This summer, with little fanfare, 35-year-old Arturo Lupoli retired from football. The striker, once hailed as Arsenal and Italy’s next big thing, was playing in the lower reaches of the Italian league system.

After a promising start to his professional career, Lupoli ultimately fell foul of physical problems and some ill-advised decisions. “But in the end, I don’t blame anybody except myself,” he tells The Athletic. “What happened is mostly my fault: I didn’t have the strength to impose myself and come back to a higher league.”

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Lupoli first attracted Arsenal’s attention as a teenager at Parma, the club he’d joined at 10 years old. His goalscoring exploits attracted scouts from across Europe. During his Allievi (Under-17) season, he recorded a remarkable 45 goals in 22 appearances — and his partnership with the equally highly-rated Giuseppe Rossi saw both players recognised for Italy at youth international level.

Lupoli and Rossi were Parma’s two great hopes — yet neither could see a clear progression to the senior side. What’s more, this was a period when the club was beset with financial problems. The declared bankruptcy of Parmalat, one of Parma’s principal backers, left the club facing a first-team fire sale. A once-glamorous outfit would have to scale back spending.

The crisis made Parma vulnerable, and vultures from the cash-rich Premier League swooped in for their prized assets. In the summer of 2004, Arsenal were champions and Invincibles — an enticing prospect for Lupoli.

“It was a very, very strange year at Parma,” he explains. “A lot of young people were leaving the club.

“We were playing with the under-18s, we had won the Italian championship. Sometimes, we’d train with the reserve team — but never with the first team. Arsenal made me an offer to come to England. I spoke several times with Liam Brady, who was in charge of the academy then.”

Lupoli went to Arsenal, Rossi to Manchester United. “There was a lot of talk about it,” says Lupoli. “A lot of people were asking why big Italian clubs weren’t signing these two young players.”

It was a high-profile move for Lupoli, but one that came with significant challenges. Having been a youth player until now, the 17-year-old was immediately plunged into first-team training at Arsenal’s pre-season training camp.

“It was a very, very big step between youth team and first team,” he admits. “The first few months were very, very difficult for me — especially those first two weeks of pre-season in Austria. I remember the first training session: everything was quicker, everything was faster and every player was at the top level.

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“It was very difficult to communicate and be part of the team. I had left my family, left my environment. For Giuseppe it was probably a bit easier in Manchester because he was born in America and spoke very good English.”

Lupoli did have team-mates at Arsenal who tried to help him settle. “Mathieu Flamini spoke Italian, he helped me,” he says. “Philippe Senderos too. Thierry (Henry) and Patrick (Vieira) spoke a little bit because they used to play in Italy. And then there were the Spanish guys: Cesc Fabregas and Jose Antonio Reyes were around the same age, so I used to spend a lot of time with them.”

Steadily, Lupoli began to find his feet in north London. After the Austrian camp, he was housed with an Italian family in North Finchley. He also benefited from being part of a meritocratic environment — even in a star-studded squad, manager Arsene Wenger was determined to give young players an opportunity.

“Having Arsene as a manager helped a lot,” Lupoli explains. “Cesc was already with the first team, Flamini, (Emmanuel) Eboue, (Gael) Clichy… As a young player, you see that and it makes you believe you have a chance. Arsene used to talk with us a lot — he would tell us every time that we had a chance to play with the first team. It was a big turning point for me.”

On the pitch, he struck up a prolific youth team partnership with Danish striker Nicklas Bendtner. “Nicklas was very good to play alongside,” says Lupoli. “And off the pitch, he was a very, very funny guy.

“At that time, me and him were a perfect partnership because he used to play a lot with his skill and his physical ability. And I used to move around him — I was looking for the space in behind — so we combined a lot on the pitch.

“His best attribute and his worst attribute was that he believes so much in his capacity to play at the first-team level. At the time, I was maybe doing a little bit more than him, scoring more goals than him. But he had this incredible belief, and over the years he made a very good career — even at Arsenal. He just always believed he could go to a higher level.”

#Arsenal reserves pictures from 11 years ago today. @GilbertoSilva15 @bendtnerb52 #ZinedineCygan and @arturolupoli52

— Stuart MacFarlane 🔆 (@Stuart_PhotoAFC) March 21, 2016

It was a promising cohort at Arsenal. “We had a great youth team,” reflects Lupoli. “We had Sebastian Larsson, Johan Djourou, Quincy Owusu-Abeyie — he was an incredible player at that time.”

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First-team opportunities for these young Gunners came via the League Cup. In October 2004, Lupoli made his senior debut against Manchester City. In the following round, he scored twice as Arsenal overcame Everton in a 3-1 win at Highbury.

“That game was incredible,” says Lupoli. “I wasn’t expecting to face Manchester City, but we did quite well away from home, so in the next round we played the same formation.

“It was just a perfect night — we were one nil down and then in the second half, everything was amazing. I remember Robin van Persie and Quincy had a great night, and they set me up for my two goals. I managed to take my chance. It was great because Everton were a strong team.

“I remember celebrating in the dressing room afterwards — my dad and my agent were at the stadium too. Arsene said, ‘Well done, good job, keep focusing on the next step’.”

Those words proved quite portentous for Lupoli, whose Arsenal career never superseded that “perfect” night. “For young players, it was good to play one game well,” says Lupoli. “But Arsene wanted us to play many good games, and be consistent every time we step out on the pitch. That’s the difference between a good player and a champion.

“When you are so young, you don’t fully understand that. The mentality when you are a young player is different. When you are older, you know you have to grab every opportunity. Football is like life: very quick. If you let a chance pass you by, it can be very difficult to get back to that level.”

