Former Arsenal winger Nicolas Pepe admits he considered quitting football during his time with Mikel Arteta’s side and claims the Gunners blocked his move to Saudi Arabia.
Pepe was Arsenal’s club-record signing in 2019 as he joined in a £72 million deal from French side Lille.
The winger showed flashes of promise in his first two seasons at Arsenal but ultimately failed to make a lasting impact and was allowed to join Nice on loan after his third campaign in the Premier League.
The 29-year-old, who is currently a free agent after spending last season on loan at Turkish side Trabzonspor, now says Arsenal made it difficult for him to leave the club.
‘I didn’t care about the money. At Nice, I sat on 25 per cent of my salary,’ Pepe said in an interview with L’Equipe.
‘I just wanted to play. I would have liked to terminate earlier in the summer but Arsenal didn’t want to. They said: ‘We bought you for €80m (£72m), we can’t’.
‘They asked for large sums of money so it ended up going wrong every time. They ended up accepting after the European market closed.
‘Only the Gulf countries and Turkey remained. But Arsenal only agreed to cancel, on the condition that I agreed not to join Saudi Arabia. It was a question of image. And there was this offer from Trabzonspor.’
Pepe also praised Arsenal fans for their support and admits the criticism he received during his time with the Gunners forced him to consider early retirement.
‘I didn’t ask for €80m (£72m) to be put on me,’ Pepe said.
‘At that amount, people don’t care where you come from, they want you to perform straight away. It’s all about statistics, it’s a shame but it’s current events. I wasn’t going to roll over the Premier League like that. But that’s what earned me this wave of criticism.
‘I don’t look at social media much, but if my brother told me, ‘this is what they said about you’, it would affect me unconsciously. It also came from the media or from certain members of the club. They don’t realise that it can affect the mental state, the family and it affects performances. The only people who have always supported me are the Arsenal fans.
‘At Arsenal, I had suffered a kind of trauma, as if my passion had been taken away from me, I had a disgust for football. By not playing anymore, I wondered why I was doing this job. I doubted myself to the point that I thought about quitting everything.’
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