“I was so embarrassed!” – Winger recalls struggling with high standards at Arsenal

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Former Arsenal winger Chris Willock has recalled how difficult he found it when he trained with the Gunners first-team during his days at the Emirates Stadium.

The 23-year-old, now with Queens Park Rangers after spells at Benfica, West Brom and Huddersfield Town, came up through Arsenal’s academy alongside brother Joe Willock, though he admits he found it a bit nerve-wracking when he first started training alongside the senior stars in Arsene Wenger’s side.

Willock, speaking to The Athletic, says he was a bit paranoid about how the big names at the club might be speaking about him, while he also remembers one moment where he was embarrassed for failing to properly carry out instructions in a training drill.

“On the pitch, everything had to be right,” he said. “Every pass, every little movement, the precision in their actions on the pitch was always perfect. Off the pitch, their standard of professionalism was absolutely top and that gave me an example I needed to take throughout my career. Everything needs to be perfect, you can’t cut corners.

“I was quite nervous at the start because I didn’t understand a thing. I would go into the dressing room and just automatically think people were talking about me, even though they weren’t.

“Little things were hard. I remember one of my first training sessions, we were doing a keep-ball session. I got the ball and started to dribble and everyone was saying, ‘Hey!’ — I was like, ‘What’s going on?’. The coach blew the whistle and said it’s two-touch. I was so embarrassed! But those (are) things you learn.”

All in all, it’s interesting to hear this refreshing honesty from a player who didn’t make it at a big club like Arsenal, as we so often forget that there’s a very human side to a footballing career, as there would be with any other job.

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2 Comments

  1. A rare thing indeed. Real insight. Honest, human comment on what it is to be a professional footballer. Great article.

  2. LAZY LAZY journalism. Have you even read the article in the Athletic? You have taken quotes completely out of context. Your penultimate paragraph relates to Willock’s time at Benfica before he had learned to speak Portuguese. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Arsenal. If you’re going to copy from other journalists, at least read what you are copying before you publish your article.

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