Gabriel Martinelli scored a late winner for Brazil as they edged past Japan in the Round of 32 of the World Cup.
For the third consecutive game, Carlo Ancelotti brought him on in a more central position, and Martinelli has generally looked more comfortable than he has domestically this season.
He has been able to find pockets of space and get into the box more, and against Japan, showed great composure to slot away the winning goal in stoppage time.
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Some Arsenal fans have been calling to see Martinelli through the middle for years, so why is it that Mikel Arteta has never really tried it?
Has he been wasting Martinelli all along?
Mikel Arteta has never considered playing Gabriel Martinelli through the middle
Gabriel Martinelli has played as a striker before, under Unai Emery when he was still coming through as a teenager, where he scored four goals in his first three games.
But since then, his role at Arsenal has been almost exclusively on the left, even through periods where another central option was so obviously needed.
The clearest example being during the 2024-25 campaign, when Mikel Merino was deployed as an auxiliary striker during Arsenal’s injury crisis up front.
Leandro Trossard had cameos through the middle during that time, but strangely, Martinelli did not.
And just last season, for example, when Viktor Gyokeres was struggling for form but was the only fit centre-forward, Arteta was reluctant to experiment and stuck with what he had.
Arteta likes his strikers to receive the ball with their back to goal, which is not naturally Martinelli’s game. But that is not the only way to play centrally.
A second striker role, running off someone like Kai Havertz, is essentially what Martinelli has been doing for Brazil, and it suits his instincts being in and around the box far better than working a touchline.
There is a fair counter-argument here too
While there may be some truth to Arteta’s rigid thinking holding Martinelli back, there is a middle ground.
The Brazilian’s end product has declined over the past three seasons, and that is not something that can be pinned entirely on the manager.
He scored just one Premier League goal last season, a far cry from his tally of 15 in 2022/23.
Players stagnate, and some of that responsibility has to sit with Martinelli himself.
But we’ve seen that Arteta generally prefers inside runners in his system, players who attack the space beyond the winger and the centre-forward.
On paper, that is exactly the kind of movement Martinelli offers. It has arguably always made sense but Arteta has never fancied it.
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The Arsenal boss has been especially rigid about who plays where in forward areas. In his head, Martinelli and Trossard are his left wingers, and that’s where they’ll feature almost without exception.
The rare deviations, like Merino up front or Bukayo Saka at number ten, stemmed from other injuries rather than an actual tactical experiment.
But could, for example, a front line with Eberechi Eze cutting inside from the left and Martinelli playing inside, closer to goal, as a second striker off of Havertz work?
That seems like something that Ancelotti would do, given how he’s used him for Brazil. And you could picture Pep Guardiola something like that too.
Whether Arteta ever does remains to be seen.
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