Lille goalkeeper Vito Mannone has revealed he joined Arsenal earlier in his career, as they were the only side to show any faith in him.
The goalkeeper has been speaking to Gianluca di Marzio about his career and his time spent with Arsenal earlier in it.
The Italian joined the Gunners as a youngster from FC Atalanta U19s in August 2005 in a €500,000 deal and would spend the next eight years at the club before departing permanently for Sunderland in 2013.
He spent some of his time with Arsenal out on loan with the likes of Barnsley and Hull, and ultimately only ended up making 23 appearances for the Gunners in all competitions despite his long stay with them.
He was sadly never able to establish himself as first-choice, instead only ever really playing a back up role behind the likes of Manuel Almunia, Łukasz Fabianski and Wojciech Szczęsny.
It seems he has no bitterness over that, though, and instead is grateful for Arsenal showing faith in him when others did not.
“Maybe because nobody believed in me,” he said when asked why he’d never appeared in Serie A.
“I was very young when I left no one believed in me at that moment. Instead, Arsenal did… and between staying among the youth and going to the first team at Arsenal I decided to accept the court of the Gunners.
“You meet someone who believes in you…you have to try to keep going until your time comes and silences them in a certain way. After that I did many good things in my career. The call from Italy never came and yes, a I’m kind of sorry.”
