Christos Tzolis: Arsenal's New Left Winger Ready to Shine
At Arsenal’s sun‑drenched camp in Spain, the talk keeps drifting back to a fantasy. Vinicius Jr in red and white. A superstar dropped onto the champions’ left flank.
On Saturday in Girona, reality cut in from the touchline and found the bottom corner.
Christos Tzolis, on debut, picked up the ball wide, squared up his man, drove inside with purpose and let fly. A slight deflection helped, but the finish carried something more important: intent. A reminder that Arsenal already have a new left winger, and he is not here to play understudy.
A new face, no fear
Tzolis sits down with reporters for the first time since his £34m move from Club Brugge and sounds exactly like he plays: direct, unfussy, sure of himself.
“Obviously I'm confident as a player, so I don't think about the future and what the club will do in this position,” he says, when asked how it feels to see his club chase another star in his role.
His focus is narrower. Sharper.
“I'm thinking how to improve and settle as fast as possible in the club because I have the opportunity to train directly with the team from the beginning of the season, to play the friendly games and then to go to official games.
“So it's a chance to play directly from the beginning - and then it's up to me to show the qualities and what I can bring in the team. I'm pretty confident that I will show it in the next games.”
Those numbers from Belgium – 51 goal contributions in 52 games last season – are the kind that make recruitment departments lean forward. Yet in person, the 24‑year‑old comes across as polite, measured, almost understated. Beneath that, though, is a clear edge. He has not come to London to make up the numbers.
The call that changed his career came while he was back home in Thessaloniki. His agent rang: the Premier League champions wanted him. Other clubs tried to muscle in, but a few conversations with Mikel Arteta settled the matter. Arsenal or nothing.
Arteta sees a potential cult figure, a successor in spirit to the departed Leandro Trossard. Some supporters will need convincing that the comparison is fair. Tzolis knows exactly how he plans to do it.
“He doesn't want [me] to do things differently than I did in Club Brugge,” Tzolis explains. “I think [I need] to be myself and to show on the pitch all the passion and desire to win. Because I really like to win games and to give everything.
“If I give 100 per cent for every game, every duel, who doesn't like this? That's the best thing for a football player and then always you have the support from the fans.”
‘Leonidas’ and the running test
Ask Tzolis to define himself and he boils it down to three traits: direct, creative, work rate. Inside the camp, though, another quality has caught the eye.
Arsenal’s staff put the squad through one of their brutal pre‑season markers: a 1.4km shuttle test at full tilt. Twenty metres and back. Forty and back. Sixty and back. Each distance, five times. It’s a run that exposes anyone who has cut corners over the summer.
Tzolis finished first.
One of the fitness coaches christened him “Leonidas”, after Gerard Butler’s Spartan king in 300. The nickname has stuck.
“There are not all the players here,” he says, downplaying it with a small shrug. “There are still some players that have to do the tests, of course. But so far I'm first in the fitness test. It's pretty hard.
“I had the advantage that I started pre-season also with Brugge so I was already training for two weeks and always I wanted to keep myself fit during summer so I was ready. I came here ready, my fitness level and I was happy that I could show it here as well.”
The “Leonidas” tag fits in more ways than one. He arrives as the replacement for another Leo in Trossard, who has left for Besiktas. In Greek history, Leonidas led a small force against a vast Persian army. Tzolis, at 24 and stepping into the front line of a title‑defending side, feels like a one‑man charge of his own.
Modelled on Villa, echoing Alexis
Tzolis has thought deeply about the kind of forward he wants to be. When he looks for reference points, he doesn’t reach for the obvious modern winger.
He reaches for David Villa.
“His body style is similar to mine,” he says. “We are not the tallest as strikers but in finishing terms, he was top level.
“I'm not saying I'm the level of David Villa but we have some similarities. He was not a striker, striker. He was an inside forward - a left pocket player who always went for goals.
“I see myself like this because I'm not always a typical wide winger. I go inside a lot and Villa, as a winger/inside forward, was top level.”
Villa was ruthless from that left half‑space, always hunting the far corner, always alive to second balls. Tzolis wants to live in those same pockets, drifting inside, arriving to finish rather than hugging the chalk.
Another comparison comes closer to home. Alexis Sanchez, who once terrorised defences from the Emirates’ left flank, is a player Tzolis watched obsessively as a teenager. The Chilean wore No 17 when he arrived in north London in 2014. Tzolis has taken that shirt now.
“Of course, I watched a lot of football and he was a top player for Arsenal as a left winger,” he says. “He's one of the players I looked up to when I was younger. And also I see some similarities with him.
“But it's not the reason I took the No 17. It was more that there were not so many options for the lower numbers, and there was also No 18 and 19 available. I had them in the past, so I didn't want to use them again.
“So, I went for the No 17. It's nice. Alexis Sanchez had No 17 - so I hope I will have the same success.”
The echoes are there: the low centre of gravity, the appetite for duels, the urge to drive inside and decide games. Arsenal do not need a Sanchez tribute act, but if No 17 can bring even a fraction of that influence, the Emirates will respond.
Inside a champion’s dressing room
Tzolis has walked into a club carrying a heavy piece of history. No Arsenal side has defended the English top‑flight title since Herbert Chapman’s team in the 1930s. Arteta’s group are trying to change that.
From his first days at London Colney, the Greek winger has seen why the club believes this squad can go again.
“For the pre-warming up in the gym to go to training and the intensity and how serious everybody is,” he says, when asked what surprised him most. “From gym exercises to recovery sessions, everyone is demanding and trying to do as best as possible and that shows the high-level standards of this team.
“Even in pre-season, everyone is serious for the friendly games, for the training, for every exercise. Of course you expect it, but I didn't know that before.
“When I see the training, and how hungry every player is for every training drill, that means everybody's ready to compete at the highest level. And when you're a player of Arsenal, you want compete for every title that's possible.
“So, it's not only about the Premier League, it's about all the competitions we are playing for. And I see a clear mindset [from the players] and that everybody is on the same page to win titles here. I have seen that in training, and when you train like that in the game, it makes it even better.”
He speaks from experience about how fragile a title defence can be. At Club Brugge, he arrived as champion and watched the crown slip away a year later. That lesson has stayed with him.
“To defend a title I think you don't have to think about it,” he says. “It's more or less more difficult for the other teams because the pressure is there, not on the team who won the title.”
It is a striking view. Arsenal, in his eyes, should play like hunters, not hunted.
If the Vinicius dream ever becomes real, Arteta will have an embarrassment of riches on the left. Until then, a different story is unfolding. A 24‑year‑old from Thessaloniki, running harder than anyone in pre‑season, cutting in from the wing, wearing Alexis’ number and answering to the name Leonidas, is intent on making that spot his own.
The battle for Arsenal’s left flank has already started.
