foreach my $a(@arr) 
{
   $a =~ s/^\s*//;   #trim leading spaces
   $a =~ s/\s*$//;   #trim trailing spaces
   my $count = grep {$_ =~ /($a)/g} @text;
   print "\'$a\' found $count times\n";
}
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The scalar form of grep returns the count of "matches" - not just a "true" value.
I think that is the main point that you missed.

If @arr contains multiple words, then I'm not know what you mean by a "match". I just trimmed the leading and trailing spaces from $a. If you have things in @arr like "Bob and Mary", and you want that to match across lines in @text, that is different too. But this will find " Bob and Mary " in an single line.

Your requirement is not well specified. Better would be to show some input and desired output.