Arsenal youth midfielder Ismael Bennacer has had praise heaped upon him by Andries Jonker, after the Frenchman scored a wonder goal against Bayern Munich on Wednesday – his first goal for the club.
The game ended 1-1, securing a more than valuable point for the Gunners who remained top of their UEFA Youth League group and likely to progress.
Bennacer made his first-team debut in the Capital One Cup after a string of impressive performances for the academy side’s and displayed some fine technique and after doing well against Bayern, Jonker believes Bennacer is a special talent.
He has two things in him.
Firstly he has the defensive quality in winning balls, but he also has the offensive quality in being able to play football well. He has a special quality of having a good passing range and a very good shot, like he showed against Bayern.
What we try to do with him is to make sure that he doesn’t just play in one tempo. He’s starting to play in a different way of speed, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes thinking and sometimes aggressively.
He showed he has understood the attention we gave him. There are steps that he does need to make in terms of making progress but this was the first big step and he rewarded himself with a very, very nice goal.
The Arsenal youth boss then moved on to Hugo Keto, who kept his side in the game with an unbelievable number of top quality saves. Jonker believes his efforts will make strides in his career.
Defensively it’s really, really good for him.
Hugo is very, very young and to perform this way is very impressive. We also want him to have a good role when we have the ball too. He has to make some steps there as well.
Arsenal U18s face Norwich U18s on Saturday morning, with Bennacer and Keto both expected to feature.
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