A Loan and Afraid

Why Ethan Nwaneri's loan to Olympique de Marseille should inspire excitement, not fear or regret.

Every once in a while, I receive something in the mail that makes me scoff audibly: a request for donations from my old university’s alumni relations office. To me, it’s always laughable how coyly an educational institution that has already taken tens of thousands of dollars from you tries to circle back and request even more money. What happened to the money I already paid? Don’t they have other people to ask? What made them think I had a small fortune lying around and that I’d be happy to give it to them?

The fact is, I honestly could not care less about the college itself. The campus was pretty when I was there, the dining halls are world class, and the football (American, not association) team is occasionally half-decent. But I don’t subscribe to the folksy tenets preached by its more devout acolytes outside of where they overlap with basic humanity. I don’t have a particular fondness for the university’s president or board of trustees. For me, that would be like living your life by the messaging of a semi-memorable advertising campaign and idolizing the CEO of a restaurant chain you used to frequent for cheap margaritas and appetizers.

Some people love their college and make it a core part of their identity. And I try to respect that. For many, the university they graduated from is a source of pride, a guiding light for them and their values. For me, it is a chapter of my life that is over, and I’d like to leave it at that.

With that being said, I loved most of my time at college. Not because of anything the powers that be there did for me, but because of the people I did spent my time with. Some of the best friends I have were made in the trenches of undergraduate struggles. Those friends have seen me through some tough times and some great ones. I matured under the guidance of two very different mentors — one with an endearing southern drawl who enjoyed ketchup-topped Ritz crackers on research trips to Antarctica and ice-cold IPAs everywhere else, and one who in a previous life had gone undercover at meat-packing plants to expose labor violations before settling down into a quiet, professorial era in which she drove a white Escalade in a rural college town and challenged frat bros to consider the possibility of God being a Black woman. And I made amazing memories, many of which I need a bit of help actually remembering, with people I now only see through their Instagram accounts. I’ve succeeded in ensuring college wasn’t the best four years of my life, but they still were some pretty damn good ones.

My parents, however, see it differently. If you ask them, they’ll loudly proclaim that sending me away to college was the biggest mistake they made as my permanent chaperones in life. I was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal disorder just a couple months in. I discovered the joys (and horrors) of alcohol. And I ended my college career with a painful breakup that left me so depressed I barely left my house for weeks.

The way I see it, those experiences were ultimately beneficial for me and have helped shape me into the man I am today. But my helicopter parents witnessed suffering and mistake-making on my part and have since viewed those moments as automatic net-negatives. For them, I was their baby, and I should have been getting my degree under their watchful eye, swaddled in a cocoon of safety, rather than be forced to contend with the difficulties of the world for even a second. They wanted me to stay home and comfortable, because they didn’t have the stomach to let me learn to fend for myself.

I noticed a similar sentiment in how many of the Arsenal faithful initially reacted to the news that Ethan Nwaneri will join Olympique de Marseille on loan for the remainder of the 2025/26 season. While both clubs only confirmed the move on Friday, The Athletic’s David Ornstein reported on Wednesday that the young Englishman had traveled to France to complete the deal and videos of Nwaneri arriving in Marseille began surfacing that same day. You’ve probably seen a clip of the Hale End product smiling and saying he chose Ligue 1 because William Saliba told him it’s one of the best clubs in the world. Perhaps it warmed your heart, as it did mine. But many among the Arsenal faithful have responded with angst.

Look, I don’t want to talk about what people are saying online every time I write something. It’s just not that important. What I will say is that I empathize with the sentiment. There is an understandable romanticism to Nwaneri’s story, just as there was with Bukayo Saka and Myles Lewis-Skelly, and with Emile Smith Rowe, Reiss Nelson, and Eddie Nketiah before them, and just as there will be with Max Dowman and Marli Salmon. There is perhaps no genre of story in football as inspirational as that of players emerging from a club’s academy to help lead that side to glory and cement themselves as a legend of the team they love.

From that stems almost a sort of ownership over an academy player’s path to greatness. Just as overly concerned parents do with their children, football supporters want their academy products to achieve success at home. And when that player leaves, whether it’s permanently or just temporarily, the perfect fairytale is ruined, forever tainted by the involvement of another club. The story of triumph no longer belongs purely to the institution that birthed such a hero.

Accordingly, a plethora of Arsenal supporters have reacted to the move sorrowfully, lashing out at Mikel Arteta for sanctioning the move, at Martin Ødegaard for not playing well enough to justify sending away the prince that was promised, at supporters of the transfer for ignoring an 18-year-old’s destiny involving usurping the club captain in the business end of a campaign in which the quadruple is genuinely on. We’ve collectively morphed from Tony Soprano proudly hitching his pants up and yelling, “Hey! HEY! That’s my son!” into Amos Diggory mournfully wailing, “That’s my son! That’s my boy! MY BOY!” into the night. Like thousands of self-appointed helicopter parents, fans are heartbroken that their favorite 18-year-old is leaving the nest.

