The truth behind William Saliba's failed Marseille transfer
FT Desk
- 19 Sept 2022 17:09 BST
- 3 min read
William Saliba spent last season on loan at Marseille from Arsenal and was interested in making the move back to his native France a permanent one…
Arsenal picked Saliba up from Saint-Etienne for a cool €30.7 million in the summer of 2019, but he was loaned straight back to les Verts and spent the next two seasons on loan with Nice and then Marseille.
The £50m/€57m acquisition of Ben White - a player in his position - from Brighton last summer, seemed to be the death knell in Saliba's Arsenal career. And he was enjoying things under Jorge Sampaoli at Marseille anyway.
🤩 Thomas Frank with massive praise for Arsenal's William Salibapic.twitter.com/QeLNwa2o4K
— Football Transfers (@Transfersdotcom) September 18, 2022
"I want to come back and play the Champions League," the young centre-back said at the time. "I've never played in it, and I want to discover it here."
But despite all the loan spells, Arsenal never had any intention of selling a player who broke into Didier Deschamps' France squad last season, and he has been reintegrated at the Emirates by Mikel Arteta, with White even shifting out to right-back.
Arsenal's plan
Saliba boasts two goals and an assist from centre-back this season as Arsenal have raced to the top of the Premier League table, and the player has since revealed Arteta's role in him shelving his Marseille idea.
"He's helped me integrate quickly into this system of play," he told Canal+. "Every day he gives advice to be better on the pitch. I came back here to impose myself and it's nice to start well, as I have.
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"We've had a very good start to the season until the match at Manchester [a 3-1 loss to United]. We're first and we want to continue like that. As everyone knows, I didn't play. For me, it was better to go away.
"I'm a young player and it's always better to play and gain experience, make errors and learn. If you don't play, you can't progress. For me, going away for a year-and-a-half was good. I came back stronger, with new ambitions."
Saliba has also completed more than 93 per cent of his passes this season despite attempting an average of four progressive passes per game, and is now ranked climbed back up to €26m in Football Transfers' in-house algorithm.
