At times during the World Cup, I had to be the bearer of bad news for my fellow supporters of the United States men’s national team. I suppose I could have been a little less blunt than I was about it in the moment, but that’s not my true nature. Particularly when it comes to things like football, which are important but not life-and-death, I’m typically loathe to sugarcoat things. I save a rosier presentation of the truth for trickier topics and more volatile people, instances in which both honesty and a bit of tact are simultaneously necessary.
The conversation in question centered around Folarin Balogun. The American striker has been a hit with the national team. If I’m continuing on in the vein of unvarnished sincerity, Balogun is a massive upgrade on anyone the USMNT have boasted up top for as long as I can remember (yes, that includes Landon Donovan). At the World Cup last summer, he scored a brace against Paraguay in the group stage and another goal versus Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Round of 32. On multiple occasions, he appeared the best player on a pitch he shared with the LeBron James of soccer himself, Christian Pulisic.
Such is the way of international football that Balogun, currently plying his trade at AS Monaco, leveraged his caliber against players from lesser leagues to great effect. He looked like an elite footballer on the pitch facing off against defenses including players from outside Europe’s top leagues who haven’t had time to really establish that high-level chemistry you get in club football. And in some ways Balogun is elite. But the concentration of the world’s finest talent in a handful of countries flattered the London-raised striker somewhat.
So naturally, when a red card saw him ruled out of a Round of 16 clash against Belgium, Americans did one of the things we’re unfortunately known for these days: they asked to speak to the manager. The uproar around Balogun was so great that the President of the United States engaged in yet more brazen corruption by openly pressuring FIFA to allow the striker to play. America finally had the superstar they thought they’d gotten with Christian Pulisic and stood a legitimate chance of going far in the tournament; they were going to have him on the pitch for a knockout match against Belgium in a World Cup they were hosting, even if it meant turning the globe against them. They got what they asked for, and then the scoreline turned against them quite strongly as well.
Throughout all this, against the backdrop of goals and controversy, some friends asked me if he was really that good. Others who heard commentators remark that Balogun used to be an Arsenal player asked something along the lines of, “Wow, you must regret not having him around anymore, huh?” The answer to both was no.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Balogun is a very talented forward. You have to be to play at a club like Monaco, to be linked to the clubs he has been recently, to feel it worthwhile to turn down Everton after a medical at the eleventh hour because you didn’t like how the club doctors treated you. But, as I explained to my friends during World Cup watch parties, he isn’t a world beater. He isn’t a forward who will drag a team to a Champions League title. He’ll run the channels and pop in a few goals, but Balogun doesn’t other things well enough to inspire top clubs to build around him. The American isn’t up there with the best center forwards in the world like Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Julián Alvarez, Kai Havertz (yes, I’m saying it with my chest), Alexander Isak, or Victor Osimhen. Even at Monaco, he currently appears to have lost his place to 20-year-old Paris Brunner.
Of course, I say that with the benefit of hindsight. I remember when Balogun refused to sign a new contract with Arsenal in 2021 because he wanted guaranteed first team minutes. I recall the ensuing panic among the club faithful, and feeling some of it well up inside my own mind.
At the time, Balogun was the next great hope out of Hale End. The striker had taken multiple levels of youth teams by storm, scoring at a rate that raised eyebrows across the world of Arsenal. He looked like a genuine star in the making. The Gunners had certainly agreed at one point, scrambling to get his signature for professional terms two years prior.
But following loans to Middlesbrough and Reims and a continued failure to leapfrog Eddie Nketiah in the pecking order, Arsenal weren’t as moved when Balogun once again threatened a saga over signing a new contract. He was sold to Monaco for approximately €40 million and the club moved on. The last few years show that they haven’t really suffered for it, either.
It wasn’t the last time the threatened departure of youth talent would initiate a furor. When Chido Obi and Ayden Heaven both joined Manchester United during the 2024/25 season, the mood in some corners of Arsenal Twitter was downright apoplectic. But now, Obi is on loan at Willem II while Heaven is featuring in early cup defeats. That’s not to say that either player won’t go on to have a successful career but again, the Gunners have not suffered greatly for allowing those players to leave.
