Martin Odegaard has explained how Arsenal managed to convince him to leave Real Madrid on a permanent deal last summer.

Last summer, Martin Odegaard made the major career decision to finally leave Real Madrid for good, six years after joining them as a teenager.

It was a big call, with no guarantees that he wouldn’t have been better off sticking it out in Madrid and hoping his positive Arsenal loan would see him finally breaking into their team.

Instead, Odegaard chose to join Arsenal permanently. Speaking this week, he explained what the Gunners used to convince him.

“The project,” Odegaard said. “The way the club and the manager wanted to do things, what they wanted to build here and how they wanted to play and to improve.

“Also what they said about me and how they wanted to use me, how they saw me as a player and what I could bring to the team and what they could offer to me.

“It was just the combination of all those things and the big project that is going on here, I wanted to be a part of that.”

Last week, we wrote about how Odegaard had stressed last year that he was chasing stability with a club.

“I said many times that I’ve been looking for stability (with a club), but haven’t found it,” Odegaard was quoted in March 2021.

“I think it’ll be important to find stability. I’m very happy at Arsenal, enjoying myself. I like it here. Now my focus is to finish the season, then we’ll see.”

A year later, Odegaard is now a permanent Arsenal player, and a regular starter with 26 appearances under his belt this season already.

Talking to Norwegian TV this week, Odegaard once again mentioned stability, this time suggesting he’d found it.

“I feel like I’m in a very nice place,” Odegaard said. “They (Arsenal) have given me peace and stability to settle down somewhere, and not stress about where the next loan should be.

“Now this is where I’m at, I feel good.”