#ki.ask

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT. i have loved the concept of martin zubimendi ever since i read this guardian article about him way back in 2022 about his connection with xabi and thought wow….wouldn’t it be so crazy if he came to arsenal given mikel’s connection with xabi….well well well look where we are now

most of my thoughts are from the first half or so of the season because after that i got a bit busy lol but i remember v clearly a reporter asking some absurd question about odezubirice midfield clicking because they were all born within 2 months of each other and then going hmm. rpfistically i think he is far easier to pin down than the rest, he has a real consistency of character about him primarily because it takes a certain sort of person to play a 6. most articles describe him as clearheaded, calm, cheerful - there was one that called him “subtle and selfless” - and i really do agree with that! there’s a steady confidence about him but also very clearly a shyness (see recent gifs of declan shoving him towards the crowd).

ah yes……The Oderice Thing. there are basic overviews here and here but if you scroll through their tag on my blog you’ll get a much better sense of their dynamic.

taking the opportunity to rec some fics which i think capture the complexity of their dynamic very well: passing through, parliament’s on fire and his hands are up (this is the one with the clearest look at martin/declan, though the rest of the series is equally fantastic at depicting the complicated web of martin/declan/mikel/granit), know your place, the fire in your heart. and my own fics ofc…..they’re sort of in everything but i’m partial to A LONG COLD WAR and my most recent one serrated sound

omg sorry anon i am clearing my ask box now…….thank you for finding martin as compelling and complex as i do. this is a fantastic question; had a brief think about it and i think it’s noni or ben.

noni: got closer because they were both out injured and doing rehab at the same time in winter 2025 (see this article, which mentions they share the same sense of humour and the same music taste. Whatever That Means!!!) noni’s obviously much closer to the england group/christian group but he and martin clearly have an easygoing relationship with none of the edges of tension that martin might have with some of the other england boys (declan: well documented, b: differing levels of leeway, eze: midfield competition)

https://www.tumblr.com/odericevertz/818607645430857728/whole-dash-in-a-rpf-mood-and-so-am-i-chipping?source=share

“Well, if something ever happens to you, I’d love to.” Declan shrugged.

“Is that a threat?”

“Is that what it sounds like to you?”

YOU GET ME. obligatory disclaimer that i’m putting on my tinhat from here on out.

declan laying claim to max as his Government Assigned Child Prodigy (GACP) is a perfect way to put it, but to fully understand the significance of what he’s doing here we actually have to talk about ethan and myles and to some extent their contrasting personalities. it’s really funny to me that ethan was positioned as martin’s GACP (see the video where the club sat them down and had them talk about/advise and be advised on being a 15-16yo child prodigy) but that pairing hasn’t taken off the way max/declan has. not because they aren’t close — ethan clearly looks up to and respects martin, and is evidently trying to model some aspects of his game after him — but because they’re both just more introverted and a lot of this modelling is presumably taking place offline/off-camera/more subtly.

meanwhile declan clearly attempted to ‘lay claim’ to myles in the same way he’s doing to max now — but it didn’t work because myles has blossomed faster and more confidently than anyone, even the team, expected. you can’t really be a mentor figure to someone who’s become a full-fledged character in his own right (think myles’ haaland celebration, big game performances etc). you can be a big-brother figure as declan has settled into—the way myles and declan tussle and jokingly put each other in headlocks is very reminiscent of sibling banter—but that leaves declan without a GACP, without a social-media-friendly, social-capital-boosting way to establish his authority.

enter max dowman! especially interesting to consider declan and max’s relationship in the context of max’s ascendancy in the u-17 england nt and declan being heavily earmarked for the upcoming england captaincy. it’s important also to note that like ethan, max on paper has more similarities to martin (position, child prodigy etc) but declan and him are bound by their shared british boy vibes (see: their social media, where declan regularly comments on max’s posts etc etc.) the recent selfie of them after max’s debut against milan is like the nail in the coffin for me that they’re super aware of it. not to say that it’s not genuine, because it definitely is, but i think they’re both actively playing into it bc it’s mutually beneficial—it’s something to be Declan Rice’s Government Assigned Child Prodigy, and it’s something to be Max Dowman’s Government Assigned Mentor. in fact in max’s post about the spain offseason the last 2/4 pictures are of him in very similar poses with declan and martin respectively, which suggests to me that beyond simply vibing with declan more because of personality there’s also a layer of practicality there: better to be rice’s GACP than odegaard’s in terms of social capital!

this ties in to the bigger picture of how i interpret martin/declan’s characters as well: to me oderice have an extremely complicated relationship wherein everything is about power, authority (formalised or otherwise), and how they can exercise it over others or each other. the hale end kids are imo just another front through which they fight this psychosexual proxy war. if declan’s competency and authority can’t be rewarded with captaincy (of arsenal or england) just yet, mentorship of the ridiculously gifted next generation is a low-hanging and obvious way to prove that authority!