For all the small, hopeful boys who are ferried to at Hale End for pre-academy sessions, the percentage chance of any of them ever progressing all the way to the first team is tiny. Even imagining that takes a leap of faith. But to then progress from there to spend five, 10, potentially even more years embellishing the first team, becoming captain, assuming such importance to be the club’s highest earner, well, the prospect of that is infinitesimal. There is possibly more likelihood of going into space.
With a new five-year deal that takes his association with Arsenal from boyhood to his late twenties, Bukayo Saka’s commitment marks him out as something increasingly unusual in today’s football.
Aaron Ramsey was the last Arsenal player to complete 10 years playing for the club. His final season coincided with the promotion of a cluster of academy boys, and one accomplished teenager made his debut by replacing him as a substitute in a very peculiar Europa League group game at Vorskla Poltava.
The game was supposed to be played in their home town in central Ukraine, but due to last-minute security concerns was relocated at short notice to the capital city, almost four hours away. The temperature dropped to -12C in the cavernous and underpopulated Olimpiyskiy national stadium, and after 68 minutes, with Arsenal 3-0 up and Hale End in the headlines as Joe Willock and Emile Smith Rowe both scored, Ramsey jogged off to get a coat on and save his veteran legs.
On came 17-year-old Bukayo Saka in luminous yellow boots with the No 87 on his back. The rest is his story.
It is pertinent that the baton was passed from Ramsey to Saka, who with his latest contract is now on course to mark the increasingly rare feat of a decade as a model pro in his team’s colours.
Saka made his debut in the Europa League against Vorskla Poltava in November 2018 in Ukraine (David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Even more rare, Saka is doing this as a one-club man. A quick glance at the players close to a 10-year marker in the Premier League nods towards Bernardo Silva, John McGinn, Alisson Becker, Fabian Schar and Diogo Dalot, all of whom represented other clubs. Seamus Coleman, the current don in terms of longevity who feels like he has been at Everton for ever, did also play for Sligo Rovers and Blackpool.
The mission to keep an elite player for the bulk of their career seems to be a harder trick to pull off nowadays. The market is busier, the world is smaller, money talks with more persuasive tongues, given the way some clubs or agents seek to commodify players.
Looking back to the last time Arsenal won a title with their Invincibles in 2004, they possessed an impressive number of world-class performers who all stayed for a long time. Dennis Bergkamp hit 10 years — and in fact opened the Emirates Stadium with his testimonial to honour that loyalty. Patrick Vieira eschewed constant temptation and stayed for nine seasons. Thierry Henry stole the show for eight, and added to his legacy by returning on loan a few years later. Significantly, during that time, the ambitions of the club matched those of the A-list players. That is a necessity when it comes to the best.
Rewinding a little further, it was not abnormal for British players to stay at a top club for an eternity if they were good enough and happy enough: All of the famous back four led by Tony Adams, plus David Seaman, Martin Keown and Ray Parlour, passed a decade with a cannoned chest.
Tony Adams, another one-club man, led the famous back four (Allsport via Getty Images)
There is a connection with these outstanding club servants, from the 1980s to the mid-2000s. All won multiple trophies with the club. Which brings us to Saka. Let’s not fool ourselves that he wasn’t coveted enough, or talented enough, to try something other than Arsenal in the past few years, had he chosen to do so, while his club were dealing with the realities of their aspirations and hunger not translating into medals.
A look at the experience of his England team-mate and captain Harry Kane, local icon of Arsenal’s north London rivals Tottenham while never winning a thing there, now a Bundesliga champion with a phenomenal goal record at Bayern Munich, could be moot. It’s a personal choice for any high-status player to stay or go. They generally hold the keys to their career pathway.
For the next few years, Saka is locked in with Arsenal. He is a shining light in the way he plays, conducts himself and represents the heart and soul of Arsenal values since boyhood. His first signature with the club was handled by his parents as he joined the academy officially as an under-nine. He is 24 now, hardly an old timer, and since stepping out with the first team this is his third contract extension at Arsenal, which speaks of a remarkable bond. The love is mutual.
Each time he has sat down with the club to commit his future, the team has been at a different stage of its development. The side he came into in Ukraine in 2018 finished the season outside the top four. His first renewal came the following season, recognition of his breakout campaign, and Saka was on the bench as Arsenal hoisted silverware with the FA Cup to bring light to a period of confronting mediocrity, managerial change and an eighth-place league finish. His next renewal came in 2023, at the end of their first title challenge of recent years when they were runners-up. Now they are top of the league, the best performers in the Champions League, in the Carabao Cup final, and fighting on four fronts.
Over the years, he has helped to push them upwards. He knows more than most how much it will mean to finally plant an Arsenal flag on top of the mountain. That can’t come soon enough for this committed inspirer of Arsenal’s renaissance.