United may be dealing with a similar situation themselves now. JJ Gabriel, one of the most highly rated youth talents in England, reportedly informed the Red Devils recently that he wished to exit the club. Unsurprisingly, with Michael Carrick’s men seemingly in free fall on the pitch, this news was met with embarrassment and exasperation with that fanbase.
Ultimately United will probably survive life after the youngster’s move away, if that materializes. But such is Gabriel’s supposed talent that they could very well pay a price for failing to meet his demands, particularly if he joins another Premier League club. At the end of the day, this is still a talent who could blossom into one of the finest forwards in the sport.
That’s why for some time now the acquisition of academy talent has represented something of a final frontier for player recruitment. As more and more sides like Brighton and Brentford specialize in signing players pre-hype and then selling them to bigger clubs for maximum profit, as more academies across Europe continue to pump out elite potential, it has become incumbent upon teams like Arsenal to get smarter about how they get their own hands on those assets. While the Gunners can afford to wait until such prospects are more of a sure thing and pay a corresponding transfer fee, that course of action isn’t foolproof. It doesn’t limit competition for that player’s signature.
Unsurprisingly, this seems to apply even more to attacking players. It makes sense — an elite forward is flashy, exciting, and capable of winning a team matches they might not deserve anything from. The best teams typically have the best attackers and score the most goals. And scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in football. Naturally, players who are among the best at it are extremely desirable.
Which is why last summer Arsenal, a team that won the Premier League without boasting the best attack in the English top flight, were clearly on the hunt for a special addition to their forward line. And I think that transfer window in particular showcased a downside of trying to sign world class forwards from elsewhere in their prime. Because despite being the best team in the most competitive league in Europe, despite losing a Champions League final on penalties, despite record revenue and a world class manager and a global fanbase and attractive headquarters, the Gunners failed to entice Vinícius Júnior or Julián Alvarez to join.
If you put yourself in those players’ shoes for a moment, it makes sense. The more evident factor to consider is that both forwards wanted their careers to continue in Spain’s upper echelon — Vinícius chose to remain with Real Madrid while Alvarez has opted to wait for an approach from Barcelona that may or may not come. Which is understandable; both of La Liga’s top teams are deeply storied clubs, historic titans of football with a cluttered trophy cabinet to match. To play for either is to reach the pinnacle of the sport, even if they do not maintain the supremacy over the rest of Europe they once did.
But in that vein, I’m quite confident there’s another reason why neither player wanted to move to Arsenal: staying in Spain was easier.
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I want to give Spanish football its due. The best managers in the world right now include Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Mikel Arteta, Xabi Alonso, Andoni Iraola, Luis de la Fuente, and probably Unai Emery too. Spain are the current holders of the World Cup, and rightfully so. They have produced especially outstanding talent of late (and it’s not like they haven’t in most other eras of football’s history), and their nation’s minds have been the single greatest influence on the tactical meta we see in the game today.
However, I would argue that this landslide of talent has served to benefit other leagues more than it has La Liga. All of the managers I mention currently ply their trade outside of their homeland, with the exceptions of Guardiola (who is on a sabbatical of sorts) and de la Fuente (who manages the national team). Many of the country’s best players do feature in their country’s top flight, but that talent is heavily focused at the top end of the table. What follows is that the level of the other teams in La Liga is relatively weak.
I’m really not trying to be a snob about this. I know that I say this with the extreme privilege of being a guy who just happens to support a huge team that plays in a league that rakes in obscene amounts of money from television deals. I can’t escape the fact that there is more than a tinge of elitism to what I’m writing here but after a weekend of Premier League football, it’s hard to watch Lamine Yamal stroll unchallenged into opposition penalty areas and feel you’re watching a similar standard of the game.
Gabriel Jesus, who looked fairly mortal in the final two seasons of his time at Arsenal, is suddenly scoring at will for Barca. Maybe Hansi Flick has instantly gotten a tune out of the Brazilian that Arteta couldn’t. Or maybe it’s simply easier to score against Racing Santander than it is against Fulham.
