Gabriel Magalhaes is in the Brazil squad for the Tokyo Olympics later this summer, but Gabriel Martinelli has missed out.

Brazil confirmed their final Olympic squad on Thursday, with Gabriel Magalhaes unsurprisingly involved following starts in both of their friendly matches in June. However, Gabriel Martinelli was left out.

There hasn’t been an official reason given for Martinelli’s exclusion. Arsenal don’t technically need to release him, so it’s possible they decided not to. As Arseblog speculate, maybe he picked up a knock, or perhaps he didn’t impress in the recent friendly.

Another alternative is that he was just always on the fringes of their squad to begin with.

After Arsenal refused to release him in 2020, he didn’t play any part in their Olympic qualification campaign. He only started one of their two June friendlies (his first game for Brazil since 2019) and came off after 73 minutes.

It’s easy to make the case he was one of the less settled members of the squad, which is an issue when Brazil are now selecting their team for the actual tournament.

The good news for Arsenal fans is that Martinelli will now be available for pre-season, barring a late Brazil call-up for injuries or similar. It would be nice to have him available to really settle in before the campaign begins.

Sadly, Gabriel Magalhaes will not be available and is now likely to miss the start of the new season as well. This could be good news for William Saliba though, who will now probably only be competing with Pablo Mari at left-centre-back between July and September.