20 years after leaving Arsenal, £86m star is now “the best in the world”
da pinup bet： Hale End. Arsenal’s famed academy is certainly one of the best in the country right now at producing first-team-ready players.
da luck： Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe both made their name during the early stages of the Mikel Arteta era and in the present day, plenty more are coming through.
Last season, it was all about the magnificent Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly. Nwaneri broke through first as a 15-year-old a few years ago but it’s arguably Lewis-Skelly who’s made the best transition. He’s now a regular with England.
This season it’s all been about Max Dowman. He’s the youngest debutant in Champions League history. Put it simply, he’s a generational talent.
Let’s not forget young Marli Salmon either. Not since the days of Tony Adams and Martin Keown has Arsenal’s youth system produced a defender who’s fit to play at senior level.
Between then and now, it’s safe to say there have been few to slip through the cracks of Hale End. Here are their stories…
The ones that got away for Arsenal
The Gunners have always had a habit of producing some fine young players, not just in the present day but over the last two to three decades.
Some may remember that Manchester United legend, Andy Cole, came through Arsenal’s academy. As did Ashley Cole. The less said about his exit the better.
He’s arguably the finest talent to ever come through the club’s youth system but he is now a legend on the blue side of London at Chelsea instead. That departure still stings to this day.
In more recent times, more notable examples include German superstar Serge Gnabry. He wasn’t good enough in the eyes of Tony Pulis during a loan spell with West Brom. He was for Arsenal but Arsene Wenger and Co struggled to tie him down.
He’s now won the whole lot at Bayern Munich, featuring on 304 occasions for the German giants, scoring 98 goals and supplying 67 assists.
Another winger at Bayern by the name of Michael Olise was also on the Arsenal books as a youngster. His story isn’t too well-known but he ended up taking the same route as Cole, joining Chelsea before heading to Manchester City and then eventually making his name at Reading.
Former Chelsea coach Sean Conlon recalled Olise’s story in 2022, saying: “Michael was also training with Arsenal at the time because before you move into the U9s, you’re allowed to train with multiple teams. But he probably lived closer to Chelsea and they obviously have a great academy so he ended up signing for them.”
Yet, there’s another name at Bayern who used to call Arsenal home, and his story is certainly a famous one.
Arsenal's biggest regret at Hale End
As Arsenal struggled to beat lowly Wolves on Saturday night, they needed a ruthless centre-forward, someone capable of getting on the end of the chances Saka was creating.
In days gone by they’ve been able to rely on the likes of Thierry Henry, Robin van Persie and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Yet, since the Gabonese forward’s departure from north London, they’ve not had a prolific striker in their armoury.
It was thought that Viktor Gyokeres would be that man. He won the Gerd Muller Trophy for being the best striker in Europe last season, fending off competition from the likes of Erling Haaland and Harry Kane. He looked like a good signing on paper.
However, six goals in 19 games for the Gunners tells a different story. He’s now some way behind Haaland and indeed Kane, a forward who is famously a boyhood Gooner.
There’s that incredible picture of Kane as a boy donning Arsenal red and white but now he’s more associated with Tottenham Hotspur instead. In those parts, he’s a legend, he’s their all-time record goalscorer, he’s England’s record goalscorer too.
He’s Arsenal’s biggest what-if. As a child, he was part of Arsenal’s youth setup but it didn’t work out, largely due to his frame. It’s a remarkable tale, one that former academy manager Roy Massey recalls.
He once told talkSPORT: “Harry was a lovely young player. He was quiet, shy, didn’t have what we thought it would take to become a professional footballer and so we were totally mistaken.”
Harry Kane record @ senior level
Team
Games
Goals
Spurs
435
280
Bayern
119
113
England
112
78
Millwall
27
9
Orient
18
5
Leicester
15
2
Norwich
5
0
Massey continued: “Although I’ve got to say that when Harry was released when he was 11 or 12 years of age, he did go to play for his Sunday league club for the next three years so no other club’s picked him up in that age group. It was only when he was 15 he went to Tottenham and obviously he’s had great success.”
Liam Brady further detailed the events that led to Kane leaving Arsenal, saying: “He was a bit chubby, he wasn’t very athletic but we made a mistake.”
As Brady says, they did indeed make a massive mistake. Son Heung-min labelled his former teammate as “the best player in the world” back in 2018 and seven years on, that is now certainly true.
Aged 32, Kane is “the best striker in the world” in the words of Stuttgart striker Deniz Undav. That praise came after yet another hat-trick on the 6th December. The Standard’s Dom Smith, meanwhile, insists that he is “one of the five best players” that the game has to offer. Kylian Mbappe, Haaland? Who else can better him? Very few, if any. No one has scored more in Europe’s top five leagues than him this season.
In total, England’s captain has found the net on 113 occasions in 119 matches for Bayern after his mega £86 move. This season alone, he has scored 28 in 23, firmly making him one of the favourites to win the 2026 Ballon d’Or award. Should Bayern win the Champions League and/or England win the World Cup, he will likely be the favourite.
This story is without a doubt one of football’s biggest what-if moments. Just imagine if he’d been donning Arsenal red instead of Spurs white.
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