Bukayo Saka, English icon

On the edge of one of London’s main peripheral roads, the ever-trafficked North Circular, next to Highams Park, is the Hale End, Arsenal’s young talent academy. It does not have any special singularity from other training centers, except that it is the ‘sanctuary’ of football where he was trained and grew up. Bukayo Saka. The young talent of the ‘Gunner’, already captain and star of the Premier League, is the embodiment of this careful center for the development of football players, where every day some of the most intelligent and lucky children feels that the future may be theirs. Saka has been here for a decade and is one of the few who has achieved this, having climbed all the steps. Now he is a divine idol, an icon of the world of Arsenalbecause of its roots in Africa, and pillar of choice of England.

For now, Thenson of a Nigerian family, is one of the leaders of the new image of English football, along with other young people of the same generation, such as Bellingham, Foden or Palmer. What put him in the spotlight was his sensational performances at the start of the season. Last weekend, he again starred in an outstanding game in Arsenal’s (3-1) victory over Southampton. He arrived at the international break as the mainstay of the ‘three lions’, coached on a temporary basis by Lee Carsley, for matches against Greece and Finland in the Nations League.

The winger has already added seven goal assists in the Premier League. He is on his way to breaking all records. At 23 years old, he has the maturity to be a captain, in his absence due to injury. Odegaardand commercial brands see it as a mirror in which young English people of immigrant origin see themselves. At the moment, in the United Kingdom, there is no one better for marketing football than the very young Arsenal star and soul of the generational and stylistic transformation of the north London club.

Maturity and captaincy

Specialists at the image agency highlight Saka’s importance in reaching out to many black followers of African descent. Emirates, sponsor of the ‘gunners’, definitely chose Saka to star in an ad for its airline because it saw in him the ability to embody the self-made young man, because he connects on the field because of his talent, and off it , for his simplicity and humility, because he made public his devout Christian faith. ‘You are not born a Londoner, you are made’, is repeated as a slogan in the club’s advertisement, as Arsenal’s multicultural roots show a ‘black soul’. For them, the club, along with Adidas and Emirates, wanted to pay tribute to them by choosing this year’s second black shirt with green and red trim.

Bukayo Saka He is also a strange young man. He proudly proclaimed that he was “a child of God.” “For me, it is very important to have God’s presence with me at all times,” he repeated to justify his actions, crossing himself every time he scored a goal. “It gives me more confidence knowing that God’s plan is perfect, so I can go out and play and know that God has my back.” The Arsenal player grew up in a devout Christian family in Ealing, west London, and is said to have attended the Kingsborough Centre, a Pentecostal church in Uxbridge, until he and his family moved to Hertfordshire to be closer to training in Arsenal.

Your Christian faith

Then He maintains close ties with his Christian primary school, Edward Betham Primary School in Greenford, where he continues to inspire students. He confides to young people who want to follow in his footsteps that his Bible, a gift from his father, is one of the things he cannot live without: “I try to read it every night before I go to bed. “I try to memorize the messages and carry them into my life.” Saka’s faith has helped him, he says, in difficult moments, like when he was bitterly criticized on social networks, with racist insults, because he missed the decisive penalty in the Euro 2020 Championship. Saka has the same faith in Crystal Palace centre-back Marc Guéhi.

SA Bukayo Saka The coaches always saw him as a smart football player, with a lot of technical qualities, but they were surprised to see him now, with a leadership capacity that was not expected of him. At 23 years old, he is no longer the educated youth player who shone with his excellent dribbling from the right wing. Now he takes his responsibility to decide the matches. Today, Saka proudly wears the captain’s armband, showing the character and self-confidence demanded of him. His coach, Mikel Arteta, sees no limits to his growth: “There are statistics that cannot be ignored, and what he does at his age, when the team needs it, is incredible.”

The influence of that Then was in the hundreds of children coming in and through the gates of Hale End was enormous. He was there too, from the age of nine until the end. Talented players have come through the Arsenal academy, directed by former player Per Mertesacker, but they rarely become starters at the Emirates. Norton-Cuffy, Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Riis Nelson, they are all in the same chain of progress, as are Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly now, but only Saka has climbed to the top. That is why he is an image and reference, converted into a new modern icon of success, which is also expressed by the English team.