In an unfortunate turn of events for Omar Rekik, the Arsenal prospect’s proposed loan move to Stoke City has collapsed due to the Championship club being unable to offload the players needed to facilitate the deal.
Rekik only arrived at Arsenal from Hertha Berlin a year ago for a bargain fee of £540,000 per Football Insider, but has been stuck playing under-23s football with the Gunners, despite impressing Tunisia enough to earn a spot in their senior national team squad.
Omar is the younger brother of former Manchester City talent Karim Rekik, who currently plies his trade for Sevilla. The Athletic add that Arsenal wished for Omar to spend the second portion of the campaign out on loan, but that now looks unlikely.
Rekik is an important player for the Gunners’ Under-23s side, starting all 13 of his appearances so far this season as the majority of his omissions have been due to international duty with Tunisia.
The 20-year-old even reportedly travelled north for his medical ahead of a switch to Stoke, only for the deal to collapse late on in a real shame for Rekik as he’s now missed the chance to showcase the talent that Tunisia clearly see to fans of English football.
Rekik has only recently returned from the Africa Cup of Nations, he was part of the Tunisia squad but only saw two substitute appearances over the course of the competition.
See More: Arsenal seal developmental signing of young defender and confirm loan plans
Understand Omar Rekik’s loan move to Stoke City is off as things stand as they (Stoke City) couldn’t shift players for the move to happen
Arsenal were planning for him to go out on loan from last month, so it is a bit unfortunate https://t.co/6Eyjqril3X
— Art de Roché (@ArtdeRoche) January 31, 2022
Stoke have eventually managed to offload a player to recruit a central defender, but unfortunately it couldn’t be Rekik as the Athletic have since reported that the Potters have completed a loan swap with Reading to take on Liam Moore in exchange for Tom Ince.
It’s pretty harsh that this stumbling block only popped up for Rekik in the final hours of the transfer window, when there’s seemingly no time to realistically arrange an alternative option that would allow the Dutch-Tunisian talent to kickstart his professional career.
Hopefully Rekik isn’t too disheartened by this setback, which was completely out of his hands, there is plenty of time for the talent to establish himself in the English game, he’ll just have to wait a little bit longer which will no doubt be frustrating.