Martin Odegaard ‘pretended he was Arsene Wenger’ and bought himself for Arsenal on FIFA

Martin Odegaard might have only been an Arsenal player for two years now but a move to the Emirates Stadium has been brewing ever since the midfielder first appeared on FIFA.

Odegaard became the youngest player to ever be featured in the series at just 16-years-old back in 2015, shortly after his high-profile move to Real Madrid, but that didn’t stop the Norwegian from trying to engineer a move to Arsenal for his cyber-self.

“I’ve always had this weird connection to Arsenal. It started long before I signed,” the Gunners skipper told The Player’s Tribune. “I don’t even really know how to explain it, except with one little story.

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“I’ve never been that much into video games … but the one exception was FIFA. I mostly played Career Mode. You know, where you get to be the manager? The club I always chose to manage was Arsenal. They were my FIFA team.

“As I got older, around the 2015 edition, I started actually appearing in FIFA … so, naturally, one of the first things I did when I was pretending to be Arsene Wenger on Career Mode was buy myself.

“Me and Arsenal. It just seemed like a good match in my head.”

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The 24-year-old named Thierry Henry, Cesc Fabregas and Mesut Ozil as some of his biggest heroes growing up, adding that Arsenal’s “history of developing playmakers” always appealed to him.

“Growing up in Norway, I watched a lot of Premier League and I just had this good feeling about Arsenal. I’d seen clips of Thierry Henry and the Invincibles. I knew the club had a history of developing playmakers like Fabregas, Nasri, Ozil – really smart, technical players, who were good on the ball and played the difficult passes. My kind of players.”

Odegaard failed to make grade at Real Madrid, but in 2021 he fulfilled his FIFA destiny by joining Arsenal. The move has been a game-changer for both player and club, with Odegaard inspiring the Gunners to their first genuine title challenge in over a decade while simultaneously living up to the sky-high expectations the world set for him as a prodigiously-talented teenager.

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