“Very, very special” -Arsenal youngster Arsene Wenger labelled the ‘next Robert Pires’
| Published date | 03 April 2021 |
| Date | 03 April 2021 |
Fernando Torres completed a blockbuster move to Chelsea whilst Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez joined Liverpool.
As all the drama elsewhere captured the headlines, Eisfeld was flown from Germany on a private jet and found himself sat in Arsene Wenger’s office.
He was just 19 at the time, and a few years earlier his agent had asked him the dream outcome of his career.
“I’d love to play for Arsenal at some stage,” he replied.
Somewhat out of the blue, his golden opportunity arrived.
“The deal was quite last-minute,” he recalls. “I was on a plane over, did the medical then was sat in Arsene’s office.
“Obviously as a young player it’s very, very exciting to meet someone of the calibre of Arsene Wenger.
“Especially because at the time I played for Dortmund Under-19s. I hadn’t had much to do with the first-team yet, I had trained with them only two or three times.
“I was quite new to senior football and now I was sat in Arsene Wenger’s office, talking to him about the way he wanted to play football, him giving me compliments.
“I think he said that I seemed to be a technically gifted player, and coming from him that was very, very special.”
The compliments Eisfeld received that day in Wenger’s office were nothing compared to those uttered by the legendary Frenchman after his first Arsenal start.
Having put together an impressive run at Under-23s level, the youngster caught the eye against West Bromwich Albion in a League Cup game in September 2013.
He scored the opener and was a live wire throughout, prompting Wenger to compare him to one of the stars of his Invincibles side.
"He is a Pires type,” Wenger purred.
"He appears to be in the box without being noisy and appearing suddenly. When he is there, he finishes well.
"He has that kind of quality that some midfielders have -not many. They have the timing to get in dangerous situations. When they have those dangerous situations, they are like snakes. They bite you to death because they don't miss their first touch.
"He's cool enough in front of goal and he finishes well.”
They were comments which, understandably, generated plenty of noise and excitement.
“I read at the time that Arsene Wenger had compared me to Pires after the game,” Eisfeld recalls.
“Obviously that was very, very special but I’m really not one to read too much in the media about games or performances.
“I’ve always known that football is a very forgetful environment -one day you are the hero then the next time you can be the villain, so I tried to stay away from that.
“But I remember the Pires thing very fondly because it came from Arsene Wenger, who, for me is such an important person in football.
“You could go as far as to say Arsene Wenger changed the landscape of...
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