Revealed: How Arsenal landed top midfielder

Luis Suarez played a key role in Lucas Torreira’s decision to join Arsenal this summer, according to the midfielder’s agent.

Torreira officially completed his £26 million switch to the Gunners after Uruguay’s World Cup campaign last month. The 22-year-old impressed at the tournament and featured alongside Suarez in Russia as Uruguay reached the quarter-final stage but were knocked out by France.

And it has emerged that Suarez, who was the subject of a £40m plus £1 bid from Arsenal in 2013, gave a glowing review of the Gunners to Torreira ahead of his switch to the Premier League.

‘The recommendation of Luis Suarez was decisive for Torreira to arrive at Arsenal,’ Torreira’s agent Pablo Bentancur told Sport890. Torreira, meanwhile, joined training with his new Arsenal teammates for the first time last week. The midfielder featured in the 2-0 win over Lazio on Saturday and is preparing to make his Premier League debut against Manchester City on Sunday.

 

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On signing Torreira Unai Emery stated, “In Lucas Torreira, we have signed a young player who is a very bright talent in the game.

“A midfielder with great quality, I have enjoyed watching his performances for Sampdoria in the past two seasons, and we all saw him do very well for Uruguay in the World Cup.

“He is a young player already with good experience, but who wants to keep on growing. We welcome Lucas to Arsenal and look forward to him joining us soon for pre-seaso

Torreira is still only young but he has already shown he has all the ability he needs to develop into a world-class midfielder.

The youngster plays most of his games as a central defensive midfielder. However, he can also drop back to centre-back and push forward to centre mid and even on a few occasions, central attacking midfield.

Torreira began his career at Serie B side, Pescara Primavera. The Uruguayan played 29 games for their first team scoring four goals in that period.

Torreira then earned himself a move to Serie A side Sampdoria for a fee believed to be around £1.8 million.

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The defensive midfielder has played 74 games for the Serie A side, scoring four and assisting four in that time.

Torreira also helped guide Sampdoria to a 10th place finish last season in the Serie A. He is a strong midfielder who reads the game very well and is superb at making interceptions.

The Uruguayan also played 38 games in all competitions last season for Sampdoria, scoring four and assisting one.

And – despite lacking match fitness having only returned to training recently – he looked comfortable at protecting the defence in yesterday’s 2-0 win over Lazio.

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His solidity and discipline in front of the back four will be a welcome sign to Gunners fans, but it was his technical ability that most got people talking.

Renowned fan site ArsenalFanTV were out in Stockholm, Sweden, to watch the match and host Robbie Lyle was filmed asking locals on their thoughts on Torreira following the match.

One supporter said: “He really resembles Cazorla.

“The movement and technique – I think he’s a perfect replacement for Cazorla.

“He [Cazorla] was a very important player so the technicality and the skill – I think he will be really good.”

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Cazorla was widely considered one of the best technical players in the Arsenal ranks during his six-year spell, but his time at the club was hampered by injuries.

The clip has been seen more than 16,000 times since it was posted to YouTube yesterday.

And viewers agreed with the bold claims made.

“I was saying the same thing too, he reminds me of Cazorla,” one commented. “Not as creative though.”

Another added: “Torreira will be that Cazorla type player for us.”

But a third wasn’t as convinced, saying: “One game and you’re comparing him to Santi.

“Just like [Granit] Xhaka was the next [Xabi] Alonso.”

Xhaka was also praised during the match last night, for what he did after Reiss Nelson’s goal.

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