Before every game at Emirates Stadium, Martin Odegaard lifts the lid on the mood in the camp via his captain’s notes published in the matchday programme.
Ahead of this evening’s big Champions League clash with Atletico Madrid, he discusses how his knee injury occurred, how the recovery is going, a timeframe for a return and what he’s doing to still be a leader off the pitch. Here is a snippet:
It was another really good result for us on Saturday at Fulham. whenever you keep a clean sheet and win away in this league you can be happy.
I had to watch the game from home as I’m recovering from my knee injury of course, but the rehab is going well. I had a few days off after the West Ham game, because I couldn’t do much work and had to rest my knee anyway, so I went to Norway. But I’ve been back for a week now and working every day to keep my fitness up as well as trying to heal the injury, so it’s busy days at the moment.
It’s hard work and long days in recovery, but that’s what you want and I feel like it’s going well so far. I feel like I’ve been really unlucky a few times this season. It was a knee-to-knee contact in the West Ham game, and at the time I didn’t know if it was bad or not because they can be quite painful, but normally you can run it off.
So that’s why I tried to keep going, to see if it was getting better. I was hoping it was just a knock that would improve in a couple of minutes. But it didn’t get better and I felt like something was wrong, so in the end it was better to come off. As soon as we got inside, the medical team had a proper look at it. When the adrenaline stopped flowing and it settled down a bit, then it was quite sore.
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It’s tricky to set a return date with this type of injury because, especially it being my left leg, a lot depends on how it goes when I start getting back on the pitch. Sometimes it can be quite sore when you start passing the ball and shooting and all these things with that leg, so it’s really hard to say a date. All I can say is I’m progressing really well at the moment. I think we will know more when I start getting back on the training pitches and we’ll see how that goes. If that goes really well then it can be quick.
In the meantime, I’m going to try to contribute however I can off the pitch. I’ve had some experiences now not being available, last year with my ankle injury and this year with the shoulder as well. I’m there at Sobha every day around the team. I’m in the meetings, I’m at the games so I’m definitely around and helping in a different way. I’m just trying to see if the team needs anything or if I see something when I’m watching.
For now we are looking forward to tonight’s game, and I’m so disappointed not to be playing because these are the big Champions League nights that we all love playing.
Read the rest of Martin’s notes, as well as a host of other fantastic content, by buying the Arsenal v Atletico Madrid programme either around the stadium or online, or subscribe to get every edition delivered to your door.
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
