Are Arsenal too passive with National Teams?

Some fans say Arsenal management need to make a stand against sending players out

At this point it feels almost unavoidable that when an international window hits, Arsenal are bound to pick up an injury. The latest victim is Gabriel, Arsenal’s stalwart defender who picked up a thigh injury in an international friendly against Senegal and is expected to miss at least a month, if not two.

It’s infuriating, of course. So many of us are Arsenal first, even those who do support decent national teams, so the idea of Gabriel missing eight weeks because he got hurt in a friendly or Martin Ødegaard doing the same after getting his ankle stomped on international duty is difficult to process without seething.

But injuries also tend to bring out some of the worst, most myopic takes in the base, and I’m not just talking about the Twitter rage-baiters. I’ve seen thoughtful people call Gabriel a “moron” for playing the match, which was at the Emirates. I’ve seen his decision called “braindead” and “selfish.” I’ve seen suggestions that Arsenal are simply too weak when it comes to pushing back on National Teams and need to do more to restrict their players from reporting, particularly for matches that aren’t directly part of tournaments or qualifying. But are those valid points to make?

The meaninglessness of it all

This is probably the element of the injury that heats heads the most. Brazil-Senegal was a friendly, meaning there was no World Cup spot on the line, like for so many European and African sides this past international break. So why even play at all?

The reason is pretty straightforward: The guys running the show do not view these matches as meaningless. No manager with the experience and success of Carlo Ancelotti would select the team he did against Senegal if he felt it was simply a match for fun.

Managers like Ancelotti realize that, with the Champions League final due on May 30 and the World Cup group stage kicking off just 12 days later, he is not going to have time to appropriately gauge important things like chemistry, cultural fit and how well certain players respond to his coaching in those short two weeks — or for early enders, maybe four weeks — after the club season. This is an important proving ground for tactical ideas and approaches that could be the difference between winning a World Cup and bringing humiliation upon themselves on the global stage.

US Men’s coach Maurizio Pochettino recently made this point:

“We need to start to win when the World Cup starts,” he told media after a recent friendly match. “There are too many examples of teams (who win friendlies) then arrive at the World Cup in the best condition… and are out in the group stage.”

For countries such as Brazil, there is an added element of competition for spots. Perhaps an Arsenal fan views Gabriel as the obvious LCB for the Seleção, but the truth is there are few players who can afford to skip international duty without risk of strain on their relationships with the hierarchies responsible for selecting the eventual competitive squads.

For these reasons, you see lists like the below, which is only a sampling of guys who turned up and started for international friendlies (not qualifiers) only yesterday, a Tuesday prior to weekend duty at the club level:

Noussair Mazraoui, Marquinhos, Daichi Kamada, Estêvão, Rodrygo, Vincius Jr, Matheus Cunha, Wataru Endo, Brahim Díaz, Takefusa Kubo, Éder Militão, Bruno Guimarães, Casemiro, Takumi Minamino, Yukinari Sugarawa, Kang-in Lee, Heung-Min Son, Min-Jae Kim, Kamaldeen Sulemana, Evann Guessand, Edmond Tapsoba, Mehdi Taremi, Riyad Mahrez, Ismael Bennacer, Houssem Aouar, Rayan-Ait Nouri, Aïssa Mandi, Marcelino Núñez, Hamza Igamane, Ismael Saibari, Sofyan Amrabat, Neil El Aynaoui, Romain Saïss, Wesley, Caio Henrique, Ko Itakura, Ellyes Skhiri, Hannibal Mejri, Yan Valery, Jens Castrop, Moisés Caicedo, Piero Hincapié, Willian Pacho, Edson Álvarez, Raul Jiménez, Diego Gómez, Miguel Almirón, Jonathan David, Stephen Eustaquio, Richard Riós, Yaser Asprilla, Luis Díaz, Jhon Lucumi

That list includes at least a handful of players for whose clubs injuries would be catastrophic and season-threatening. But they turned up and represented their countries because it’s an honor, they understand the importance of it, and they want to continue to do so.

