While cinema-goers have spent the past few weeks admiring Christopher Nolan’s version of Odysseus’ long journey home, Arsenal have been focused on creating a full-circle moment with a Greek hero of their own.Five years ago, new signing Christos Tzolis made his Premier League debut for Norwich City at Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. He was 19 at the time, and his own Odyssey has involved loan spells at Twente in the Netherlands and Fortuna Dusseldorf in Germany before a permanent switch to Belgian champions Club Brugge put him on the radar of reigning English champions Arsenal.“It was crazy,” the 24-year-old recalls in a roundtable interview with the media. “It was a very nice experience (even if) it was a tough period for both teams. It’s special because I played my first game in the Emirates and now I’m a player for Arsenal.”Tzolis has been an Arsenal player for 11 days, and has not needed long to endear himself to his new fanbase. Two days after signing, he assisted a goal for Reiss Nelson in a behind-closed-doors friendly against MK Dons and backed that up with his first goal in Arsenal colours a week later away at Girona.Despite arriving with an exceptional record of 20 goals and 29 assists for Club Brugge last season, fans can be forgiven if this was their first real glimpse of Tzolis since his Norwich days.Reflecting on that time, when he was given just six league starts across two seasons, Tzolis says:“It was my second professional year in football, and the team was not really ready for the Premier League. That makes it difficult to adapt and to play how I could play because I’m a more offensive player who played for a team that has the ball and creates a lot of chances.Christos Tzolis playing for Norwich at the Emirates (Tess Derry/PA Images via Getty Images)“In football progress is not always going up where, directly, you can play at the highest level. The game time was not enough as a young player to develop, and that was the bad thing about the Norwich situation.“That’s why I went to Dusseldorf, to get my confidence back because I knew I had the skills and qualities to score the goals. Even though it was not the highest level, it was good to play every game and have the feeling that you can score, create and play well.”After Tzolis scored 22 goals and made six assists in Germany’s second tier, Club Brugge made their move in 2024. His second season ended with a league title, and Tzolis was a coveted asset.On Arsenal, he says they were “the first team who were directly interested in me (this summer). There are always some teams that talk, but Arsenal was directly the most concrete team, and that makes it easier to lock in and say, ‘I just want to go there and I don’t want to hear anything else’. “There were some teams trying, but it was an easy choice and clear that I want to join here.”Would Vini Jr. be worth it for Arsenal?JJ BullTzolis was back home in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, when he first heard of Arsenal’s interest. He admits that it would have been very difficult to say no to Arsenal, but that his conversations with manager Mikel Arteta were another part of the draw.“We spoke more about my story,” Tzolis says. “He wanted to know about my personal life and my career path. He knows my game style and wants me to do the same things at Arsenal. He doesn’t want me to do things differently than I did in Club Brugge.“He didn’t say, ‘You have to score 10 or 15 goals’, but just to ‘play free and show your qualities; then everything will come’. That makes it a bit easier to be in the final third when we have a lot of ball possession. The chances will be there, the only thing is to be ready and focused.”One thing that helped narrow that focus last season, when he scored 22 goals and assisted 29 for Club Brugge, was fantasy football. The winger often captained himself in the Belgian Pro League’s fantasy game, which he joked drove him to score and assist more goals.Mikel Arteta helped persuade Christos Tzolis to join (Alex Caparros/Getty Images)Growing up as a player who could play across the front line, however, his real-life inspiration came in the shape of David Villa. Asked why the former Spain, Barcelona and Valencia forward stood out to him so much, Tzolis says: “David Villa 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. His body style is similar to mine too. 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.”The same could be said for former Arsenal and Barcelona forward Alexis Sanchez, whose former number (17) Tzolis will wear this season. The Chile international played across the attack for Arsenal and was another player Tzolis looked up to as a teenager, but on selecting his shirt number, he says: “I see some similarities, but it’s not the reason I took the No 17. It was more that there were not so many options. I had 18 and 19 in the past, so I didn’t want to use them again. It’s nice that Alexis Sanchez also had No 17, so I hope I will have the same success.”As well as seeing himself as a direct and creative player, Tzolis used “work rate” as the third characteristic to describe himself. He provided a taste of that, alongside discipline, away in Girona, instinctively dropping back into the backline to help Arsenal’s defenders maintain a back four when Ben White pushed high from right-back, as well as getting back to make tackles and defensive headers himself.Tzolis ranked first in some fitness exercises during Arsenal’s pre-season trip to Girona last week. One was a bleep test-style drill that tasked players with a 20-metre run and retreat followed by 40 metres and then 60 metres to be done five times in succession. In total, it was 1.2 kilometres of hard running. His performance has seen some fitness coaches call him Leonidas, after the Spartan warrior in the 2006 film 300, but Tzolis did not want to take all the credit.“Not all the players are here, so some still have to do the tests,” he says with a laugh. “It’s actually pretty hard. I had the advantage that I started pre-season also with Brugge, so I was already training for two weeks, and I always 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.”One of the players who will not return for another week and a half is Bukayo Saka. Arsenal’s right-winger reached the final weekend of World Cup football with England, scoring a hat-trick in their win over France in the third-place play-off.Tzolis is five months younger than Saka, and upon signing last month, the forward named him as the player he is most looking forward to learning from. Yet to meet in person, Tzolis has been developing some connections with others on the pitch.Christos Tzolis celebrating a goal for Club Brugge last season (Jasper Jacobs/BELGA/AFP via Getty Images)“We (him and Saka) are in similar positions, so you can always look and learn new things that maybe you didn’t think about,” he says. “Also, to connect in the game makes it easier because everybody is thinking at a higher level and always in the right timing, which makes the job easier for every player.“Myles Lewis-Skelly and I have some good connections. He’s playing a lot of forward inside passes.”Tzolis will also get to know Declan Rice. The midfielder may finally have some competition when swinging deliveries in from the left, as nine of Tzolis’ 29 assists last season came from set pieces (eight corners and one free kick).Tzolis jokes that he still has a lot to learn when it comes to Arsenal’s “special” set pieces and feels that designated coach Nicolas Jover will be the one to decide who the taker is. Even if he shows promise from a dead ball — there were some glimpses in Girona — Arsenal will be more encouraged that Tzolis has seemed to hit the ground running in open play. With two weeks of pre-season already under his belt, the positive momentum for his return to the Premier League is building.Having signed a five-year deal at Arsenal, there is hope that he will not need as many pit stops on this English voyage compared to his last.“I’ve now had three years in a row that I’m important for my teams and had a big role in attack,” Tzolis says. “I feel more ready to be in the Premier League. I’m not the same player I was in Norwich, 100 per cent. I feel it in my body and also in my mindset. Now it’s my time to show that I’m ready and capable of playing in the Premier League.”