Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is still just 31 years old, which feels very young for a man who made his first-team debut for Southampton when Gordon Brown was UK prime minister. It is just over 15 years since Oxlade-Chamberlain broke into Alan Pardew’s Saints squad, aged 16, and after successful and high-profile moves to both Arsenal and Liverpool, plus a trophy haul that includes a Premier League and Champions League title, plus three FA Cups, few can say that Oxlade-Chamberlain has not fulfilled his potential.
Yet his exit from Liverpool at the expiry of his contract in 2023, aged just 29, felt a little hollow. Presented with a photo collage after his final Anfield match and photographed on the pitch alongside his fellow departees, Roberto Firmino (to Saudi Arabia) and 37-year-old James Milner (to Brighton), who were both beaming ear to ear, Oxlade-Chamberlain looked a little lost, diffident almost. Where next?
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Besiktas, it turned out. Turkey, and the Istanbul clubs in particular, have long been a safe landing spot for ageing European-based players accustomed to high wages looking for first-team action, and Besiktas is, in theory, a fine place to play football: sold-out stadiums with passionate fans in a wonderful city and a chance to earn silverware and play European football. And in the first season, 2023-24, that’s exactly what happened: Oxlade-Chamberlain made 30 appearances and despite a sixth-placed finish, Besiktas won the Turkish Cup, earning qualification to the Europa League this season. But elsewhere, there have been huge problems for both player and club.
In the 20 months that Oxlade-Chamberlain has been at Besiktas, there have been nine managers, with none lasting more than 20 games. Last summer, just 12 months into his three-year contract, Oxlade-Chamberlain was frozen out by the club as they attempted to shift his reported £70,000-a-week wages. The club’s general secretary, Kaan Sakul, publicly announced in September that Oxlade-Chamberlain would be cut from the club’s Europa League group-stage squad – “he was the first name to go” – while manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst, appointed in July 2024, did not give the midfielder a single first-team minute before being sacked in November. Off-the-pitch, the midfielder’s fiance, Perrie Edwards, and his young son remain in Cheshire, with the former Little Mix singer recently admitting the distance has proved challenging.
It felt as though Oxlade-Chamberlain’s career was tracking along a downward curve that seems to follow so many former wonderkids. Many of England’s brightest young players in recent years who broke through as teenagers – Theo Walcott, Raheem Sterling, Micah Richards, Phil Jones, Dele Alli, Luke Shaw and Jack Wilshere – have seemed to struggle in the latter part of their careers. Reasons include (but are not restricted to) the vast number of minutes already played, bad luck, injuries, ever-increasing competition, poor advice, a failed transfer or two and other off-field issues.
Yet, despite his obvious obstacles at Besiktas, Oxlade-Chamberlain – the 18th youngest player to play for England – now looks to be bucking this trend. Since being given a chance off the bench in early December (the Portsmouth-born player scored the only goal in a 1-0 win over Fenerbahce in his second appearance of the season), the midfielder has been ever present, and since the January arrival of Ole Gunnar Solskjær as manager, Oxlade-Chamberlain has started every league game in a new-ish role of defensive midfield. Besiktas are out of this season’s Europa League and 24 points adrift of Galatasaray at the top the Süper Lig, but Saturday’s 2-1 win over the league leaders – ending Gala’s hopes of an invincible season – show how far the Black Eagles have come in just a few months under their Norwegian manager.
Why Solskjær was out of work for well over three years remains a mystery, particularly as his achievements with Manchester United – beating PSG to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League in 2019, a third-placed Premier League finish in 2020, a second-placed finish in 2021 and a penalty-shootout defeat to Villarreal in the Europa League final – look increasingly impressive given United’s current plight. At Old Trafford, Solskjær was known for fast counterattacking football but the 52-year-old has already diversified his skill set at Besiktas, also using a possession-based system with Oxlade-Chamberlain at the heart of his midfield and even using a strikerless 4-6-0 formation in the win over Galatasaray. Besiktas fans have already taken Solskjær into their hearts.
“These months here have been brilliant,” Solskjær said last week. “What we’ve started building really excites me. It feels like a proper family. We’re getting closer by the day. There’s belief, there’s passion. Of course, there’ll be bumps in the road – we’ll take a few punches to the face. That’s football. All I ask from the fans is to keep backing us like they always do.”
Now fourth in the table, Besiktas remain in the hunt for Europa League qualification and face Göztepe in the Turkish Cup quarter-finals on Thursday as they attempt to defend their triumph from last season. After a rocky period, Besiktas’s season is far from over and despite their own very different journeys to reach this point, the same could be said for both Oxlade-Chamberlain and Solskjær.
