It was the summer of 2018 and Stephy Mavididi was contemplating what comes next.
The young forward had just returned to Arsenal after a loan spell at Charlton but it wasn’t the Arsenal he had grown accustomed to, having first arrived as an 11-year-old.
Arsene Wenger had gone and so had the majority of the coaching and medical staff he knew.
Sign up to watch every Serie A match this season on DAZN
The Unai Emery era had begun and Mavididi, like many of the young players at the club at the time, was unsure of what the future would hold.
But then his phone rang one morning and things suddenly became very clear.
“I still remember when my agent gave me the call,” Mavididi tells Goal. “I’d just woken up and he told me Juventus wanted to buy me. I thought I was still dreaming to me honest.”
But Mavididi wasn’t dreaming, he was very much awake. Italy’s most successful club had indeed come calling.
“I felt like it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that might not come round again,” Mavididi adds.
“We had many discussions. Me, my agent, the two clubs and, in the end, all parties thought it was the best decision for me to go.”
Mavididi had just turned 19 at the time and had spent the past eight years progressing through Arsenal’s academy at Hale End.
He was born in Derby but moved to the capital when he was just six months old and grew up in east London.
His first steps into professional football came with Southend United but he was soon spotted by Arsenal. From that point on there was only one place he wanted to go.
“Arsenal were the team I had supported since I started playing football so it was a no-brainer for me,” he says.
After impressing during his time at Hale End, Mavididi signed his first professional contract in July 2015 and started to train regularly alongside Wenger’s first team at London Colney.
By now he was part of the Under-19 set-up and found himself being coached by Thierry Henry, who was working with the youth teams at Arsenal while doing his coaching badges.
“I remember the first day I met him I was starstruck,” recalls Mavididi. “As a coach he was top, but for me he was more like a mentor.
“You could talk to him for ages and everything he would say would just be spot on. Obviously he has been there and done it and he just gave you a different perspective on things.”
By the time he was 18, Mavididi was starting to knock on the door of the Arsenal first team.
Wenger would often include him in training sessions but, despite making some matchday squads in the cup competitions, the teenager never got on for his debut.
Eager to play senior football, he joined Charlton on loan in January 2017 but made just five appearances before his stay was cruelly cut short by a hamstring injury.
Once recovered, he again headed out on loan, agreeing a move to Preston, before heading back to Charlton to spend the second half of the 2017-18 campaign in League One.
When that loan spell ended with a play-off semi-final defeat to Shrewsbury, Mavididi knew he had a big decision to make.
“I wanted to kick on because I felt like I wasn’t getting any younger,” he says. “I was weighing up my options and that’s when Juventus came calling.”
Unbeknown to him, the Serie A giants had been monitoring Mavididi for some time, with Claudio Chiellini - brother of first-team captain Giorgio - the man responsible for taking him to Turin.
“It was like a completely new world that I was going into,” he says. “Moving from England to Italy, it’s a completely different culture and language. It was a massive step.
“But more and more young English boys are taking that jump and playing abroad. It was a big decision, but if you are brave enough then why not?"
Mavididi initially linked up with the Juventus Under-23 or 'B' side, which plays its football in Italy’s third tier.
And the former Arsenal kid impressed, despite having to go through an initial period of adaptation which, he admits, left him totally out of his comfort zone.
“When I first got there I did find it a bit tough,” he says. “I was alone. The language, the culture, the philosophy. It was all new. It was difficult but it was a challenge and I enjoyed it.”
Six goals in 27 appearances for the B side were enough to catch the eye of Juve coach Massimiliano Allegri and, as the season progressed, he started to spend more and more time training with first team.
That gave Mavididi the opportunity to work alongside his idol, a certain Cristiano Ronaldo.
“Even in training you can learn so much from him,” says Mavididi. “You can tell why he has been at the top for many years. You can see his quality day in, day out. In and around the hotel, on the team bus, in the dressing room.
“Of course he has the talent, no-one can doubt that. But the main thing for me is his mentality and how he looks after himself. How much work he puts in, how well he knows his body.
“He just proves every day why he’s one of the best to ever play."
Having continued to impress Allegri in training, the moment Mavididi had been working towards arrived on April 13, 2019.
Juventus travelled to take on SPAL knowing a point would be enough to win them an eighth successive Serie A title and Mavididi was named amongst the substitutes.
He was eventually introduced with 21 minutes remaining, replacing Moise Kean up front.
The score was 1-1 at the time which would have been enough to secure the title, but SPAL went on to snatch a 2-1 win thanks to a Sergio Floccari strike.
It was a defeat that put the Juventus championship celebrations on ice for another week, but for Mavididi it was still a special day.
“When Allegri brought me on I was so buzzing,” he says. “I just wanted to score so bad. We didn’t manage to get the point we needed to win the title so we had to wait until the next week.”
Mavididi was again named on the bench seven days later against Fiorentina but didn’t come on during the 2-1 victory which did wrap up the title.
“It was amazing to be in and around it all,” he says. “They are moments I will never forget and I can only thank Allegri for that.”
That was Allegri’s fifth title on the spin with Juventus and proved to be his last, with the Italian coach announcing soon after it was secured that he would be stepping down at the end of the season.
He was replaced by former Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri and the change came as a blow to Mavididi, who had worked so hard during his first year in Italy to force his way into Allegri’s plans.
The forward returned for pre-season but knew by the end of the summer that he would need to leave to get regular game time, so agreed a loan move to French Ligue 1 side Dijon.
It meant another change of culture and another new language, but it’s not in Mavididi’s nature to shy away from a challenge.
“When I was a kid I used to play on the street with older boys,” he says. “You get kicked a lot because they think they can walk all over you.
“So I think that’s where my work ethic comes from. I’m not afraid of a challenge and after my year in Italy I was ready to play regularly in one of Europe’s top five leagues.
“When I first signed I didn’t really know what to expect because I didn’t really know how most of the teams played in France.
“So it took me a bit of time to adapt, but now I feel like I’ve discovered the type of league it is and how to get around it.”
Mavididi has scored six times in 22 appearances for Dijon this season, with four of those goals coming in his last five games.
Now settled in France and having adjusted to the style of play, the aim is to continue progressing during the final few months of the campaign before mulling over his future in the summer.
He still has two years left on his contract at Juventus, but a summer exit is possible with Mavididi admitting that at some point he wants to return to England.
“In the next few years my dream is to play in the Premier League,” he says. “Being an English boy and growing up watching it, it’s my dream to play there and it’s a dream I want to achieve.”
