Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard has returned to training following his post-World Cup holiday, but he won’t be involved in Wednesday’s friendly against Real Betis.
Arsenal have confirmed on social media that Martin Odegaard is back in training at their London Colney training centre, making his comeback for pre-season after his post-World Cup holiday.
The rest of the senior squad are currently in Dublin for the friendly match against Real Betis on Wednesday evening, so Odegaard hasn’t quite linked up with his teammates yet. The Arsenal captain is set to miss Wednesday’s friendly.
But that’s no surprise, considering Gabriel Magalhaes and Gabriel Martinelli made their own late comebacks last week, and neither of them were in the subsequent matchday squad against Girona.
The Arsenal medical and fitness staff clearly want to give players a few days to get up to speed before throwing them into match situations.
The timing of Odegaard’s return makes sense in the context of the Gabriels’ comebacks.
The Brazil internationals were eliminated from the World Cup on July 5th, whilst Norway went out on July 11th, so you’d expect Odegaard to return the week after Gabriel and Martinelli did.
By that same logic, all of Arsenal’s remaining absent World Cup internationals were done with the tournament seven or eight days later, so they should all be back by Thursday of next week.
That will give them a very tight turnaround for the Community Shield on the Sunday, August 16th. So there’s little expectation they’ll be involved in that game.
Back on Odegaard, the Arsenal captain will presumably be ready for some minutes by the time this weekend’s Emirates Cup match against Borussia Dortmund comes around.
Piero Hincapie, Kai Havertz, and Viktor Gyokeres all got around half an hour against Girona, so that’s probably what to expect for the Gabriels on Wednesday and Odegaard on Sunday.
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