Willian insists he wanted to reignite the love and passion for the game, which is why he left Arsenal just a season after signing a three-year deal.
Arsenal fans may not want to revisit the time Willian played for the club. The Brazilian was signed on a free transfer from Chelsea before the 2020/21 season began, but the decision by the Gunners proved to be a disastrous one.
Mikel Arteta and Edu Gaspar signed Willian on big wages to add experience and a different dimension to Arsenal’s attack. In the opening game of the season against Fulham, the Brazilian provided two assists, and it seemed like the Gunners made the right call.
Soon, performances started dipping as Willian failed to add value or repay the trust shown by Arteta, who tended to choose the Brazilian ahead of Nicolas Pepe. Soon the former Chelsea winger lost his place and was resigned to a bench role for the next phase of the season.
Willian managed to score his first and only goal for Arsenal towards the end of the season. Arsenal recognised the error that they had made by offering him a three-year deal on massive wages which they rectified this past summer. Willian left the club after just a single season for boyhood club Corinthians, much to the relief of the Arsenal faithful.
Willian has now opened up on his time at the Emirates, suggesting he told his agent he wanted to leave just three months into the first season. The quotes from the winger appeared on Goal.com via YouTube channel FIVE, where he stated how the desire to reignite his love and passion for the game allowed him to forgo huge financial gains.
Willian said, “I was not happy; that’s why I didn’t perform. I don’t want to go into the details, but I wasn’t happy. So, when I arrived there I was happy, from the beginning I was motivated, I wanted to do well, new club, new mates, new projects.
“After three months, I told my agent, ‘please, I want to go’. I don’t want to speak badly about the club because it is a big club, has a big history in football, big players played there before it’s a big club – but it didn’t work, it was, of course, the most difficult time of my career.
“Yeah, it was big money that I gave up – money is not the most important thing in life, you need to be happy, to be getting pleasure and wake up and want to go to training. I wasn’t having that, so I said to myself, with my family and my wife ‘I cannot stay here, I am not happy here, I have to leave and find a way out to leave the club.’ For me, it is unfair to stay in a place you don’t want to stay just because of the money.”
Since returning to Corinthians, Willian has made nine appearances, registering two assists so far. As for Arsenal, they seem to have found their formula in the attacking unit with Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli, Emile Smith Rowe and Martin Odegaard excelling in recent weeks.