Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta with Mohamed Elneny, Gabriel Magalhaes and Jakub Kiwior
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta with Mohamed Elneny, Gabriel Magalhaes and Jakub Kiwior
A midfielder who outlasts several managers at one club rarely finishes the story there. The next stop is usually about minutes, not medals.
Free agents at 34 still have a market if they can sit in front of a defence and keep the ball. Europe’s mid-table sides buy that habit more cheaply than they buy youth.
The announcement often comes from a reporter before the club website catches up.
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Mohamed Elneny has agreed to join Greek Super League side Levadiakos as a free agent, after first word from Greek journalist Ilia Kallonas.
The 34-year-old left Al Jazira after two seasons in the UAE. He joined the Abu Dhabi club on a free transfer in July 2024 when his Arsenal contract expired.
He spent eight and a half years in north London after arriving from Basel in January 2016. Across all competitions he made 161 appearances and scored six times, including 91 Premier League games. A season on loan at Besiktas in 2019-20 was the only break. By the time he said goodbye in May 2024 he was the squad’s longest-serving player.
Supporters remember the tidy passing and the night he scored in an FA Cup tie as much as the long stretches on the bench under Mikel Arteta. He was part of FA Cup-winning squads and stayed popular even when first-team minutes dried up.
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Al Jazira gave him regular football. He won the UAE League Cup in 2025 and was voted that league’s player of the season in his first campaign there. Last season he still featured, though his minutes dropped.
Levadiakos sit in Greece’s top flight and have been adding experienced names. A holding midfielder who knows how to manage a game is the profile. There is no transfer fee. Contract length has not been published on the club site.
For Arsenal it is a footnote rather than a reunion. The midfield now runs through Declan Rice, Martin Zubimendi and Bruno Guimaraes. Elneny’s chapter closed when he walked out in 2024.
For him it is another dressing room and a return to European football after two years in the Gulf. The move still needs the usual medical and a club statement. Until those land, Wheatley’s line is the news: agreed, free, Greece. A player who once filled the engine room at the Emirates will now do the same job in Livadeia.