“The call came.”
One thing that cannot be missed when talking about ‘soccer genius’ Park Joo-young is the process of joining Arsenal in the English Premier League in 2011.
In the 2010/11 season, AS Monaco in France scored 12 goals in 33 Ligue 1 matches and was recognized as a top European striker.
However, Park Joo-young’s transfer was not to Lille, but to Arsenal, which was competing to win the Premier League with Manchester United and Chelsea at the time. According to French media, Arsenal carried out a so-called ‘hijacking’ by intercepting Park Chu-young, who was about to sign with Lille.
For ‘hijacking’, it is necessary to have a strong conviction that the player must go to another team, not the team he is trying to sign, but in the case of Park Joo-young, it is speculated that “Director Wenger called and changed Park Joo-young’s mind before he was about to wear the Lille uniform.” There was not a lot of this.
After 11 years and 6 months, Park Joo-young finally opened his mouth. There was a ‘phone chance’.
After appearing on the soccer YouTube channel ‘Shoot for Love’ on the 6th, Park Joo-young told the secret story at the time메이저놀이터. He said he was on the phone with Wenger.
Park Joo-young said, “The phone call did come,” and after expressing his rhyme, he said, “(Wenger) is Park (Joo-young) or you? He said that he would like to come (to Arsenal).”
However, it was not a situation where Park Joo-young was happy when he received a call from Wenger. Park Joo-young added, “At first, I thought it was a prank call.”
Park Joo-young changed his mind at the ‘phone chance’, but the result was not good.
Park Joo-young came on as a substitute in just one game in his first season in the Premier League. On 26 October 2011, against Bolton in the League Cup, he scored on his England debut with a fantastic right-footed kick, but Wenger did not change his mind.
In his first season at Arsenal, he played a total of 6 games, including 3 League Cup games, 2 UEFA Champions League games, in addition to the Premier League, and left on loan to Celta Vigo in Spain in the summer of 2012.
After returning to Arsenal in the 2013/14 season and playing one League Cup game for six months, he went on loan to Watford in the second division, and since then he has not been seen wearing an Arsenal uniform.
Park Joo-young has been playing for Ulsan Hyundai since last year after working for Al Shabab in Saudi Arabia and FC Seoul. He is expected to accompany Ulsan this year as well.
It was a nuance that Park Joo-young had no regrets even though he had virtually failed at Arsenal.
When asked, “Was it not possible to ask Wenger to use it?”, he said, “I don’t know. I have no regrets because I know what happened.”