Arsenal and Everton Soares: Is this the Edu effect?

Arsenal are being linked with 23-year-old Gremio winger Everton Soares. Is this the effect of new technical director Edu Gaspar, who is an expert of the Brazilian market?

Arsenal need a winger. Their search for one, however, is not proving very productive. Interest in a wide array of potential targets, stemming from Yannick Carrasco in China to Wilfried Zaha at Crystal Palace, has led to little activity whatsoever, unless if you include an 18-year-old who has never played in Europe before.

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As a result, the club is beginning to turn to other options, including apparently star Lille winger Nicolas Pepe and now Gremio prospect Everton Soares. The latter only emerged in the last couple of days, the 23-year-old having been busy scoring a goal in the Copa America final for his Brazil.

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It remains to be seen how real this interest actually is, but for what it is worth, Everton himself has confirmed there is an offer for an unnamed club:

"“At this moment I have an offer, but I can’t say the name of the club. Just like I can’t promise that on Thursday I’ll still be playing for Gremio, we’ll see.”"

I know nothing about Everton, and if I’m honest, I bet that most people involved in football know very litle about him other than those that follow Brazilian football carefully. He has only ever played in Brazil or for Brazil. He is not exactly a household name, despite his obvious talent. So, should this interest be real, it leads me to one, fairly obvious conclusion: new technical director Edu Gaspar is having an immediate impact of proceedings at the Emirates.

Former Invincible Edu was named as the replacement to Ivan Gazidis earlier this summer, arriving in north London just days after Brazil’s successful Copa America campaign, for which he was the general coordinator. He joined up with the team on their U.S. pre-season tour and has dived into work alongside head of football Raul Sanllehi.

There are few people in England that will know Brazilian football as innately as Edu. He became the director of football at Corinthians upon his retirement, from 2010 to 2016, and has been the general coordinator of Brazil ever since. If there is an individual who knows Brazilian football well, it is Edu.

And so, it is fairly obvious to put two and two together. Edu is the man engineering the Everton move, if there is indeed an Everton move in the first place. That means two things: the first is that he and Sanllehi are working together from the off but that Edu is being listened to; the second is that he has been preparing for this job for some time, already eyeing up targets and plans for the future, as the deal for Gabriel Martinelli also suggested.

Edu is the future of Arsenal football club. And that future may just have a Brazilian tinge.