Arsenal’s Folarin Balogun has been rewarded for his promotion to Mikel Arteta’s first team with an England Under21 call-up, reports The Daily Mail.
The striker was close to leaving Arsenal at the end of last season, but the Gunners convinced him to stay and gave him a new contract.
They have now promoted him to their first-team squad and he started the first match of the season against Brentford while being a second-half substitute in the game against Chelsea.
Arteta is keeping his promise to field him more often in this campaign and he may have moved ahead of Eddie Nketiah in the pecking order at the Emirates already.
The Gunners will look to give him more chances as the season moves on, even though he might not start their next match against Manchester City, tomorrow.
Under-21 boss, Lee Carsley, has now handed him a call-up to the England youth squad for the games against Romania and Kosovo.
He also handed a fresh call-up to Liverpool’s Harvey Elliott and Cole Palmer of Manchester City.
Balogun isn’t the only Arsenal player called up with Emile Smith Rowe and Tyreece John-Jules, who is on loan at Blackpool, also handed call-ups.
Ironic really, as he looked much better when he was in the u23’s but didn’t get picked.
Good for his development, status and confidence though, so delighted for him.
Hasn’t impressed so far in the senior team and has a lot of work to do. The potential seems to be there though, so let’s hope he doesn’t turn out to be another Nketiah / Willock type of “Almost there but not quite good enough” player
Now the over hype from a lot of people has completely disappeared after only one game in the first team. The kid looked absolutely lost out there.
People were cursing Arteta out all last season and at the beginning of this season. “Balogan is the real deal. Give him a game and you will see. Right now he is not worse than Auba, Laca, Nketia, blah blah”.
Same was said for J.E.T, Akpom, Afobe, AMN, Nelson, Nketia, Willock, etc. So much talk and hype about how these were the next big things.
I don’t even remember Saka or Smith Rowe getting as much talk as compared to the likes of Akpom, Afobe, AMN, Nelson, Balogan, Nketia etc but those 2 have gone on to make it.
For the last season or so it has been about Balogan and now that Azeez kid.
What lesson do we all have to learn here? Most of the time the managers / coaches know more about the progress of any given young player at our club, hence why managers always frustrate us fans (armchair managers) when they don’t play the newest shiny academy youngster on the block.
We have all hyped up so many academy youngsters of ours throughout the years and out of the 100’s you can count on one hand how many have made it going back to Ashley Cole to today.
Lets take it easy and let the young players progress dictate if they deserve first team football. “If you are good enough you are old enough.”
The managers are more qualified than us for the majority of the time.
Just saying.