William Gallas has blamed the English media as the reason Theo Walcott never reached his full potential.
The attacker moved to Arsenal as a 17-year-old in 2006 after a blistering start to life as a player at Southampton.
He was fast-tracked to the Gunners’ first team and caught the attention of the world with his pace and dribbling ability.
He spent the next 12 years at the Emirates before leaving for Everton, but he cannot say he reached his full potential.
Arsenal kept expecting him to fire them to another league title, but he is now considered a wonder kid who had a normal career, eventually.
Gallas was his teammate at the Emirates and the Frenchman believes the hype around his emergence is partly to blame for his failure to reach his full potential.
He said via The Sun:
“There is a problem when they speak too quickly about players they think are going to be top-class. He was still young, 16 or 17.
“I felt he needed time to let him get to another level, and not to put that pressure on him. They put pressure on them, indirectly, when they write these things about him, even if they are being very humble.
“So for me I’m not really surprised Walcott hasn’t had the career he was touted to have had.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
All prodigies get more than the required attention and media coverage because they amaze us.
You cannot blame the media for raving over the next big thing because everyone loves to watch and read these stories.
Walcott had an average career, but he did better than several other wonder-kids.
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I don’t think the hype was particularly discouraged by arsenal tbh.
Anyway, despite not reaching his maximum potential, he was a regular player at a CL club for all his best years, and scored a very respectable number of goals in his career. Could have been a lot worse.
A good solid player who unfortunately for him got hyped up by the English media at a very young age ,never let us down and like Davi said above scored the goals and some very important ones .
Obviously his game was based on his pace ,not much skill but still found the net at a good rate for a winger -forward
I think he was meant to be a Michael Owen type striker in a 442 system but was a bit unfortunate with the 433 revolution, which probably limited his output.
I’m sounding like more of a fan than I was at the time, but i think he was a bit unfortunate and mishandled to an extent
Theo Walcott for all his misguided detractors, PRODUCED!!!!!!!
Do i think he could have done better with a bit more of an attitude? Definitely but that wasn’t how he played. Probably too nice to be a footballer but he was very productive at Arsenal.
At the the end of the day, he won 3major honors with the gooners. The is still a top notch player
Walcott didn’t reach his potential ??
He scored goals for Arsenal and England, having got 47 caps!
I know he wasn’t everyone’s favourite on here but I really liked him, he didn’t hide, he wasn’t lazy and he did his best. If anything it was the way he was used that didn’t help him.
Messi praised him once….That’s says a lot!!And Capello admitted making a mistakes bu not taking him to WC in South Africa…He’s about like Giroud,not in the style of play but in the sens that they’r a bit atypic and have rare profiles nowadays.Giroud had a better career though because he’s mentally stronger and has this ability to costantly prove people wrong at club and international level!
And Giroud wasn’t hyped once in his career but all the time underrated….When you see how Grealish is overrated by british media to the point that he costs 110 million £….. Incredible
It’s more that I and I presume others thought he had the talent to be much much better than he ended up – he could have scored more than Rooney imo.
He was inconsistent during his career – some put that down to injuries, but i don’t think so. It was mentality imo.
And less talented than we think