Julio Pleguezuelo | In my own words

Just be patient and keep working. If you keep doing the right stuff, then you’ll get your reward. 

There’s no exact path that you have to follow to get into the first team. It’s just down to each individual, the condition the first team is in at the time, the situation with injuries… there are so many factors which go into just playing 90 minutes at Emirates Stadium or wherever it is with the first team. 

There’s so much going on behind the scenes that you can’t control, you just have to focus on yourself and trying to push yourself as much as you can. Most of all, though, it requires patience – and that’s something I’ve needed throughout my life.

I was born in Mallorca and I lived there until I was seven. My first memory of kicking a ball about was when I was about five or six, my dad took me to this team in Mallorca called Atletico Baleares. I just remember playing there with my friends from school and having fun. That’s what it’s all about when you’re a kid. 

Julio Pleguezuelo

I’m from a very sporty family. My dad played semi-pro football in Spain, and my older brother played a few games for Mallorca too before he got injured and retired. He was a left back, like my younger brother, Xavi, who plays for Malaga now.

When I moved to Barcelona from Mallorca, I was just playing for my local team. I played my first game in the season and then my dad got a phonecall for me to have trials at Espanyol for their under-7s or under-8s. I got into their team and then spent six years at the club. Then when I was 14, I joined Atletico Madrid for a season but I think being away from my family at such a young age was difficult. Sure, it helped me to grow up a lot quicker but I missed my family and friends a lot, especially being that young. 

At the end of that season in Madrid, Barcelona came in for me and after talking it through with my mum and dad, we made the decision to bring me back home. I was staying at La Masia but I got to see them every two or three days and that really helped me, plus my little brother was playing for the club at the time too. 

I spent two years with Barcelona but about midway through my second season, Arsenal showed up and it turned out they’d been following me for quite a few months. When the time came to make a decision, I knew what my answer would be. I came to London, met Arsène Wenger, saw the training ground and the stadium, and I was fascinated by the club. I didn’t even have to think about it, I joined the club straight away.

I’ve loved Arsenal since I was a kid. It sounds strange but them losing the Champions League final against Barcelona made me love them even more. I was supporting Arsenal that day and was gutted they didn’t win because they really deserved to. I’ve always liked the history and I’ve followed a lot of players like Freddie and Thierry Henry.

It’s crazy how the world works because one day you’re a kid and looking up to these players as your idols, but then the next moment they’re your manager and you’re training alongside them. It was a bit crazy when all that happened, with Thierry coming in for the Uefa Youth League and Freddie now coaching our under-23s. I’ve never told them how much I admired them, so they don’t know that yet! 

Hector Bellerin and Jon Toral had made the journey from Barcelona to Arsenal a year or so before I did. I didn’t have any contact with Hector before I joined the club and I think Jon was having surgery in Spain but when I came to the training ground to have a look around, Hector was here and spoke with me for a bit. He explained how everything worked, the philosophy at the club, the values… I’d already made my mind up about moving here, but everything he told me just made me want to join the club even more. 

Surprisingly, a few kids left Barcelona for England that year. Sergi Canos, who’s now doing well for Brentford, originally moved to Liverpool and Josi Quintero moved to Chelsea. There were a few more players from Valencia who I knew from the national team, but also Pablo Maffeo who joined Manchester City.

Pablo’s a friend for life because we played together at Espanyol when we were kids. It was really, really good to have him over here too and I actually got to play against him in my first season for the under-18s. It was crazy to be able to play against a friend who you’ve found in a different country. 

That was a good memory of my first few months in England but there were lots of bad ones, too. The first six months were tough because I couldn’t play as I didn’t have my clearance. The club helped me a lot because they were letting me go home quite often to switch off a little bit from everything. As soon as I got my clearance that November, I got to start playing a little bit and jumped straight into the reserves.

The good news was that home sickness wasn’t an issue anymore. The experience at Atletico Madrid really toughened me up and helped me settle into my new surroundings a bit easier. The family I was living with really helped me and all of my team-mates were great. Hector obviously helped me a lot, Jon did too when he came back from injury, but all of my age group were fantastic. Tafari Moore, Stefan O’Connor, Dan Crowley… I was lucky to have some really lovely players with me to help me out.

But while I’d settled off the pitch, the injuries started on it. It was so frustrating because all I wanted to do was play. In my first season, I had a lot of groin problems, especially with my hips, so that was stopping me a lot. Then when I came back from the summer break, I did the pre-season with the first team and felt like I was flying. 

I got to play against Boreham Wood with the first team and got coached by Arsène Wenger for the first time, so I think I did really well in that pre-season. But then I had an ankle injury which stopped me for nearly a month, and when I came back I tore my groin in the first game and was out for another six or seven weeks. Literally three games after coming back from that groin injury, I did my knee. 

I had a lot of frustration because every time I was coming back, I was coming back very strong with lots of confidence and it was really tough for me because I just wanted to get going but couldn’t. After I came back from my knee injury, nearly five months after suffering it, I played the last three or four games of the season and then did everything I could to get myself fit for the next season. I didn’t stop running in the summer because I didn’t want to sit out injured anymore. We came back from the summer break, got through pre-season and then finally, after three years, had a successful season. I played in every game of the season, captained the team and got promoted to the top division with the under-21s. 

I always get reminded about the interview I gave on live TV after the game, but all I can say is that I’m a passionate player. Once I’m on the pitch, I give everything I can because I want to repay the fans and that encourages me. That interview was a little bit of that coming out and I probably swore because of all of the feelings I had at the time. Obviously after my first two seasons, this moment was my first good experience as an Arsenal player and I think I maybe let myself go a little bit too much!

After that season, I was given the chance to join my childhood club, Mallorca, on loan. It was tough because it was my first experience in professional football, and I felt that I was playing really well, training really well and was feeling amazing, but it felt like my chance was never going to come. Because I didn’t have experience in that type of football, managers wouldn’t trust me.

They usually look for experienced players to play at centre back and players who could handle pressure, so it felt like I wasn’t good enough. I got to play a few games before Christmas and just when I thought I’d made a good impression, I wasn’t involved again until April when a new manager came in and changed the whole team. He trusted me and saw me playing well in training, so he told me I was going to play. I think I played the final 12 games and we were really close to avoiding relegation but missed out by two points. 

It was a good and a bad experience at the same time. After that season, I didn’t have that much time off to switch off because three weeks later I was back at Arsenal for pre-season. I tried to push myself as much as I could at Arsenal and had the same mentality of, ‘I’ve had some experience out on loan, now it’s time to give it a go and try to break into the first team at Arsenal’. That chance didn’t really come so in January I made the decision to go out on loan again. Gimnastic showed up on transfer deadline day and I joined them until the end of the season.

I started playing there and then got a little setback with a groin injury, then ended up playing about 12 games. I did really well so I felt good coming back to Arsenal ready for this season, full of confidence. I had offers to leave in the summer but I just had this feeling that this year was going to be my year. 

I just wanted to play for Arsenal, that’s always been my dream. I was patient again and just had to try to wait for my moment. I just tried to show everyone that I was good enough to play, so I kept working and working. I think my reward came when I started against Blackpool. 

It was everything I dreamed of since I joined the club. Some players get to the first quickly, some players take longer but the days leading up to my debut were amazing for me and I’m so pleased with how everything’s happened. My dream has come true.

I know I’ve played for the first team now and that’s a great achievement for me, but obviously my main goal is to establish myself in the first team to become a regular in the Premier League at a big club like Arsenal. Arsenal is the club that I love and I want to play for Arsenal. Hopefully the chances will continue to come my way. 

Julio Pleguezuelo