Jack Wilshere is without a team. At 29, the English midfielder has seen his promising career fade in recent years and his future for next season is complicated to the point that he does not even have offers.
“I never in my life thought I was going to be in this position. Today I was running on a running track. Everybody told me that at 28 or 29 I was going to be at the top of my career. And I thought that so it would be, that he would continue playing for England, that he would continue in a top club … “, Wilshere himself confesses to The Athletic, whose contract with Bournemouth, of the English Second Division, expired on June 30 after signing a contract in January. short-term contract.
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Long gone are those years when Wilshere broke into Arsenal’s first team in 2008 and, after a loan deal at Bolton, made his debut for the English team in August 2010. But a series of injuries cut short his career and in the 2016 season- 2017 the ‘Gunners’ already yielded it to Bournemouth, then in the Premier League.
Arsenal, West Ham and Bournemouth
In June 2018 he left Arsenal at the end of his contract and signed for West Ham for three seasons but in October 2020 both parties agreed to terminate the contract. He was without a team until in January 2021 he began his last and fleeting stage at Bournemouth.
Wilshere’s situation is so strange that it even affects his family life, as he explains in detail in the same interview. “My children are already at an age where they understand things. Archie, who is nine, asks me: What do you think of MLS? Why aren’t you playing in the league? He loves football, he knows everything Sometimes he says to me: Why doesn’t any team want you? I don’t know. How do I explain it to him? They have friends at school and you know how children are, they can be very tough. Why doesn’t your dad work ? Isn’t he a good footballer? ”
“Nobody loves Me”
Siena and Jack, their two young children, have never seen their father play football: “The most difficult thing is trying to explain it when they ask things like: So why don’t you sign for a team in England? wants”.
Looking back, Wilshere acknowledges that “I should never have left Arsenal and this has nothing to do with West Ham (the team he went to) because I was a fan as a child. I had a conversation with Arsène Wenger when I returned from my assignment in Bournemouth and I had 12 months left on my contract. He told me: “You can go, here we are not going to offer you a new contract.” I knew that Wenger valued me as a footballer and I knew that if I had games I could earn my trust. conversation when I sat down with Unai Emery and he told me: ‘Look, here you have a new contract but you are not going to be in my starting lineup.’ I remember I left angry, I called my agent and told him that I had to go. Maybe I must have taken a few days to think I could have fought for a spot in that midfield. “
Wants to play abroad
But Wilshere has no choice but to look to the future. . “I feel like a door has been closed to me in my country,” he admits. “I am open to playing abroad. In fact, I want to go and try something different, it will be good for me and my family.” The market closes on August 31 but being free of contract, it could sign after the deadline.