Arturo Lupoli is now 32 years of age, something which will make Arsenal fans of a certain vintage feel rather old.
The Italian joined the Gunners youth system from Parma in 2004, but wasn’t able to fully breakthrough to the first team under Arsene Wenger. Back then the competition for places was great, and Lupoli keeps very special memories of his time with the London club.
Having moved to Derby County on loan, Lupoli then left Arsenal permanently for Fiorentina. He’s since had a varied career with lower league clubs in Italy, and even had a spell in Hungary.
He’s now with Virtus Verona, a club in Italy’s Serie C, and has sat down with TGGialloblu for an interview about his career, and much of it was about his period with Arsenal.
Asked about his time with the Gunners, Lupoli said: “The experience I had at Arsenal was a daydream. Maybe I was catapulted into a dimension that was enormous for me at that age. When I arrived at Arsenal, the team came from a league title won without losing a single game. Every day I tried to learn something from each of these champions. I then managed to carve out some space with Wenger. I remember playing City-Arsenal in the Cup where we won 0-3. In a match against Everton then, I scored twice and Wenger gave me confidence and made me understand that I could also give something.”
Lupoli added that his teammates at Arsenal were ‘phenomenal’, and he was especially close to Cesc Fabregas, Philippe Senderos and Jose Antonio Reyes. He could speak Italian to them, and also with Thierry Henry, but the Frenchman jokingly refused to speak the language again after his country lost to Italy in the 2006 World Cup final.
Reyes was tragically killed in a car accident last year, and Lupoli explained how their friendship started: “At the time of Arsenal we had a lot of ties, we went to English lessons together and he was a genuine and sincere person. After a Champions League match against Ajax he gave me his shirt and I still keep it with great care and affection.”
Lupoli believes he made the wrong choice moving to Fiorentina, given there was as much competition at the Tuscany side as he’d found at Arsenal. That experience and then dropping down to smaller clubs, resulted in him never actually playing a match in Serie A.
