‘I instructed my agent I needed Arsenal exit after three months – I gave up huge cash’
Ex-Premier League ace Willian was desperate to leave Arsenal just three months after joining the club.
The Brazilian forward made a surprise move from Chelsea in 2020 following a contract standoff, opting for a longer deal with Arsenal. As a free transfer, it looked like a real coup for the Gunners but things turned sour for Willian – now playing in Greece with Olympiacos – who soon realised he had made a huge error of judgement.
Speaking to Rio Ferdinand on his Five YouTube channel in 2021, Willian explained how he never adapted to life under Mikel Arteta, who was in the early days of his Gunners reign. Willian, now 36, said: “I wasn’t happy. That’s why I didn’t perform.
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“When I arrived there I was happy, from the beginning I was motivated, I wanted to do well – new club, new mates, new project. But after three months, I said to my agent: ‘Please, I want to go’. I don’t want to speak bad about the club, because it is a big club. Arsenal has a big history.
“In football, big players played there before as well. But it didn’t work, it didn’t work. It was, of course, the most difficult time of my career.”
Willian saw out the 2020/21 season but had his contract cancelled two years early to allow him to return to Brazil with one of his previous clubs, Corinthians. He returned to London with Fulham in 2022, spending two years at Craven Cottage before his recent move to Greece.
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(Image: Getty Images)
“It was big money that I gave up [to leave Arsenal],” said Willian of his Gunners exit. “But sometimes money is not the most important thing in life. I think you need to be happy, get pleasure every day waking up in the morning to go to train. I wasn’t having that.
“So I said to myself, with my family, I cannot stay here, I am not happy here. I have to leave, find a way out, leave the club, because if I stay I am going to stay the same. For me, it’s unfair to stay in a place that you don’t want to stay just because of the money. For me, it was that.”
On his departure from Chelsea, he explained: “It was difficult to decide, because I wanted to stay at Chelsea.”
“But I wanted a three-year contract and Chelsea say: ‘No, we want to give you two years’. At the end of the season, I decided to join Arsenal and also because before we had conversations with Edu and Mikel as well. They showed me a good project, they showed me a lot of good stuff that they want to do. It was because of that.”
