Arsenal academy left-back Lino Sousa turned down the chance to play at the u19 European Championship to stay with Mikel Arteta’s squad for pre-season.

According to The Athletic, Lino Sousa received a call-up from Portugal for the u19 European Championship, which kicked off earlier this week.

Sousa turned down the opportunity, opting to remain with Arsenal for pre-season.

Oleksandr Zinchenko and Kieran Tierney only returned to training this weekend, leaving an opening in the squad at left-back throughout the week.

Cedric Soares ended up starting on the left in the behind-closed-doors friendly against Watford on Saturday, but Sousa came on for the second half.

With plenty of transfer speculation around Tierney and Cedric, Sousa might feel there’s an opportunity to step up into the spot behind Zinchenko if things go well in pre-season.

At the very least, it looks as though Sousa is set to travel to Germany with the senior stars, just as he did last year.

The Athletic point out that though Sousa didn’t actually play in last year’s friendly against Nurnberg, he still ended up spending plenty of time around Mikel Arteta, his assistants, and Arsenal’s first-team stars.

The opportunity to do so again this summer is clearly a chance Sousa didn’t want to miss.

As well as the opportunity to make his mark at Arsenal, it’s also not clear whether or not Sousa intends to represent Portugal internationally.

So far, the 18-year-old has played for England, featuring for the England u18s in all of the international breaks over the last year.

Born in Lisbon, Sousa is certainly eligible to play for Portugal, he just hasn’t done so yet. In fact, his most recent appearance for the England u18s was against Portugal.

For the time being, the teenager doesn’t have to commit his international future either way.

As for the Portugal u19s, they’ve won their opening two group games to guarantee progression to the knockout stages.