Eberechi Eze recalls emotional reaction to being released by Arsenal as a youngster | OneFootball

Eberechi Eze’s move to Arsenal from Crystal Palace looks set to be completed in the next few days but this won’t be the first time the England international has had a spell at the north London club.

It emerged on Wednesday evening that Arsenal had managed to hijack Eze’s move to their bitter rivals Tottenham and instead bring him to the Emirates Stadium in a deal worth £60m and £7.5m in add-ons.

The medical is scheduled for today (Friday, 22 August) and the 27-year-old will then be announced as the newest Gunner in the near future.

Eze has made no secret of being a boyhood Arsenal fan and joined the club’s academy at the age of eight. However, he was released when he was just 13 and has previously admitted, in an exclusive interview with The Independent, just how much that hurt.

“It’s exactly like going into the teacher’s office,” Eze told The Independent back in 2020. ​“It started at Arsenal. I was 13 [when I was released]. That was the worst one. I remember crying in my room for a solid week, my mum telling me that it’s going to be OK but not being able to get over it.

“Then I went to Fulham and I was finally starting to enjoy my football again. We played Arsenal a few months later but, when I went over to shake the academy manager’s hand, I started welling up. All the feelings came back.”

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Eberechi Eze is set to join Arsenal in a deal worth £60m and £7.5m in add-ons. (PA)

Following his release by Arsenal, Eze spent a few years at Fulham, then a few months at Reading before a stint at Millwall, where the ideology of the club left little room for a creative, flair player in the No 10 role who loved the ball at his feet.

“Over and over again,” Eze said. “As much as I wasn’t happy at Millwall, it was a platform to play. I didn’t expect to be released, but I was so used to the feeling. As soon as I went into [Neil Harris’] office I was thinking ‘this could go left’. You have to try and just get on with it but it was definitely difficult to cope with.”

The Millwall release came shortly before he turned 18 and opportunities at Sunderland, Bristol City and Swansea ultimately amounted nothing.

“The reason was always that it didn’t look like my desire was there,” Eze explained. “The same thing again and again. All I could think was if you only you knew in my head how much I want this....

“It’s probably a bad thing but I didn’t think I needed to change [the type of player I was]. I probably should’ve tried to adapt, not play two different systems in one team, but I just wanted to get on the ball and enjoy myself.”

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Eze got his first real break at QPR, where he shone in the Championship (PA)

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He would then go on to deliver a first major trophy in Crystal Palace history (Getty)

In the summer of 2016, an 18-year-old Eze was at a crossroads, contemplating a life away from football as he prepared to start a part-time job at Tesco and considered college courses. But then, QPR came knocking and set him on a path back to Arsenal, where it all began.

“I honestly have no idea what I would have done,” he added. “I didn’t like anything at school. Even P.E. was a drag. When my agent told me I had a trial at QPR I just thought: ‘I have to get in’. There was no other option.”

Eze would go on to light up the Championship as he made more than 100 appearances at QPR before earning a £17m move to Crystal Palace in the summer of 2020, just after the end of the Covid-interrupted campaign.

He has notched 40 goals in 169 appearances for the Eagles, become a consistent presence in England squads over the past couple of years and led Palace to their first-ever major trophy – the FA Cup back in May, where he scored the only goal in the final against Manchester City.

As a kid growing up in south London, he supported the Thierry Henry and Arsene Wenger-led Arsenal and he’s now rejoining his first club as a key part of the Mikel Arteta revolution, trying to deliver a first Premier League title since those heady days. He will hope that this time his association with the Gunners doesn’t end in tears.