Yaya Sanogo Arsenal Champions League 2014
Yaya Sanogo Arsenal Champions League 2014
Yaya Sanogo was back at Arsenal on Tuesday, turning up at London Colney to catch up with his old team-mate Mikel Arteta as the squad trained for Wednesday night’s Champions League game against Slavia Prague.
According to the Evening Standard, the Frenchman was spotted at the Sobha Realty Training Centre on Tuesday morning. Why he was there is not clear, but he got some time with Arteta before the Arsenal boss went off to oversee preparations for the trip to Prague.
The pair go back a long way. Sanogo and Arteta shared a dressing room from 2013 to 2016, and the 33-year-old has been without a club since leaving Amazonas last year. He has not officially retired.
A familiar face on a busy morning
He picked quite a session to drop in on. The same Tuesday morning saw his compatriot William Saliba back with the group, stepping up his recovery from the back injury that has kept him out since the World Cup semi-final in July. Arteta has already explained why Saliba avoided surgery and why he cannot come back in bits.
So there was plenty on the manager’s plate, from Saliba’s comeback to Max Dowman’s return after the Fleetwood red card, and he still made time for a chat with an old friend.
Why did Wenger sign Yaya Sanogo?
Sanogo’s Arsenal story started with a phone call he nearly ignored. He joined from Auxerre on a free transfer, after catching Arsene Wenger’s eye by scoring seven goals in the same week.
He has told the story himself, speaking to Masterclass. After two difficult years in which, in his words, “the phone wouldn’t ring”, a +44 number flashed up while he was at home on his MacBook with “a little Motorola”. He didn’t answer. Wenger rang again.
Sanogo said: “I say ‘Hello’. ‘Hello, it’s Arsene Wenger’. I thought it was a joke.”
Wenger told him everybody was talking about his seven goals in a week, picked up straight away that he was shy, and offered to fly to Paris to meet him. Sanogo’s reaction, looking back: “I’ll sign right now.”
One goal in four years
It never quite clicked in north London. Sanogo spent four years at Arsenal, and his only goal for the club came in a 2-0 Champions League group stage win over Borussia Dortmund in November 2014.
There is something fitting about the timing, then. He turned up in a week when Arsenal are back in the competition that gave him his one big night in red and white.
Is Yaya Sanogo coming back to Arsenal?
Nothing points that way. No reason has been given for the visit, and reading a coaching or playing role into it would be pure guesswork. He is a free agent at 33 who has not hung up his boots, and for now this looks like an old team-mate saying hello.
Verdict: a nice moment before a serious night in Prague
Arsenal have had plenty of heavy news this week, so a former striker popping in for a catch-up is a welcome bit of warmth. Arteta was in that dressing room when Sanogo was the shy kid with the Motorola, and it says something good about the place that the door is still open a decade on.
The serious stuff starts again on Wednesday night. If you want to know who Arteta’s side will be facing, here is how we expect Slavia Prague to line up.