To conclude this tangent, it’s no wonder that Vinícius and Alvarez would want to avoid a move to England. Why sign up for weekly battles with Sunderland and Brentford when you simply don’t need to? Why sacrifice sunshine and space on the pitch to constantly contend with elite athletes executing aggressive and comprehensive tactics in extremely well-coached defensive structures? Why make your matches skirmishes when they’re currently showcases?
The Premier League is a grind. A grueling, draining, exhausting grind. It’s understandable that superstar attackers in La Liga, Ligue 1, or the Bundesliga would prefer not to run toward it. I believe it takes a genuinely special mentality to forsake one’s comparatively comfortable situation at the top of those leagues and volunteer for the series of battles that a Premier League season entails.
There are of course plenty of players out there who are willing to accept the challenge of competing for the highest honors at Arsenal. But that brings us to a second issue with solving for the left side of the Gunners’ attack in the current market: outside of Vinícius, Alvarez, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, perhaps Eli Junior Kroupi, and a few others, who out there could feasibly step into the role and perform at the level required, especially considering the likely expenditure necessary to secure their services? The market for an elite left-sided attacker is frankly bare.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good footballers out there. Last summer players such as Iliman Ndiaye, Cody Gakpo, and Nicolas Jackson were available in the Premier League. The likes of Antonio Nusa, Ibrahim Mbaye, and Karim Adeyemi were on the market abroad. But none of those players were measurably better than what Arsenal already have on their roster (although I would be lying if I said Morgan Rogers fell into this category). The Gunners don’t need someone just as good as Eberechi Eze, Christos Tzolis, or Noni Madueke. The next acquisition there must be a genuine level-raiser; otherwise, you are simply bloating your squad and raising the wage bill without really moving the needle.
Needless to say, this all greatly complicates Arsenal’s search for that final Infinity Stone of a player.
Which brings us back to the avenue of removing the middlemen and going straight to the source. By that I mean beating smart operators to the punch and signing precocious, high-ceiling talents as early as possible. And that entails becoming more active in the market for academy players.
To that end, we have seen Arsenal make several noticeable deals to bring teenage phenoms to Hale End. Highly-rated Ecuadorian twins Edwin and Holger Quintero will join next summer, as will Andria Bartishvili from Kolkheti 1913. Victor Ozhianvuna of Shamrock Rovers is reportedly scheduled to arrive at the club in January. Axel Donczew joined from Cardiff City at the end of August. Igor Tyjon is another recent acquisition, as is Ceadach O’Neill. The Gunners also managed to steal away Vincent Joseph from Liverpool and James Scanlon from United.
Already at the club are prospects such as Andre Harriman-Annous and Louis Zečević-John. Emerson Nwaneri, Ethan’s younger brother, has also made a splash lately. And then of course is Max Dowman, who is assuredly in the process of making someone in the Arsenal first team redundant. There are also additional talents coming down the pipeline whom it would be irresponsible to discuss right now despite how exciting they too currently are.
All of this is part of a wider arms race that Arsenal and other top clubs have waged for years now. The idea of signing footballers as early as possible isn’t new. Years before Tony Bloom stiffed buyers left and right, before Todd Boehly spent king’s ransoms on players dubbed future stars by the latest version of EA Sports FC, before both Chelsea and Manchester City essentially purchased other clubs to use as incubators for prospects, teams were acquiring era-defining talents as teenagers.
The Gunners are no strangers to this. They used to lead the way in this sort of thing. Cesc Fábregas, Aaron Ramsey, Theo Walcott, Hector Bellerín, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain all arrived before they were of age in the Wenger era and quickly became key contributors. Their most recent title-winning side featured William Saliba and Gabriel Martinelli, both of whom the Gunners acquired at the age of 18.
They weren’t the only ones, of course. Vinícius joined Real Madrid from Flamengo at the age of 16 for a whopping €45 million. They also acquired Norwegian wonderkid Martin Ødegaard just after he turned 16. Gabriel Jesus left Palmeiras to sign with Manchester City when he was 17.