“Other clubs are cuter about injuries”

This is probably the point that you see brought up the most, right? Arsenal, the line goes, are pushovers about sending players out to their national teams while the trickier clubs like City and Liverpool know how to find the loopholes.

Of course, FIFA rules do not permit clubs to unilaterally block a player from reporting for duty. Clubs may only restrict (and that’s probably the wrong word) players when:

• The player is not medically fit

  • This is something that has to be documented, and the national team has the right to conduct its own exam

• The match is outside an official FIFA international window

  • This applies to basically none of what we’re talking about

• The player is being asked to play for a youth team while scheduled for club duty

  • This pops up in times such as the Olympics. Clubs are not required to allow senior players to report for youth team duty when there is senior team activity scheduled, which leads to moments such as Arsenal blocking Saliba from taking part in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

• Late call-ups

  • If the NT misses the deadline, typically 15 days notice, the club is not obligated

Clubs and National Teams do sometimes end up at odds regarding these decisions too! It’s not incredibly common, but it does happen.

So surely there are examples of City or Liverpool holding back player after player to avoid overuse and injury, right?

Well, not really. In fact, Erling Haaland didn’t make the above list, but he started against Italy this week in a qualifier despite Norway already making the cut, which could definitely be argued as a “meaningless game,” particularly for a player whose place in the team is nowhere near at risk.

And sure, we see examples such as John Stones or Ibrahima Konaté missing a break with an acute injury that comes off as mostly precautionary, but any suggestion Arsenal do not do the same is woefully misled.

Case in point - it was only a year ago that Mikel Arteta faced scrutiny for Bukayo Saka missing an international break and then scoring in the first game after that window, telling the press he would “send the MRI” to England if needed.

This was actually the second time in 2024 that Saka had been called up and ultimately not played for England, as he skipped a March break with a minor muscular injury to heal up for the run-in.

In the same break, Declan Rice and Martin Ødegaard each also withdrew from international duty despite playing in the most recent Arsenal match.

Just a month prior, Ghanaian officials had said Arsenal didn’t release a player for international duty for an injury that was largely manageable, and the player’s decision to stay back was mostly precautionary in nature.

Kai Havertz skipped the same break for Germany with a “knee injury” despite playing the final match before the break, and ended up starting and playing 90 in the first match back from break.

So you see? It’s really not hard at all to find examples of times when Arsenal made reasonable decisions to keep players out of international action. It’s not as if they’re missing out on some amazing invention other clubs are utilizing to stay healthy.

But it only happens to Arsenal

This is perhaps the most frustrating point that you see made, whether directly or not, and it amounts to more of an admission that a person follows Arsenal more or less exclusively. To wit:

• Yoane Wissa still has not made his Newcastle debut due to a knee injury he picked up playing for the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the summer

• Alphonso Davies has not played this season and only just returned to training after an ACL tear he suffered while playing for the Canada NT in March

• Ola Aina hasn’t played in more than two months since picking up a hamstring injury on international duty for Nigeria

• Chelsea’s Dario Essugo suffered a torn thigh muscle on international duty for the Portugal U21s in September, and may not return until January

• There are plenty of other famous examples, such as Gavi tearing his ACL + meniscus playing for Spain and missing nearly a year, Eduardo Camavinga tearing a knee ligament in training for France and missing two months in November 2023, Vinicius Jr tearing a hamstring for Brazil during the same break and missing two months, or even something minor such as Stones missing the spring 2024 City-Arsenal match due to an injury he suffered on duty with England.

Does that make it any less frustrating what happened to our Gabriel? No, of course not. Perhaps it normalizes it a bit, though, and by recognizing that everything occurred within a normal framework, some of the irateness that comes from feeling unfairly targeted or slighted may fade.

Gabriel leaves big shoes to fill over the 10-15 matches to come. Thankfully, Arsenal have never been better staffed to handle this absence, even if none of them are quite as good as him at the height of his power.

But whether Arsenal don’t drop off at all or look significantly worse, this is a true example of a time when it makes no sense to hate the player, and instead when you should fully hate the game. If not, there’s surely only more heartbreak coming your way.