And in a way, Marseille will hopefully very much serve as a finishing school for Nwaneri. Just as it once did for Saliba, his older brother-in-arms. Under the tutelage of Professor Roberto De Zerbi, the Hale End product should graduate with the requisite skills to be able to fully integrate into the Arsenal workforce and become one of tomorrow’s leaders for the Gunners. At least, that’s the plan.

I think it’s a good one. The fact of the matter is, Nwaneri needed to play. Sure, he’s essentially on roughly the same pace for minutes as Phil Foden was at his age. But we’re talking about a player who last season scored a number of goals for a Premier League side before turning 18 that only Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen have ever bettered, finishing with nine goals and two assists during the 2024/25 campaign.

You don’t put that kind of talent back in the box. You don’t keep that sort of potential hanging around the outer fringes of a massive squad, with only one or two matches earmarked for their involvement in the second half of a season. If you want them to be great, they have to play. Even if that means sending them away for a time.

That is the truth, by the way — Nwaneri would likely not have featured for the rest of this season, except for the seeming dead rubber against FC Kairat at the Emirates next week and Wigan Athletic’s visit in the 4th Round of the FA Cup. Ødegaard continues on as first choice at the right eight position despite a recent string of disappearing acts. Even if Arteta were to demote the skipper, one of Mikel Merino (who as emerged as something of a lieutenant for the manager this season) or Eberechi Eze (a far more senior player who has produced several moments of quality already at Arsenal) would be first in line to supplant him. And that is to say nothing of Kai Havertz, who appears to be nearing a return to full match fitness and can play that role as well; on Friday Arteta reiterated as much, claiming that the German could play at either attacking midfield position as part of a tandem with Viktor Gyökeres. Behind the immovable Declan Rice at left eight, Merino, Eze, and Havertz also figure to be above Nwaneri in the pecking order there as well.

Even if Nwaneri had walked back his apparent wish to play exclusively in midfield, he would have faced an uphill battle to get enough minutes. Obviously Bukayo Saka has established himself as a talisman of this current Arsenal side at right wing. But Noni Madueke has now come in and solidified a timeshare in that position with his countryman. Beyond those two, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus are options who have also played in that position and likely would have been considered over Nwaneri. Either way, barring an avalanche of injuries, the next four months would very well have seen the young Englishman continuing to be left out of matchday squads.

I don’t say any of this to push some contrarian view that Nwaneri is not a potentially generational player with a blindingly bright future ahead of him. He very much is. But there continues to be a misconception, within the Arsenal faithful and football fandom generally, that talent is all that is required to play at the highest level. And that’s just not the case.

There has been a decent amount of consternation around Nwaneri’s lack of minutes this season. Obviously, the conspiracy theories have accordingly been floated; Arteta hates young players, lineup selections aren’t a meritocracy, so on and so forth. If you want to believe those or more extreme lines of thinking, that is your prerogative. But for me, Nwaneri’s peripheral role in the Arsenal team came down to one thing: his reliability off the ball.

At this point, we should all be aware that Arteta is quite the stickler for discipline out of possession. Eze failed to cover Matty Cash before the Aston Villa right back scored the first goal in Arsenal’s loss in Birmingham, and has been used sparingly since. Madueke has been chewed out multiple times this season for not executing his defensive duties properly. Riccardo Calafiori became second choice to Myles Lewis-Skelly last season in part because the Englishman offered more off the ball at the time.

Nwaneri similarly has yet to show that this side of his game has matured. He doesn’t win duels the way that Havertz and Merino have to earn Arteta’s undying trust. He’s not yet an intelligent orchestrator of the press the way Ødegaard can be. He isn’t a tough tackler who outmuscles opponents consistently like Lewis-Skelly. As magical as Nwaneri can be with the ball at his feet, he has much to learn without it. But there is no reason to think he can’t find his feet in this regard; in his last appearance, he showed a good deal of mettle against a very physical Portsmouth side.

In today’s Premier League, it is an outsized risk to rely on players who can’t reliably function out of possession. The English top flight is currently a 20-team chess match dominated by athleticism and defensive structures, duels and low blocks, sprints and set pieces. For Nwaneri, that means two things in particular. First, there is no room for liabilities out of possession, especially for a team aiming to finish at the top of the pile. But secondly, and more encouragingly, the game will soon begin to once again favor individual quality in the final third.

That brings us to why Arsenal have selected Marseille to take Nwaneri on loan. Bournemouth and Crystal Palace were reportedly interested in taking the teenager on loan (while it appears Chelsea and Borussia Dortmund had sniffed around regarding a more permanent arrangement), but the French outfit represented an opportunity to really take Nwaneri out of his comfort zone. The Hale End product will be in a different country, having to speak a different language, contending with a different brand of football. He won’t be in London or a stone’s throw away. He will truly have to fend for himself. Arteta said as much during his presser ahead of Sunday’s clash against Manchester United:

“But one day you have to go: ‘OK, pack your bags, these are the flight tickets, and you have to go to Marseille.’ Whoa, whoa, whoa. And that is fear, is insecurity, is getting out of a place that has been really comfortable for him around his family. But then this is the thing at the end - you have to be thrown there, into the sharks in an incredible football culture and atmosphere and club and it’s going to make him so good.”