Arsenal would of course acquire two of those players and try quite hard for the third. But now, in a transfer landscape in which an English transfer record fee might not get you a readymade footballer, clubs must be more cost-effective. In a footballing world in which Champions League teams hire armies of scouts from Twitter and everyone knows who the wonderkid after the next wonderkid will be, clubs must be smarter.
Even as they signed the crop of academy players I mentioned above, Arsenal faced stiff competition from their rivals. They even lost players to competitors from Hale End; Mishel Nduka departed for City while Kyran Thompson went to the other side of north London. Even Emerson Nwaneri was reportedly touch-and-go for a moment. The Gunners almost had Jeremy Monga’s signing completed before City swooped in, leveraged a relationship with Enzo Maresca, and offered silly money. Clubs are smarter than they’ve ever been before, and the youth market has become unbelievably cutthroat.
So I’d imagine the English champions are quite pleased with their haul in recent times. The young players I have listed are all highly rated forwards and midfielders. And they have arrived at Arsenal during the tenures of Paulo Xavier — who helped bring Martinelli to north London and Vinícius, Rodrygo, and Endrick to Real Madrid — and Maurizio Micheli — who helped unearth stars like Osimhen, Kvaratskhelia, Kim Min-jae, and Marek Hamšík for Napoli. Micheli was reportedly critical in the identification of Bartishvili.
The job of an academy is two-fold: to generate revenue for a club, and to provide the occasional talent who can serve the first team reliably. For quite some time now, the Gunners have failed miserably to accomplish the former. Over and over again, we have witnessed players good enough for perfectly respectable careers in football leave Hale End for nothing. Hopefully, the ongoing revamp of the academy leadership will serve to remedy that.
But in recent years, a true bounty of high-level talent has emerged from the youth ranks to not only compliment the senior squad, but to elevate it. Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri, Max Dowman, and Marli Salmon have all made a successful impact on the first team at one point or another. A few of them were even crucial in securing the club’s first Premier League title in 22 years.
And it makes sense this would occur, too. For not only does acquisition of prodigies mean lower costs, lower chance of violation financial rules, and more money for other players, but it also ensures that these star talents can be molded. Players can be brought up playing with the principles of the club they call home while also being prepared over years to contend with the demands of the relevant league.
It’s why La Masia is a talent generator operating at max capacity. They identify amazing talent, train them for years to play the forward-minded and hyper-technical football Barcelona are known for, and prepare to enter La Liga equipped to deal with its veterans.
This of course happens at Arsenal too. At Hale End, players learn to play with the principles the first team, the champions of England, employ every week. And the best of these young Gunners are taught to not only expect and contend the brutal physical rigors of the English top flight, but to relish that battle.
With all this in mind, I wonder if perhaps we have recently witnessed the acquisition of Arsenal’s next great attacking player. Clearly, signing a level-raising forward the old-fashioned away hasn’t quite worked. They have thus far been unable to find that perfect marriage of graft and flair within one athlete on the market, so foreseeably the next step would be to try to quietly manufacture such a player in-house.
What this means is that over the coming months and seasons Bartishvili, the Quinteros, and the rest will be integrated with the academy. They will learn to play the Arsenal way. They will come to view the Premier League as their ultimate goal and not a grind to run from, and they will be equipped to deal with its intense demands. Perhaps one or two will be capable enough to earn promotion to the fringes of the first team. And hopefully, one of these bets hits.
In the meantime, the Gunners obviously will continue to scour the market for opportunities. As long as they are in their winning window, Arsenal should always be in the conversation when a superstar talent becomes available. But I suspect that the champions will largely aim to bridge the gap until a prospect is ready to break into the first team. They will certainly continue to add to their forward line when necessary, but the priority will be the long-term plan for their precocious young attackers.
Personally, I think the future of Arsenal’s attack is exciting. Dowman looks a near-certain star in the making, knock on wood. And based on the things we’ve already heard about some of them, the potential of some of the new arrivals is huge. Yes, the current group could use more immediate bolstering and hopefully that arrives in January. But if the Gunners’ hopes are special, we could be in for something special not too long from now.
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