Gabriel Martinelli left the Premier League to “clear his head” and for a “change scenery,” his agent now claims after being sold by Arsenal to Al Hilal during the summer transfer window.
There were “offers” to stay in England, his agent Marcos Casseb told Brazilian media outlet Itatiaia, although he did not name any clubs involved. The same, he said, was true of Germany’s Bundesliga and Serie A in Italy. The interview reads like an attempt to rewrite the narrative surrounding the Brazilian winger, who was being pushed to the fringes at Arsenal.
“We think his cycle at Arsenal had ended,” Casseb said. “It was seven years, he arrived there at 18, and Arsenal went through a huge rebuild.
“Last year they were Premier League champions. I think he completed his cycle. He arrived young. He was the only player who was there before [Mikel] Arteta, apart from [Bukayo] Saka.”
Arteta’s burning ambition saw Martinelli become collateral damage.
The Gunners won the Premier League last season but fell short in the Champions League. Arteta wants to defend the domestic title, which Arsenal haven’t done since 1935, and crown his team European champions, which Arsenal have never done. Martinelli, dropped last season, was identified as someone to upgrade.
While Christos Tzolis replaced Leandro Trossard, the Gunners tried and failed to sign Morgan Rogers, Bradley Barcola and Vinícius Júnior. Selling Martinelli was still deemed beneficial even though a superstar winger didn’t arrive.
Martinelli Showed Reluctance to Leave Arsenal
It was widely reported during the summer that Martinelli rejected Galatasaray. The reason given was that he saw his career continuing in a bigger European league. As Fabrizio Romano put it, he “never considered a move to Türkiye at this stage of his career a realistic option.”
In mid-August, reputable reporting suggested Martinelli was “not pushing to leave” Arsenal. But, if it came to it, he wanted to join a club in England, Spain, France, Germany or Italy. Soon afterwards, he didn’t even make the bench for Arsenal’s first three matches of the season. The club could get good money by selling and Arteta was sending a clear message.
Martinelli wound up moving to Saudi Arabia, where enormous tax-free salaries lure players out of Europe but cannot make up for the much reduced global appeal and significantly lower competitive quality; after seven rounds of matches, one out of three clubs in the 18-team division is still winless so far this season. If Martinelli saw himself as being above Türkiye’s Süper Lig, the Saudi Pro League was objectively not a better alternative from a pure soccer perspective.
The way Casseb tells it now is offering a different spin. “We thought it was time for him to move, and the club also saw it that way. It was a very good departure for him and for Arsenal.”
It certainly was for Arsenal. The Gunners almost doubled their club-record sale by raising £60 million ($79.3 million) from Martinelli’s transfer, breaking the embarrassingly old mark set nine years earlier when Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain joined Liverpool.
“Did he get offers? He did yeah,” Casseb declared. “We had offers from Italian clubs, we had offers from German clubs and we had offers from other Premier League clubs but it was a moment when I think he needed and he also wanted to clear his head a bit, to change scenery.
“He went to the biggest club in Asia to be part of a very ambitious project. You can see it in the players that they have brought in, three players who were at the World Cup, each with their respective national teams and three players that are under 27.
“That’s a trend in Arab football right now, they’re changing the way they want to sign players. They’ve been trying to do that—lower the average age of the league—and their project has attracted a lot of attention. I think it was really important for a change of scenery.”
Martinelli’s Al Hilal Impact Needs to Improve
Since joining Al Hilal, Martinelli has started three out of four games. There were initial concerns that he might have to share minutes with fellow new arrival Crysencio Summerville, with both competing for starts on the left wing. Martinelli has instead moved to the right.
He scored a hat-trick in just 54 minutes on the pitch when Al Hilal thrashed 17th-place Al Taawoun 6–0 on Sept. 12. Martinelli has been much less effective in his other appearances.
An AFC Champions League Elite debut in a win against Qatar’s Al Gharafa last week produced no goals, no assists, no chances created and only a single shot on target. It was a similar story when Al Hilal suffered a surprising home defeat to Neom five days prior.
Martinelli started only once for Brazil at the 2026 World Cup and is off the roster for the September-October international window. There’s an element of Carlo Ancelotti using these friendly matches to experiment, but it’s equally notable that it wasn’t key players who were sacrificed to open it up and make that possible—Vinícius Jr, Raphinha, Gabriel, Marquinhos and Bruno Guimarães were all selected as normal.
Anything but scintillating form in the Saudi Pro League might not be good enough.
