24 September 2023 , 08:00
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Martin Odegaard was THE wonderkid of the early 2010's. Plucked from the port city of Drammen, Norway as a teen, the midfielder may only be 24 now - but already has quite the story to tell.
In possession of the kind of technical talent that defied his years, the mercurial playmaker started to train with senior professionals in 2012 when he was just 13. By the time Odegaard had turned 15, he'd made history by making his first-team debut for hometown club Strømsgodset.
The rest of the footballing world soon took notice, but the fact that a 15-year-old was pulling the strings in the middle of the park in men's professional football came as little surprise to those who know him best. Last year, Mirror Football spoke exclusively to two prominent figures in the Strømsgodset hierarchy who witnessed Odegaard's rise to superstardom first-hand.
Club Chief Executive Officer Magne Jordan Nilsen recalled the first time he could tell the current Arsenal captain was unlike anything else he'd seen before. "I remember the pre-season before when he was 15 years old he was with us for pre-season in Marbella and he played against a Hungarian team, he played as a 6 in the centre of midfield and he totally dominated the game," he explained.
"Martin was just 15, and he totally dominated the game and I remember the coaches and players said ‘this thing that we have just experienced now, we will never see again in our lifetime – this will never happen again.’ I didn’t want to tell anyone as they were going to sign him straight away. He played like a 30-year-old superstar at 15."
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Nilsen's sentiments were echoed by Strømsgodset's marketing manager Rune Marthinsen, who shed light on just how overwhelming the interest in Odegaard was. He claimed: "We had sponsors who wanted to sign him when he was 13 years old, I don’t think very many people in Drammen had heard about him but Diadora, Adidas and Nike all wanted him. Martin was something no one in Norway had ever seen before."
"I know we had 63 emails from foreign clubs, Bayern Munich, Dortmund, Liverpool, everyone, that was maybe when he was 14/15 years old. The thing about all the interest, it was Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Arsenal, some of the Italian teams – every top team in Europe, but the most impressive thing wasn’t just Martin’s technical ability, it was Martin’s and his family’s ability to stay grounded."
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Martin Odegaard has signed a new long-term contract at ArsenalThings went to a different stratosphere when Odegaard eventually upped sticks and joined Spanish giants Real Madrid. Images of the teen holding up that iconic white shirt were on the back pages of every sporting outlet in Spain and indeed all over Europe.
But ultimately, it was a move that was destined to fail from the get-go. The weight of expectation seemed to weigh too heavy on the shoulders of someone even as mentally strong as Odegaard. The white-hot spotlight of the Santiago Bernabeu proved all too intense and a series of loan spells elsewhere soon followed.
By the time Odegaard had turned 21, he had represented four different clubs. Spells in Holland with first Heerenveen and then Vitesse Arnhem came and went, before the 2019/20 season was spent with a fellow LaLiga side in Real Sociedad.
The fact those at the top of the Real Madrid hierarchy felt so little towards Odegaard that they even let him ply his trade for someone in the same league as Los Blancos said it all. He impressed enough in San Sebastian to catch the eye of Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta, though.
A six-month loan spell at the Emirates followed in January 2021 and while Odegaard didn't spark a plethora of headlines, he did enough to persuade Arteta to keep him around on a permanent basis. After a promising enough debut campaign, arguably the most defining moment of the Norwegian's career would happen.
In the summer of 2022, Odegaard was handed the captain's armband. Some eyebrows were raised among fans and pundits, but in the eyes of Arteta it was an easy decision to make. Shortly before it was officially announced, the Gunners boss waxed lyrical over the midfielder's mentality.
"Martin has a lot of qualities that we want as a captain, " he claimed. "One of them is that he thinks about the team before himself. He had a period at the start where he wasn't playing, he was the first in training, the last to leave, asking the right questions – why he wasn't playing, what he had to do – he was always listening, he was always helping his teammates."
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Mikel Arteta has a fantastic relationship with captain Martin OdegaardDonning the armband seemed to raise Odegaard's game to a whole new level, with the 24-year-old notching 15 league goals last term as Arsenal came close to a first title in 19 years, only to be pipped by Manchester City.
As a reward for his goal-scoring exploits and leadership qualities, Arsenal have handed Odegaard a new five-year contract which ties him to the Emirates until the summer of 2028 and sees him become the club's highest earner.
For all of Odegaard's remarks once his extension was made public, the most striking of all was written in an advert taken out in the local papers of both Islington and Drammen. In block capitals, the message read: 'A PLACE WHERE I BELØNG."
Nearly 10 years after his high-profile switch to Spain, at long last the boy wonder has found somewhere he can call home in Arteta's Arsenal. He is slowly but surely achieving the kind of stardom those back at boyhood club Strømsgodset always expected.