International Call-Ups

By: Martin | November 11th, 2009

This happened a couple of days ago, but, you know…(shrugs). 15 Arsenal players have been called up for duty over the international break. The entire list can be found here.

Of the 15, only 5–Diaby, Gallas, and Sagna for France, Arshavin for Russia, and Song for Cameroon–are playing in meaningful senior international matches, as all of their nations are trying to qualify for the World Cup. Interesting that Nasri didn’t get the call from France–I suspect that if he stays healthy the rest of the season and France qualifies, we will see him in South Africa. Eboue is also representing Ivory Coast in a World Cup qualifier, but they have already qualified so nothing is at stake for them in the matches.

Elsewhere, Kieran Gibbs and Vito Mannone will represent their countries in qualifiers for the UEFA Under-21 Championships. Other than that, it’s all friendlies–Cesc for Spain, RvP for Holland, TV5 for Belgium, Eduardo for Croatia, Ramsey for Wales, Senderos for Switzerland, and Wojciech Szczesny earning his first senior call-up for Poland, ironically replacing the injured Lukasz Fabianski.

This is less than the ordinary number of Gunners on duty, mainly due to injuries (Walcott, Fabianski, Clichy, Vela, Djourou, Wilshere, Bendtner) and guys who just came back from injury or haven’t had a chance to play much this season (Nasri, Rosicky).

At any rate, it should make the training ground a little less lonely. Usually, on international breaks, I always have this image in my head of Arsenal “practices” which always makes me giggle for no reason. But I’ll share it with you anyway. Arsene Wenger sits in a chair off to the side of the practice pitch, doing that “trying to stay awake thing” where his eyelids start to flutter and then close, his head slowly sinks forward, and then he suddenly snaps his whole head backwards and looks around to see if anyone saw him falling asleep. Meanwhile, on the pitch, Denilson and Almunia stand about 15 yards apart, disinterestedly kicking the ball back and forth. After about an hour of this, they call it a day, and then at the end of the international break Arsene gives a press conference talking about how the players who didn’t called up trained hard and are match fit. I also wonder if Almunia and Denilson have bonded from spending so much time together during these breaks, or whether they’re so sick of only having the other one to talk to for approximately 6-8 weeks out of every season that they can’t stand the sight of one another.

Anyway, enough idle international break speculation. For their sakes I suppose I hope that France, Russia, and Cameroon qualify for the World Cup, although, honestly, if more Arsenal players were to get 2 months of rest this summer and come back refreshed for the start of the season, I can’t say I’d be too upset. Most of all, hopefully everyone makes it through the break without picking up injuries–the fact that some of our star players are playing in meaningless friendlies in which they could pick up a significant injury which could alter Arsenal’s season does not sit well with me at all, but we’ve been over that before and I’ll refrain from beating that particular dead horse today.

Happy Veterans/Armistice Day.