New Arsenal signing Petr Cech has revealed on the club's official website that he was close to joining the Gunners more than a decade ago.
He made the switch to the Emirates on Monday, for a fee assumed to be around £10.9m, having spent most of last season on the bench for Chelsea after Thibaut Courtois returned from his loan spell at Atletico Madrid to claim the first-choice keeper's spot.
However, things could have turned out very differently, as the Czech stop-stopper reveals that he nearly came to the Gunners as a teenager in the early 2000s.
Talking to Arsenal Player, he said: “There was a chance before I went to France [to join Rennes] that I could sign for Arsenal but I was only 18 or 19 and at that time Czech Republic were not in the European Union.
“You needed a work permit and the conditions were to play 75 per cent of the first-team games for the national team, which at the time was impossible for me to get. In the end I went to France because I couldn’t get a work permit.
“I had a few teams who were interested but Arsenal was one of the main ones. I was so excited because of the Premier League and big clubs but unfortunately it was not the time for me to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment