This summer, Arsenal had 10 players participating in the World Cup, if you include new signing Lucas Torreira, so let’s take a look at how they all got on.
Many of Arsenal’s stars missed out on the tournament for one reason or another, particularly the likes of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Aaron Ramsey and Henrikh Mkhitaryan whose countries simply didn’t qualify.
Then there were those who were injured, notably Laurent Koscielny, and those who didn’t get the call up despite regular international participation in the past, like Shkodran Mustafi and Alexandre Lacazette.
Of the lucky few that did make the tournament though, how did it all go?
2David Ospina (Colombia) 7
Ospina had a good tournament overall, with a couple of disappointing moments thrown in as you’d expect. He kept clean sheets against Poland and Senegal, only conceded one goal in 120 minutes against England (a penalty) and then saved Henderson’s spot kick in the shootout.
He couldn’t get a strong hand on Eric Dier’s winner, but you can hardly blame him for that. It’s fair to question his performance in the defeat to Japan though, particularly his trademark panic from a corner, which led to the winning goal.
Danny Welbeck (England) 5
Welbeck only played 11 minutes of England’s run to the semi-final, and it was in a group game that the team didn’t even really want to win. He had one shot on target, one poor miss and completed the only pass he attempted. Hard to draw many conclusions from that.
Granit Xhaka (Switzerland) 7
Xhaka had a very underrated tournament, mostly as a result of a load of disparaging comments from Phil Neville when Switzerland went out in the last-16. Before that he was very good, particularly in the match against Serbia where he was one of the stars of the show, and scored one of the goals of the tournament.
After a strong group stage, it’s fair to say he wasn’t as good against Sweden, even if Neville took it way too far. Hopefully he’ll arrive back in England with his new contract and a desire to prove the critics wrong.