Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain nearly became a rugby player or a county cricketer instead
At school in Portsmouth, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain played scrum half and was offered a trial at London Irish rugby club. He also kept wicket, bowled and opened the batting, and turned down trials with Hampshire cricket because they clashed with football. Football won, and at 18 he set a Champions League scoring record.
Born in Portsmouth on 15 August 1993, he is the son of Mark Chamberlain, a former England winger who played for Stoke City and Portsmouth; an uncle and a younger brother also played professionally. He joined the Southampton academy aged seven and made his first-team debut on 2 March 2010 at 16 years 199 days, the club's second youngest behind Theo Walcott. In 2010–11 he scored nine times as Southampton won promotion and was named in the League One Team of the Year.
Arsenal, the club he supported as a boy, signed him in August 2011 for a reported initial 12 million pounds. On 28 September 2011 he scored in the eighth minute of his Champions League debut against Olympiacos, surging onto a long pass from Alex Song, and so overtook Walcott as the youngest Englishman to score in the competition. Marco van Basten called him a gem. He played 198 games for Arsenal, winning the FA Cup three times.
England capped him in May 2012 against Norway, and his surprise selection for Euro 2012 made him the second youngest player to represent England at a European Championship. He won 35 caps and scored seven goals.
Liverpool paid 35 million pounds in August 2017. Then, in April 2018, a serious knee injury against Roma in a Champions League semi-final wiped out the rest of that season and the World Cup. He returned 366 days later and collected a Champions League winner's medal for 2018–19 and a league title in 2019–20. Later spells took him to Beşiktaş in Turkey and on to Celtic.
Source: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
