FEATURE | How Mikel Arteta’s PSG stint set him on course for greatness at Arsenal | OneFootball

“On Saturday, we are going to be the champions of Europe,” Mikel Arteta proclaimed in a private exchange celebrating Arsenal’s Premier League win. Why wouldn’t belief be running through the veins of the manager who ended the club’s 22-year wait for the title? Even if they will be coming up against reigning European champions Paris Saint-Germain. 

The Premier League trophy has ensured Arteta’s place in the club’s pantheon of managerial greats, but winning their first-ever UEFA Champions League would set him apart. Other Arsenal managers have won the league, but none other than Arsène Wenger has ever come close to touching the Holy Grail. 

At the back of his mind, perhaps Arteta is thinking that there is a beautiful symmetry to Saturday’s opponents being PSG. It’s a personal twist of fate that standing in the way of what could be his crowning moment as a manager is the club that kick-started his playing career, the team that represented the very first steps in a long and often torturous journey that took him to where he is today. 

When Paris came calling

The then 18-year-old Arteta arrived at PSG on a one-and-a-half-year loan from the Barcelona B team midway through the 2000/01 season. A graduate of Barcelona’s prestigious academy, La Masia, his pathway into the first team was blocked by the likes of Pep Guardiola, Emmanuel Petit, Xavi Hernández, and, funnily enough, current PSG manager Luis Enrique. 

Without any hope of breaking into a star-studded midfield, opportunity knocked in the form of a call from Luis Fernandez. The PSG manager was in his second stint in charge of the club and was a long-term admirer of Arteta’s talents. Prior to returning to Les Parisiens in 2000, Fernandez had taken the reins at Athletic Bilbao, where he had unsuccessfully tried to sign Arteta. 

In an interview with TNT Sports, Arteta revealed what Fernandez told him to convince him to move to Paris: “I fully trust you. I know you’re very young, but I think you’re going to glide into this team in a great way. And believe me, you have my word, you are going to play games.” 

It was a promise that the manager stuck to. Arteta was handed his debut in the 4-0 Coupe de France defeat to AJ Auxerre on the 9th of February, and then five days later, he was in the starting line-up for the trip to face AC Milan in the Champions League. 

A glittering glass jaw

At PSG, Arteta was immediately surrounded by the likes of Mauricio Pochettino, Jay-Jay Okocha, and Nicolas Anelka. A few months later, Gabriel Heinze would arrive on the banks of the Seine, accompanied by a fresh-faced Ronaldinho, ready for his first taste of European football. 

And it was here in his formative experiences in the professional game that Arteta received a crash course in the art of doing the dirty work. As he told the press last season, ahead of Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final exit to PSG, “I had to do all the defending because I had Ronaldinho and Okocha in front of me. Imagine! It was super, almost unreal. It was a dream for me. I was so blessed, and I had so much energy at that time. I couldn’t waste that opportunity.”

A sentiment that was not, but perhaps should have been, the doctrine of the team, because it’s hard not to look at that PSG squad and think of wasted opportunities. There was so much talent in the squad, but dysfunction coursed throughout it, no less so than between Fernandez and Ronaldinho, where there was a widely reported rift between the two (albeit this is something Fernandez has routinely denied). 

Regardless, the result was that, for all of PSG’s talent, they were a team that fell flat across Arteta’s year and a half, winning solely the UEFA Intertoto Cup; a team that glittered with a glass jaw. And one that could not bring back the success of the 1990s, where they won the league, three Coupe de France’s, two Coupe de Ligue’s, and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. 

The long shadows of the City of Light

At the end of his loan, Arteta wanted to remain in the French capital. The feeling was mutual, with Fernandez keen to keep him. However, an agreement with Barcelona couldn’t be reached, and instead, the young Spaniard would begin his long association with British football by moving to Rangers. 

But the City of Lights cast a long shadow over his career. Talking of his time in Paris, Arteta has said, “It was an experience that will stay with me forever, with teammates who helped and shaped who I wanted to be as a player, and ignited something in me to become a manager in the future.” 

And maybe, when he succeeded Unai Emery in 2019 as Arsenal manager, he saw shades of the PSG side he joined as a teenager reflected in The Gunners. A team chasing the memories of their golden era, of egos and dysfunction, and of a glittering glass jaw. 

As a young player, he was not able to (or expected to) steer PSG in the right direction, but as a manager, he has been able to plot a path that has made Arsenal, once more, one of the dominant forces in English football. He’s rid the side of individualism and selfishness and installed in them a love of defensive diligence. When Arsenal now play, the star is the team, even if the team is full of stars in their own right. 

Mikel Arteta: a player and manager transformed

“Luiz [Fernandez] did it,” Arteta told TNT Sport. “The manager did it. I think there was a moment where I recognised the power of the manager and the power of feeling somebody is convinced by your ability.” 

The unerring belief that was shown to him by Fernandez when he was a young player is the same one he now shows as a manager. It is the same recognition he gives to his players and to the supporters. And it is the same confidence that led him to proclaim, “On Saturday, we are going to be the champions of Europe.” 

GFFN | Nick Hartland