situations where you are pushed to the limit that you get the best out of yourself. I think I have a lot to learn in the Premier League, a lot to improve, but I think I can do that.”
I’ve been impressed so far, and what’s exciting is I think there’s a lot more to come. We’re seven games into the new Premier League season, and I don’t believe we’ve seen anything close to the best of him yet. His introduction against West Ham and his subsequent display gives a real indication of how important he is going to be for this team, but I think we’re still seeing him in a period of slight adaptation. Which augurs well.
We just need to get his dog over from Spain. A man is not complete without his best four-legged friend, and when we have a pooch-powered Zubi … ooof, watch out.
Max Dowman: He came off the bench in the second half as England U19s beat Belgium 4-1 in Marbella.
Fun fact: He’s only 15.
Right. I’ll leave it there for now, but we’ll have an afternoon Arsecast Extra for you a bit later on. Keep an eye out for the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server. Pod should be out around 5pm or so.
For now, have a great Sunday.
