PAOK Saloniki of Greece striker, Chuba Akpom is reeling lyrical about two former players at Arsenal of England, as he says he loved the form displayed by Thierry Henry and Alexis Sanchez at the London-based club that produced him, megasportsarena.com reports.
Although he got only a handful of competitive games for The Gunners’ senior team, until he opted to leave Emirates Stadium and move to PAOK, Akpom recalls how he admired the former captain, Henry, and always tried to learn a thing of two from the Frenchman any time he got the opportunity of training with the senior team,
The barrel-chested Nigerian-born all-action attacker also gave thumbs-up to Sanchez for always putting his spirit into every game he played, before injuries reduced his productivity, while also hailing former Arsenal midfielder, Tomas Rosicky for giving him good advice on how to succeed.
The youngster, who made his Arsenal debut against Sunderland in September 2013, on the same day Mesut Ozil played his first game for the north London outfit, further revealed that he looked up to Chelsea legend, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink during his formative years at Emirates Stadium.
Hasselbaink, then a Holland international striker of fearsome potentials, also played for Leeds United, Middlesbrough, Charlton Athletic and Cardiff City in England, but the best period of his career in terms of goals scoring was with Chelsea, for which he hit 88 goals in all competitions.
His days with Leeds are also now in perspective for Akpom, who recalls how he also hobnobbed with the Dutch star, such that Hasselbaink became his mentor and hero, even as he still recalls some happy days spent together with The Gunners duo of Henry and Rosicky.
The Super Eagles’ hopeful, who joined Arsenal at the age of five and got 12 first-team outings with the north London club before joining PAOK in August 2018, also picked Chilean attacker, Alexis Sanchez as the best player he has played with in his career.
He praised the work rate of the former Barcelona striker, stating that he used to skip recovery sessions in order to train fully with the rest of the squad and be close to Sanchez, who scored 80 goals and won two FA Cups during his four-year spell with the Emirates Stadium outfit.
Akpom told Don Dada: “You’re not going to guess it. Everybody is probably thinking Thierry Henry right now but the guy that made me start playing football was Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. When he was at Leeds, that was my first memory of watching football.
“Watching Leeds play and I saw Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, and then he want to play for Chelsea, he was just my favorite player at the time. And then I started getting into more into Arsenal and I started watching Thierry Henry but mainly it was Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
“The biggest advice I’d received from someone was from Tomas Rosicky, he liked me a lot, used to sit me down and speak to me. He said to me that he doesn’t know if anyone else believes in me but I should believe in myself because he believes in me as well.
”For him to tell me that I should always believe in myself, coming from someone with experience gave me a big push. I have always remembered that, it has always been in my head throughout all my career.
“Best player I played with is Alexis Sanchez, playing with him changed my whole mindset towards football because if you see the way he works, in training every single day he’s a 110 percent.
“After a game, ninety minutes, he could be playing in the Champions League and League game same week, he won’t do recovery the next day after the game, he’s straight into the training with the players that were on the bench.
“Obviously I used to not be in the squad or be on the bench, so he’s coming to training, he literally ran for ninety minutes and training with us that have been on the bench or not in the squad the next day.”
“Arsene Wenger is telling him to go inside and Alexis is saying I’m staying here and he ends up doing the whole training session with us, doing the running, and I’m saying this is what it takes to be world class.
“Even when we are doing the warm ups, he gets on the floor, starts doing press-ups, he’s just a different breed. His work rate is just another level and that gave me motivation to start working a bit more harder than others.”
BiG JOE@JohnsonjoebabaA