Alexandre Dimitri Song Billong was born in Cameroon on 9 September 1987 – one of 28 children in the family.
At 16 he moved to France and signed for Bastia becoming part of the team after one season, and was selected for France Under 16s.
Bastia loaned him to Arsenal for 2005/6 and he made his Premiership on 19 September 2005 as a sub. He was eventually sold to Arsenal for £1m in June 2006.
Then came Fulham v Arsenal, 29 November 2006. Song played in midfield and the fans at the game gave him hell. The anti-Arsenal fans who claim to be Arsenal fans (the notorious AAA) who were for the most part not at the match started a “not fit to wear the shirt” campaign against Song. In the face of the abuse he was substituted at half time.
On 30 January 2007 he was loaned to Charlton for the rest of the season and the AAA were triumphant but they were wrong, for not only did Song come back to score his first goal in the defeat of Liverpool away by 6-3 on 9 January 2007 in the League Cup.
Of course the AAA don’t give up this easy and they wrote article after article against Song, and claiming he should be sold at once and new quality players should be brought in.
In 2011 Mr Wenger said, “I thought about that Fulham game recently. It shows that players need to be given time and confidence. Unfortunately at the big clubs you cannot always do it. He is one of the players who surprised everybody. You wouldn’t expect what he delivers at the moment.”
The following season he was part of the first team as Mr Wenger said: “I brought him here aged 17 and worked very hard with him, we worked hard because I felt he had the talent to become a good player. I know that the opinions are changing about him now.”
That was a reference to the constant abuse that the manager and Song still got.
In October 2009 Song was voted third in the Arsenal.com player of the month award for October, (largely because the AAA tend to boycott the voting on the grounds that all the players are awful) and on 25 November 2009, Song signed a new contract with Arsenal, lasting until 2014.
In 2012 he was voted in second place as the Arsenal player of the 2011/12 season by the fans.
Season |
Lge Games |
Goals |
Cup Games |
Goals |
Europe Games |
Goals |
Total Games |
Goals |
2005–06 |
5 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
2006–07 |
2 |
0 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
6 |
1 |
2007–08 |
9 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
15 |
0 |
2008–09 |
31 |
1 |
6 |
0 |
11 |
1 |
48 |
2 |
2009–10 |
26 |
1 |
2 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
38 |
1 |
2010–11 |
31 |
4 |
6 |
0 |
5 |
1 |
42 |
5 |
2011–12 |
34 |
1 |
3 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
46 |
1 |
On 20 August 2012, Song was transferred to Barcelona for £15m. As he became clear that he was yet another Arsenal player bought, but then not found a place in the team, Mr Wenger said, “There is no buy-back [clause] in his contract. I heard he wants to give it a go for another season, which you can understand because it’s the first season.
Song started 15 matches for Barcelona in his first season, playing out of position at the centre of defence in some cases.
The books…
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches
There were qualities in Song that we sorely missed, and it was a mistake to sell him. But obviously we were not ready for our next step and players had to go to bring money in. People say he was too attacking, but do they think he could have done that if Wenger was unhappy about it? I remember his solo run in the CL and i thought, my god, the man wants to be a striker.
Anyway good luck Song, and don’t come back to haunt us please.