Lupoli speaks from some experience. For all his natural talent, he did not carve out a career at the top level. He has considerable regrets about the manner of his departure from Arsenal, in 2007.

With his pathway to the first team blocked by a number of big names, Lupoli was loaned to Derby County for the 2006-07 season. It was a successful campaign: one that would ultimately end in promotion via the play-offs. “I had a great season, on and off the pitch,” says Lupoli. “We played some great football and everybody seemed to love me at Derby.”

Arsenal were happy with his progress. His contract was due to expire in the summer of 2007, but Wenger authorised a new four-year contract. The idea was for Lupoli to return to Derby on loan in the Premier League. Under external pressure, however, Lupoli opted to sign a pre-contract with Fiorentina back home in Italy.

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“It wasn’t a decision made on quality of life,” says Lupoli. “I was having a great time with Arsenal and with Derby. My decision was just made because of a lot of pressure from outside, mostly from my agent and my family.

“I should have listened more to myself because I was asking to stay in England. But the offer from Fiorentina was very strong on the money side. At that time, everybody in Italy was speaking about me going to Arsenal and scoring goals, and doing well with Derby County. Then I was going with the Italian under-21 team, scoring goals there too. So they made a great offer.”

There was also interest from Napoli, and Lupoli was interested in pursuing that option to be closer to his parents. “I asked a lot of times to go and speak with them,” says Lupoli. “But my agent said their offer was not good enough.”

“At that time I should have waited a little bit, and taken my time to arrive at the right decision. But by the start of February, I had already signed for Fiorentina as a free agent.

“I trusted my agent a lot because they took me to England and they’d always been very close to me and my family, but when it comes to a decision like this everybody has to make their own mind up. At the end, it’s the player that has to go somewhere and live that experience. I should have listened to myself — but in the end, I just trusted my agents and decided to follow their way of thinking.”

It was a fork in the road for Lupoli. “Of course, if I look back there are a few things I would change,” he admits. “But I have to look back at that time and understand why it happened. When you grow older, and you have more experience, you see life in many different ways. It becomes a different story.”

After three years in England, returning to Italy provided Lupoli with something of a shock. “It was totally different for me all over again,” he says. “By now, I was used to the English mentality, the preparation, the way of training. The Italian way was so different: it was so much about tactics every day, and learning how to stop the opponent. I wasn’t used to this — at Arsenal and Derby, we did almost nothing like this! There the preparation was more about our technical skill, our ability, our way of playing football. And training was much shorter in England — in Italy, it seemed so long.

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“I had a few very difficult months in Italy. At that point, I started to see football in a different way. I stopped enjoying training.”

In a bid to kickstart his career, Lupoli returned to England for loan spells with Norwich and Sheffield United. He enjoyed his time with both clubs, but neither deal became permanent. “I would have loved to have stayed a few more years in England,” he admits. “It felt like my home. It was my style of football. Even if I hadn’t continued to play for many years in the Premier League — it’s more about enjoying training and football every day.”

“Back then, the Championship was the perfect league for me. I had space, and I had technical ability. I could play in many different positions and different ways. I think I could have done a lot more if I had stayed there.”

After Fiorentina began the nomadic period of Lupoli’s career — his wilderness years, aged 22. “First I joined Ascoli,” he explains. “I really liked the place and the club. But in the second year, I had a problem with my ankle, so I had two operations.

“People started saying my physical condition hadn’t recovered well from my surgery. And in some ways, they were right: I always had pain, even after the second operation. After that, I tried to come back and move to different clubs. But for the next few years, I had a very difficult time. I really struggled with my ankle, and then once you get to your mid to late twenties, it’s very hard to come back to the same level.”

After his time with Arsenal, Lupoli never stayed at a club longer than two years. In the course of his 17-year playing career, he would represent 18 different sides. His wanderings took him through the lower reaches of the Italian football pyramid, Serie C and D, as well as a brief spell in Hungary with Budapest Honved.

“Budapest was an incredible city, a good experience,” he says. “I went there with two or three other Italian players. Roberto Mancini’s son, Andrea, was also there. The problem was that after a few games, the Italian manager Marco Rossi was sacked, so we were left a little bit outside of the club!”

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After a spell with local Italian side San Donnino, Lupoli quit over the summer. Playing football had not made him happy for some time. “When I was in England, going to training never bothered me,” he explained. “It was like I was a little boy, every day was joyful. I would have stayed at the training ground all day.

“Over time, that changed. I started just wanting to go home after training. I knew football would always be my life, so I never gave up, I always tried to go on. But by the age of 32 or 33, I was already thinking about finishing my career.

“I’ve seen so many things in Italy that I don’t like. The main reason Italy is not at the level it was before is that there are not enough good coaches at grassroots level. In Serie A, the training ground and environment is good. Outside that, it’s not — the rest is like the fifth or sixth league in England, sometimes not even that. We don’t spend any money on structure, or youth development. It’s all about the result in Italy, even in the youth league. You don’t see people playing just to enjoy it, like I did when I was younger. In my opinion, Italy is 20 or 30 years behind Germany and England in a lot of ways.”

Lupoli may have fallen out of love with playing, but not with football: his focus now is on a new career as a coach. He hopes to use his story to educate a new generation of footballers. And he hopes one day to work in England, a country he clearly still adores.

“Arsenal was my first professional club, and I was there in maybe the best years of their history,” he says. “I’ve been back two or three times with my children to watch games at the Emirates. I’ve been to the club shop, and many people there still recognise me, and we spend some time together.

“Arsenal was a great, great time,” he says. “It will be special with me forever.”

(Top photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)