I am not talking about the Arsenal transfer rumours that have been doing the rounds of the football media recently, suggesting that the Arsenal and Chile international star Alexis Sanchez has become increasingly frustrated with life as a Gunner and is keen on a move away from Arsenal in the summer transfer window, although if they turn out to be true it would certainly represent a major problem for Arsene Wenger.
Even if they turn out to be just the usual sort of spurious rumours that we will be seeing a lot more of in the coming months, the Arsenal boss still looks set to have a big problem with his star striker, all because of the strange decision to hold another Copa America tournament this summer, even though the last one was held less than a year ago, with Alexis scoring the winning penalty against Argentina to win it for the first time.
The tournament, which is being played in the USA, starts on June 4th so there will be no time for the Arsenal striker to rest when the Premier League season ends at the weekend. If Chile make it to the semi-final stage they will either play in the third place decider on June 25th or the final on June 26th, once again giving our over worked player very little chance to rest and recharge his batteries before training and pre-season starts ahead of the next campaign.
As reported by Metro, Wenger has admitted that last year’s Copa America had a negative effect on Sanchez at the start of this season and he clearly feels that the same is likely to happen again, when asked if he could believe that they had crowbarred another international tournament into the football schedule.
The Frenchman said, ‘No. I think last year was the century, so they made a special one [with special rules].
‘It had an impact on him [Alexis] this season I think. Of course Chile won it as well, so after some big achievement like that you always have a bit of decompression. I think he suffered physically this season from that.’
This will be the third summer in a row that Alexis has not been able to have a proper break, so how big a problem will it be for Arsenal? Will Wenger have to think about giving him a rest and bringing him in later in the season?
Bob