H\u00fcrriyet<\/a>, Esen said his decision was driven by pragmatism rather than anything else.<\/p>\n\u201cWolverhampton was the closest club to me in terms of location,\u201d he said, when asked why he had opted for Wolves over the likes of Arsenal. \u201cAs an academy, they constantly take care of players and give them opportunities. This is very important.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther clubs have very large pools of young players. They mostly prefer the loan method. I wanted a place where I could stay and show myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The winger progressed quickly after his move, playing for Wolves\u2019 under-18s before stepping up to the under-21 side. His form also brought international interest. Esen received an invitation from Wales Under-21s and was included in a senior training camp in Portugal, but he ultimately declined the opportunity.<\/p>\n
His ambition, he said, lies elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cG\u00f6khan G\u00f6n\u00fcl<\/strong> invited me when he was in charge of the [Turkish] U21 National Team. However, I couldn\u2019t participate because of a problem with my Turkish citizenship, which we are still trying to resolve. <\/p>\n\u201cBut my dream is to wear the Turkish A National Team jersey and I am working towards that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A highly-rated winger, who turned down interest from Arsenal and Manchester City, has explained why he chose to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":475098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[45],"tags":[215302,215303,216,221,62,215304,67,132,68,215305,32289],"class_list":["post-475097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-gokhan-gonul","tag-josh-esen","tag-manchester-city","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-turkey-u21","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wales-u21","tag-wolverhampton-wanderers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115791944335198934","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"MANCHESTER,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/manchester-united-v-wolverhampton-wanderers-fa-youth-cup-1024x683.jpg\" "\\"21yo")
Photo by Charlotte Tattersall\/Getty Images<\/p>\n