Cristiano Ronaldo once tipped Martin Odegaard as one of his top five wonderkids to keep an eye on.
And it’s fair to say his 2015 prediction has come true, with Odegaard – now Arsenal skipper – regarded as one of the top midfielders in Europe.
At the time, Ronaldo and Odegaard were teammates at Real Madrid following the latter’s arrival at the Bernabeu as a 16-year-old from Stromsgodset.
It was Ronaldo who Odegaard came on for when he made Real history in May 2015 in the club’s 7-3 win over Getafe.
Aged just 16 years and 157 days, the Gunners playmaker became Los Blancos‘ youngest ever player after entering the match in the 58th minute.
Six months later when speaking to TNT Sports, Ronaldo named Odegaard as one of his five most exciting young players in world football, alongside Neymar, Eden Hazard, Paul Pogba and Memphis Depay.
Naming the Norwegian first, Ronaldo said: “You see many players with potential, for example I will mention Odegaard of Madrid.
“At 16 he’s still young, but you can see that he’s a very good player.”
In a separate interview prior to Odegaard’s arrival in Spain, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner revealed he was left taken aback after training with him during his trial.
Ronaldo remarked: “He’s a good player, I think he’s a young boy, he can still grow.
“He’s 16-years-old. He has a good future ahead. We must give him time to learn, to take his best decisions.
“But I see a lot of potential in the player, he has got a good left foot.”
While Ronaldo, who Odegaard previously revealed was one of his mentors at the Bernabeu, knew Real had a serious talent on their hands, boss Carlo Ancelotti wasn’t interested.
Writing in his 2016 autobiography Quiet Leadership, Odegaard’s arrival at the club was labelled as a ‘PR exercise’ by the Italian.
Ancelotti wrote: “When Real Madrid decided to sign a kid from Norway, 16-year-old Martin Odegaard, I thought, ‘I don’t care if he comes in or not because he’s not going to play for me now’.
“He could go on to be the best player in the world after I’m gone, but I’m not interested in the signing. He is being recruited for the future, for other managers after my time.”
Before adding: “If the president decides that, for a PR exercise, he needs the Norwegian boy to play three games with the first team, I will work out a way of doing that.”
It was a similar view shared by Ancelotti’s successor Zinedine Zidane, with Odegaard limited to just 11 appearances in all competitions – being shipped out on loan on four occasions.
One of those spells came at Arsenal during the second half of the 2020/21 season, with the Gunners eventually turning his temporary stay into a permanent move for £30million.
And you can be sure Odegaard will be looking to show Ancelotti, who returned to Madrid in 2021, what he is missing over the course of the Champions League quarter-final tie between the two teams.
Ancelotti was quick to heap praise on the player for how he has developed since leaving Real, lauding him over his courage in seeking first-team football elsewhere.
The ex-Chelsea boss said in his pre-match press conference: “He was very young [at Real Madrid]. He had that talent when he was 16.
“He left the club for new experiences and he is one of the best midfielders right now in Europe. When he arrived, he was really young.
“He didn’t have space to play in the first team because in front he had Ronaldo, [Karim] Benzema and James Rodriguez, and he didn’t find maybe the space to show his quality.
“He was really young, he decided to go away to have the possibility to play and I think – honestly – he did well because now he is back at one of the most important clubs in Europe.”
