The Martinelli Fallacy

There's a wonderful line in The Social Network. The character who plays Mark Zuckerberg is being grilled by an attorney over allegations that he stole the idea for Facebook off a couple of twins. And he goes, 'If your clients invented Facebook then they would have invented Facebook'. Or something to that effect.

Simple. And true.

Alexander Graham-Bell wasn't the first geezer to think, 'God I'd love to speak to someone who was somewhere else entirely'. Thomas Edison wasn't the first to think, 'I wish I could see things at night time'. And I can promise you that Levi Roots wasn't the first Jamaican man in the history of Jamaica to think up the name, 'Reggae Reggae Sauce'.

And yet it was Graham-Bell who invented the telephone, and it was Edison who had the light bulb moment, and it was Roots who conjured up the aformentioned sauce.

The point is, it's one thing having the potential to do something. It's another entirely to have the drive, attrition and courage to actually do something about it, like Zuckerberg did.

And over the coming days, as Gabriel Martinelli looks set to leave Arsenal, you will hear obituaries for the 25-year-old's career - and more prominently, you will hear all about the apparent tragedy that is - or was - his potential.

With a cheetah's pace, undeniable skill and Brazilian-slash-Italian genes, a teenage Martinelli looked like one of the hottest prospects in the game.

Who can forget his double away to Liverpool, after which Jurgen Klopp called him 'the talent of the century'. And his solo goal away to Chelsea a few months later, sprinting the length of the pitch in Olympic time.

Forget talent of the century. This was bargain of the century, a player who cost us only £6 million. Now he's bargain of the century for a different reason if we get upwards of £55 million from Al-Hilal.

You would've scoffed at this figure in 2023 if you were told that Martinelli would be worth that much three years later. He'd just had a 15-goal Premier League season for Arsenal, earning him a big new contract. We signed Declan Rice for £100 million that summer and you wouldn't have been a fool to think maybe, just maybe, Martinelli would one day command a fee on that scale, too.

Problem is, he's only scored a combined 15 Premier League goals since the end of the 2022-23 season - five more than Gabriel Magalhaes in that time - and that £55 million fee is an absolute steal; not only because he only had one year left on his contract, but largely because he was not a player of that much substance.

His last three seasons at Arsenal yielded 29 goals and 18 assists from 148 appearances.

Lukas Podolski was someone who didn't particularly pull up any trees on the left-hand side of Arsenal's attack, but he managed 31 goals and 16 assists in 82 appearances for the club.

Martinelli has talent, don't get me wrong, but this is a 25-year-old man - the same age as Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.

And if we still think of him as a fresh-faced teenager then it's probably because he doesn't play with any more intelligence, maturity or cutting edge now than when he was one.

The point about the Zuckerberg line in The Social Network is that in any walk of life, there is a gulf between potential in its simplest form and actually maximising it. And unfortunately for Gabriel Martinelli, he will forever remain on the wrong side of that threshold.

If Martinelli could have been world class for Arsenal, he'd have been world class for Arsenal.