Serge Gnabry: From West Brom flop to Bayern & Germany Star
Serge Gnabry. Is letting him go Arsenal’s biggest mistake in the last 5 years? Before we go further, who is Serge Gnabry? Serge Gnabry is a German professional footballer who plays for German & European Champions Bayern Munich and the German national team. He is of Cote d’Ivoire descent. Gnabry began his professional career with Arsenal FC in England, initially joining the youth team at the North London based club. He played only 18 times for Arsenal’s first team. The likes of Theo Walcott, Park Chu-young, Gervinho and even Marouane Chamakh played more for the club than Gnabry. He suffered a serious knee injury which ruled him out for the 2014-15 season. In August 2015, due to a lack of game time, Gnabry joined West Brom on loan for the 2015-16 season. However, he played only 1 league match and 2 EFL cup matches at the West Midlands club. Former West Brom manager Tony Pulis once famously said that Serge wasn’t good enough to play for West Brom. Now those comments look flat out wrong.
The turning point in Gnabry’s career came in 2016 when he was sold by Arsenal to Bundesliga club Werder Bremen after he impressed and helped Germany to a silver medal at the Rio Olympics 2016. The transfer fee was just €5 million. He scored 11 goals and provided 2 assists in 27 appearances for Werder in the 2016-17 season. This performance caught the attention of Bayern Munich. Die Roten paid just €8 million for Gnabry’s services. After joining Bayern, he was loaned out to Hoffenheim for the 2017-18 season. At Hoffenheim, he made 26 appearances and had 17 goal involvements (10 goals and 7 assists). Gnabry returned to Bayern after his loan spell at Hoffenheim. He won the 2018-19 Bayern player of the year award having scored 13 goals and given 9 assists in 42 matches across all competitions. The 2019-20 season was a spectacular season for both Gnabry and the Bavarian giants as the club won the treble for the second time in its history (the first being 2012-13). Gnabry showed the world what he was capable of after he scored 4 goals against previous season’s UCL runner up Tottenham in a 7-2 away win for Bayern. He also scored twice against Chelsea and Lyon in the Round of 16 and the semi-final respectively. Gnabry also scored in the famous 8-2 win for the Bavarians against Barcelona in the quarter-final. In total, Gnabry made 46 appearances in the 19-20 season scoring 23 goals and providing 14 assists across the Bundesliga, UCL and the DFB Pokal. And with Leroy Sane having arrived at Die Roten, Bayern have an exciting winger partnership which could be called ‘Sanabry’ just like Robben and Ribery had ‘Robbery’ for a decade at the club.
Gnabry has also been capped 14 times by Germany. In those 14 matches played so far, he scored 13 goals and made 4 assists. Gnabry has come a long way in his career. Once deemed a West Brom flop and not good enough for top flight football, he is now Germany’s most valuable player according to Transfermarkt and a key player for Bayern Munich.