And he’ll have to face the sharks in a league that will challenge him. Ligue 1 sports some of the fiercest athletes on the continent and many of the biggest rising stars in football, and not just on Paris Saint-Germain’s roster. Ayoub Bouaddi, Jérémy Jacquet, Maghnes Akliouche, and Malick Fofana are among the next generation of potentially elite talents Nwaneri will face off against while at Marseille. The Englishman will compete on the pitch with them and more experienced players desperate to take the game to him and his temporary team. The pace and physicality of the French league will force the young Englishman to adapt to the demands of that side of the game.

But it’s not just about his out-of-possession game. Under De Zerbi, Nwaneri will also refine his technical ability further. The Italian manager is a coach’s coach; Arteta himself has been very complimentary of De Zerbi in the past, and even Pep Guardiola has referred to to the Marseille boss as one of the managers he admires most. De Zerbi is unafraid of implementing complicated tactical schemes, and he’s far more willing to incorporate younger footballers into those elaborate setups than other managers. As Arteta put it on Friday, “he’s an incredible developer of young talent, and he’s a really courageous manager in the way he plays with young talent as well.”

What is encouraging about pairing Nwaneri with De Zerbi’s style of play specifically is what it will add to the Arsenal man’s skill set. The Italian’s sides very typically bait pressure from the opposition, inviting the other team onto them and creating gaps in behind. This essentially allows De Zerbi’s team to manufacture attacking transitions while in possession and not needing win the ball high up the pitch. This game plan requires Marseille players to be adept at receiving under pressure with their backs to goal and either quickly turn their marker or pass to a teammate, allowing for interplay in tight spaces. It also relies on positional fluidity as full backs often invert into midfield and midfielders may swap roles with wingers.

So, it’s easy to see how Nwaneri is expected to develop while on the southern coast of France. He’ll hopefully return more adept at physically holding off opponents while facing his own goal, turning and facing opponents while keeping secure possession, combining with teammates within opposition blocks, and quickly accelerating the pace of an attack to catch out other teams. And those are traits that, despite significant differences between Arsenal’s current style of play and Marseille’s, do translate well to an Arteta system. And we’ve seen the Gunners play similarly in buildup — David Raya putting his foot on the ball to lure in an opposition press, before initiating a passing sequence that beats that press and sees Arsenal quickly progress up the pitch and fashion shooting opportunities, with Jurriën Timber coming into midfield, Saka taking up central spaces, Ødegaard drifting out wide, and Calafiori roaming only God knows where. And the fluidity of De Zerbi’s Marseille side will undoubtedly increase Nwaneri’s positional awareness and appreciation for the maintaining of defensive structures, leading to an increased reliability off the ball.

The best part is, Nwaneri will play. Sporting director Andrea Berta reportedly set the terms of the loan so that the structure of the fee Marseille shall pay to Arsenal is based on game time. The more Nwaneri plays, the less money the French side owe the Gunners. I’m confident that the Englishman will impress enough to earn minutes anyway, but it’s nice to know Marseille will be additionally incentivized to use him. And he’ll play those minutes at the Vélodrome, a loud, imposing, huge stadium containing a rich history and some of the most passionate fans in Europe.

So, for the next four months and change, many Arsenal fans will be watching two teams. Ligue 1 should inspect an uptick in viewership due to Nwaneri’s arrival. And look, with all the positives on the table, it’s still a little scary. Several things could go wrong. Nwaneri could fall out with De Zerbi, as so many players have before him. He could get hurt or struggle mightily with the tactical demands or the pace of the game in the French top flight. That in turn would draw widespread ire in a league whose fans’ collective emotions have been known to boil over in an ugly way. And frankly, I don’t love the idea of him spending so much time with Mason Greenwood.

But that’s mostly just the future helicopter parent in me talking. The truth is, this chapter for Nwaneri is also incredibly exciting. He’s going to go play and develop, for one of the best coaches in the sport, away from the sacrificial pragmatism of competing for some of the most prestigious honors in club football. In the summer he shall return not as a talented teenager, but as a more experienced and capable adult, with a more complete skill set and deeper tactical understanding, ready to truly stake his claim in an Arsenal side hoping to create a dynasty. And he will be equipped to evolve as the team does on the pitch.

I know it’ll be hard not to see him around the home ground for a while, not to see him wearing a shirt that has a cannon on the chest. They always grow up so fast. But he’ll be back before we know it. And, unlike universities, at least Marseille won’t keep asking us for more money when he is.

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