Opinion: Induct Cesc Fabregas Into The Hall Of Fame?

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·14 septembre 2025

Opinion: Induct Cesc Fabregas Into The Hall Of Fame?

There’s an irony that Cesc Fabregas should be on the shortlist to join the Premiership Hall Of Fame at the same time as Sol Campbell.

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Many Gooners defend Sol Campbell’s choice to jump the North London divide, defending a man making a simple business decision which he justified with his medal collection. Yet some of the very same supporters fail to forgive Fabregas for equally ending up moving across the English capital to lift the Premiership that eluded him at Arsenal.

I remember some of my peers demanding the midfielder’s image be removed outside our stadium when he was announced a Chelsea player. Despite more success at Stamford Bridge, the few times the Spaniard pops up as a pundit he associates himself more with the Gunners. Some fans are even suggesting the 40-year-old could one day replace Mikel Arteta as our manager.

Of course, the reason some might not now like him is because they originally loved him. For better or worse he was the face of the club during the transition from Highbury to the Emirates. If we all think with our head and not our hearts, the truth is it would have been a disgrace had Cesc Fabregas ended up with only an FA Cup medal to show from his time in the UK.

The weight Fabregas carried

In 2025, youngsters get overhyped for doing very little. In 2004, a 17-year-old walked into the midfield of the Invincibles and never looked back.

It was a change in philosophy from Arsène Wenger. No longer was the Frenchman trusting tall athletic talent but willing to put faith in smaller-built individuals who, while not physically imposing, were technically gifted.

Little did anyone know at the time though, the new recruitment policy was more a consequence of the debts because of the need to pay off the stadium. Not able to compete financially with the likes of Man United, Chelsea and eventually Man City, our scouting had to find gems from around the world, no longer able to be fussy about details such as height.

Mr Wenger (perhaps naively) believed his young squad would all wait for each other to develop. There were title races where the Gunners led but in key moments of matches and seasons we just lacked the mentality.

Asked to be one of our youngest ever captains, Fabregas got impatient waiting for more experience to arrive to help him lead an inexperienced dressing room. It was help that never arrived, and there is only so long you can ask a professional to put their career on hold and wait for jam tomorrow.

There’s a famous image of Fabregas conceding a free kick against Chelsea and our skipper trying to gesture towards the official just how much bigger the opposition were. Of course, that frustration had nothing to do with the referee but a young man who cared and was getting tired of the same formula, playing for a team who pass the ball round in patterns but in the end get bullied by a machine.

It didn’t then help that when the player went on international duty he experienced Spain’s Golden Generation of a World Cup sandwiched between two Euros. It would have felt like night and day playing for your club or country.

Day to day, you have the pressure of leading a group of potential. What an escape then to go home and link up with winners from Barcelona and Real Madrid.

cesc fabregas 2009-10 (Getty images)

Heart vs head

Fabregas moved to England at the age of 15. It’s where he grew up from a teenager into a man. It was where he was given the platform to make his dreams come true. I do believe in his heart his preference was for those dreams to be met in a red and white shirt.

Maybe I’m naive but I believe he cared about the badge and when he calls Mr Wenger a father figure, that’s genuine. As is his claim that a return to Barça was the only way he ever would have left.

Two things were going on at the same time. Arsenal were increasingly failing to challenge for the title, which coincided with his boyhood club playing some of the greatest football of all time. It’s very easy to ask someone in his twenties to ignore those two facts out of love. Mr Wenger after all did that, and was the same loyalty repaid to him?

Returning to Spain was heart vs head. Hence why Arsenal were given contractually first refusal to re-sign him the moment he departed the Nou Camp. When that happened he made it clear that was his preference. It was Arsenal who let the clause expire.

Mr Wenger would later admit he felt the need to send a message to his squad. That if you walked away it couldn’t be easy to just walk back in the door. It was a mistake.

For the record, I’m not one of those who judges someone for maximising his career and showing more ambition than our owners. Hence our once young captain has now retired and we are still searching to end our drought.

Sometimes in sport, success and failure can be decided by the smallest detail. Cesc Fabregas was a world-class player at a time when Arsenal were not acting like a world-class club.

Click on this Premier League link to vote for Cesc Fabregas

Dan Smith

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