Former Arsenal midfielder Thomas Eisfeld has detailed how the club convinced him to sign as a youngster from Borussia Dortmund.
The midfielder has been speaking to Rot-Weiss about his career so far, which has seen him playing in Germany and England to date.
He started with Osnabruck before joining Borussia Dortmund’s youth set up and working his way through their youth ranks.
That caught the attention of Arsenal, who decided to take him to London in a €750,000 deal in January 2012, a move that Eisfeld admits was very much last minute.
“As I only found out later, I had already been scouted for a long time. It must have been several years,” he said.
“The request to move to England came relatively late in January. So, the move from BVB to FC Arsenal came about quite spontaneously, because it was about an immediate transfer.
Arsenal signed Eisfeld as one for the future, something they had done throughout Arsene Wenger’s reign, with the Frenchman very much a supporter of developing young talent for the first team.
That sadly did not prove to be the case for Eisfeld, who despite impressing at youth level with 14 goals and nine assists in 40 games for the Under 21s, never made it beyond that point.
He would make just two appearances for the senior team, featuring in League Cup wins over Reading and West Brom, the latter of which he got his only goal in.
He doesn’t look back on the experience negatively, though, and instead insists the chance to work alongside some of the big names of the day was great for him as a youngster.
“(It was) very exciting and thrilling. I would say that I was a good A-junior player back then,” he added.
“But by the time I got to the pros, I realised that there was still something missing. I needed a bit of time to get to grips with the technical processes. I absorbed every detail.
“As a talent, I hardly exchanged a word with the more experienced players in the first few weeks. It’s different with today’s young players. But after two or three months I was well into it.”
