Arsenal

Arsenal has been on the news a lot lately. First off, they ended the first half of the Premier League with the top position and are hoping to win the 2022-2023 Premier league season. Mikel Arteta seems to have a strong grip over his team. 

The next concerning issue the team is facing is that their spending in the next transfer window would possibly be slightly regulated. Unfortunately, the FIFA World Cup might be causing a big strain towards the Premier League clubs and it would be interesting to see how the league will end. 

Furthermore, a list of Arsenal’s powerful iconic players were selected to join the World Cup this year. Since we’ve talked about the Manchester United players that were snubbed from joining the Qatar tournament, we’re going to talk about the five Arsenal players that were also snubbed.

Gabriel Magalhaes 

Gabriel Magalhaes Arsenal
Image of Gabriel Magalhaes, from Wikipedia.

Gabriel Magalhaes has made waves in his career in Arsenal as his name appeared on numerous football news. He has helped Mikel Arteta gain five points and is one of the key individuals that made Arsenal stay in their strong position in the Premier League. 

Unfortunately, the 24-year-old has not earned a seniority title for the Brazilian team and thus won’t be going to Qatar. This is including the fact that Magalhaes has helped his team won the Brasileiro Série A in 2017. 

Fabio Vieira

Fabio Vieira Arsenal
Image of Fabio Vieira, from Twitter.

Not to be confused with the other Fabio Vieira, who has the same name and is playing for Lusitânia F.C. as a midfielder and is also from Portugal, the Fabio we’re talking about is obviously from Arsenal.  

The 22-year-old has done a number of achievements in his career. Granted, for a footballer to join the likes of Arsenal, they need to be special and spectacular. He helped his team win the 2021–22 Taça de Portugal.

He was named as the Player of the Tournament at last years under-21 at the Euros. He was named in the preliminaries in this year’s World Cup, but unfortunately was not selected to join rank with Cristiano Ronaldo. Furthermore, he recently joined Arsenal in the middle of this year. 

Cedric Soares 

Cedric Soares Arsenal
Image of Cedric Soares, from Wikipedia.

Cedric Soares is another Portuguese national that was unfortunately not joining the World Cup. He was a defender in the 2016 Euro and his team won. He has not been joining that many international level games and appeared twice in this season’s Premier League. 

The 31-year-old appears to be not as active as his peer Ronaldo. Previously from Southampton, he initially joined Arsenal in 2020 as a six month loan. Later that year, it was announced that he was moving to Arsenal permanently and has been comfortable ever since.  

Albert Sambi Lokonga

Albert Sambi Lokonga Arsenal
Image of Albert Sambi Lokonga, from the Premier League website.

This is the final player that is from Arsenal and that was snubbed from joining this year’s World Cup. Albert Sambi Lokonga, 23, is from Belgium and has extensive experience with football. 

It appears that Roberto Martinez did not enlist him in the Belgian team. Lokonga made his senior debut last year for Belgium. Probably one of the reasons why is that he did not play for his national team for almost a year now.   

Here are more stories related to the FIFA World Cup and other football news.