Arsenal loanee Lucas Torreira has had his say on the opening weeks of his career at the club. The Uruguayan midfielder talked about the earlier part of his time at Arsenal in a chat with Italian media outlet Cronache Di Spogliatoio.
Torreira was established as a first-team regular at Italian team Sampdoria when he joined Arsenal in the summer of 2018 while new manager Unai Emery was trying to overhaul the team that has grown stale during the final years of the Arsene Wenger era in North London.
Unai Emery replaced Arsene Wenger in the summer of 2018 and Torreira was one of his first signings at the club. The midfielder began his Arsenal career well before things went south for him at the club as he lost his place in the starting XI before Emery was sacked towards the end of 2019.
Torreira remained on the outskirts of the Arsenal starting XI when Mikel Arteta was named the new Arsenal manager and he had to leave on loan to Atletico Madrid last season. He spent the whole of last season on loan at Atletico Madrid and was part of the LaLiga title-winning squad at the club. The Uruguayan international returned to Arsenal last summer and then joined Fiorentina on a season-long loan deal. At Fiorentina, he has scored twice in 19 Italian Serie A starts this season.
On his first year at Arsenal, Torreira said he didn’t speak English, but some of his teammates such as Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Stephan Lichsteiner spoke Italian which helped him to settle well at the club.
Speaking further, Torreira said that he sat in the same corner with Mesut Ozil and Alexandre Lacazette in the Arsenal dressing room. The midfielder was delighted that he was in the same dressing room space with French international star Lacazette and German midfielder Mesut Ozil. Alexandre Lacazette and Mesut Ozil were two of the biggest Arsenal players at the time.