Arsenal defender admits he wants a January move

Arsenal deals & transfers January 2025

Following his recent inclusions in the Arsenal first-team squad, Maldini Kacurri has confirmed that he’s looking to go on loan in the January transfer window.

Arsenal 19-year-old defender Maldini Kacurri made his first-team debut for the club earlier this season, coming off the bench in the Gunners’ League Cup win over Bolton Wanderers.

That’s just one of eight times Kacurri has been involved in Mikel Arteta’s squads this season, most recently featuring on the bench against Aston Villa and GNK Dinamo over the last week.

The centre-back dropped back to the u21s on Friday to get some minutes under his belt, and he helped the team to secure a clean-sheet win over Nottingham Forest.

Speaking afterwards, Kacurri revealed that his hope for the rest of the 2024/25 campaign is to go out on loan.

“Ideally, I’ll be looking to hopefully get a loan,” Kacurri told Arsenal.com. “I feel like that’s my next step, in terms of pushing forward in my career. But we’ll see.

“Whatever it is, I just want to keep working hard. Keep pushing, like usual.”

Arsenal have an extremely limited number of young loanees at the moment. With Charles Sagoe Jr. returning to the club in the January window, Marquinhos and Karl Hein are the only players on loan who are even close to youth status.

Reiss Nelson, Nuno Tavares, Albert Sambi Lokonga, and Fabio Vieira are all established senior professionals, and Marquinhos and Hein presumably think of themselves as senior players as well.

Arsenal really need to find some temporary transfers for their youth players over the final days of the January window, because it’s clear that the likes of Kacurri feel there’s little to be gained from another few months of u21 football.