Marcelo Flores came to Arsenal in a very roundabout way. The Gunners U23 midfielder was born in Canada and is the son of a Mexican footballer. He was strangely talent-spotted by Ipswich in the Cayman Islands, while his father was managing the Ladies team.
He played in the Ipswich youth teams for three years until being spotted by Arsenal in 2019. He has since improved in leaps and bounds and has even played in the full Mexico national side as a substitute. Also he was this week named as Number 48 in the Top 50 list of promising youngsters. At Number 24 was Charlie Patino, who has already made his full debut for the Gunners this season.
The Arsenal Under-23 coach boss Kevin Betsy has been talking to The Athletic about Flores. “You have to be adaptable when you play for Arsenal,” he said. “You have to be able to receive the ball in tight spaces, play wide, play inside and he can play off all four positions: No 7, No 11, No 10 — and he’s also played as a No 9 at times too.
“His work rate out of possession is excellent. He’s had to work very hard with that. He’s a very creative player, a natural attacking player and what you find with those types of players is they like it when they have the ball. When they don’t have the ball, sometimes they can take long to react, but he’s improved that area of his game tenfold in the last two years of his development and that is great to see.”
He sounds like a typical flexible Arsenal winger by that description. With Arteta’s policy of bringing through Academy players in the senior squad, could we see Flores make his debut very soon?
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Great work done by our youth coaches, highly appreciated 👏
But I must say we are not producing enough defenders especially centre backs.
Centre backs can take a bit longer to mature to first team level Oyama, quite often midfielders and wide forwards can break through before them as they are often in a less exposed position
But young Daniel Ballard is one to keep an eye on in my opinion, I think he could come through, currently on loan at Millwall
The challenge for Patino and maybe Floes is that the guys we have in front of them are young themselves
Now if we had a good striker or two coming through they could get an opportunity sooner rather than later, Balogun could still be the answer for us and although I appreciate I am in the minority I think Eddie still has a chance myself
Come through!!!
Marcelo Flores, Omari Hutchinson, Brooke Norton cuffy, kido-Taylor hart what a talent coming through the ranks..can’t wait for them😍
Great work done by our Academy in moulding such young talent. I think Flores and Biereth should get the nod sometime soon, maybe next season Initially they could be tried in the Cup games and could be developed further before they make the PL squad. Hutchinson and Patino will surely make it to the PL squad I think.