Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return | OneFootball

Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return | OneFootball

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The Independent

·16 settembre 2025

Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return

Immagine dell'articolo:Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return

Mikel Arteta is big on positive manifestation and one thing he has said this season has already come through. In the build-up to Tuesday's opening-night Champions League match against Athletic Bilbao, the Arsenal manager has been telling his players and club staff about the specific type of rain you get in the Basque country. It feels like a light rain but, within minutes, “you’re absolutely drenched”.

Arsenal employees and fans will very much know how that feels, given the curtain of water that greeted them as they arrived in Bilbao on Monday afternoon. Arteta might have been one of the few club figures happy about that. This is home.


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“It’s one of the best places to go,” Arteta beamed after the 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest at the weekend. “That’s where I’m from, I think you’re going to enjoy it.”

Knowing Arteta, he might also feel this is a fitting place to start Arsenal’s Champions League campaign, as they seek to end it by finally bringing the trophy home. One of the discussions that surrounded the initial media duties was whether, after Paris Saint-Germain’s victory last season, Arsenal are now definitively the biggest club not to win it.

“We haven’t won it yet,” Arteta said, “but that’s the opportunity. Every decision has to be taken in that direction.”

All roads now lead from here, and a stadium that will greet most of Arteta's local family. They're all travelling to the game.

Immagine dell'articolo:Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return

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Mikel Arteta’s family are from the Basque Country (Getty Images)

Immagine dell'articolo:Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return

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Arteta is back in his home region this week (Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Except, that's a little bit of a journey, because this isn’t quite home. An extra subplot to this opening Champions League game is that Arteta is actually from neighbouring San Sebastian and grew up as a supporter of Athletic’s fierce local rivals Real Sociedad. The connection remains deep.

Much was made on Saturday of how Arsenal recreated La Real’s September 2020 midfield of Mikel Merino, Martin Odegaard and Martin Zubimendi, and Arteta’s strong relationship with the San Sebastian club was seen as crucial to ensuring the signing of Zubimendi. There’s also substitute goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga, who did actually play for Athletic. Arsenal are probably the most Basque club in Europe outside the region.

Their players will consequently be all too aware of the football politics here. Athletic might be cast as European football’s great underdogs due to their famous policy of only signing players connected to the region, but it’s precisely because of that they’re seen as the exact opposite in the rest of the Basque Country. They’re the area’s "big bad".

Immagine dell'articolo:Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return

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Nico Williams is the latest Basque star to shine at Athletic Bilbao (Getty Images)

Athletic's narrow recruitment approach has ensured they’ve become notorious for trying to take talent from local rivals. Latest star Nico Williams, who will sadly miss Athletic’s grand return to the Champions League as they play in the competition for the first time since the 2014-15 season, is actually an Osasuna graduate. Real Sociedad suffered so much from Athletic's policy that they felt they had to end their own Basque-only policy in the 1980s, and started to sign foreign players. That of course eventually led to Odegaard’s own connection with the area.

One of the players that Athletic actually wanted to sign was a teenage Arteta, when he was at Real Sociedad's feeder club, Antiguoko. The young midfielder refused, because it was his “dream” to play for his boyhood team. New realities eventually intervened. Barcelona wanted him, and Arteta couldn’t turn down the most prestigious youth academy in Europe.

He eventually played for Real Sociedad for half a season in 2004-05, before beginning his own long connection with English football by moving to Everton in the January window. That departure was partly down to the Basque club politics of the club at the time, but Arteta still got some flavour of the area's on-pitch intrigue. He came on for a minute in a 3-2 Real Sociedad derby win in that campaign, but that was at home.

“I never got to play here,” Arteta lamented of the old San Mames, before describing the new version as a “beautiful stadium”.

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Arteta joined Everton after half a season at hometown club Real Sociedad (Getty Images)

Spain’s David Raya, who has also spent most of his career in England, added that “it was one of those stadiums I always wanted to play in”.

Arteta spoke about how “it’s 20 years since I’ve been here in a professional setting” but, in that time, his home region has become a new well of talent for global football.

Discussion of why that is sometimes becomes surrounded by mystique at the region, as if there’s some magic at play. It’s instead rather mundane, and literally every day.

The football culture has always been profound, with that given a different kind of form due to Spain’s spread of small pitches. That's where most of the game in the country is played. Children from the age of five upwards consequently start to internalise a more technical and spatial understanding of the game.

Raya feels that Merino is a perfect example of this. “He can play in so many different positions,” says he goalkeeper of the midfielder, due to a learned intelligence about the game that means he “knows in each situation what the game needs”.

Immagine dell'articolo:Arsenal’s Basque connection sets up fascinating Champions League return

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David Raya believes Mikel Merino (pictured) became the player he is due to his Basque upbringing (PA Wire)

From that, necessity has also bred innovation, because the Basque clubs have been forced to adapt to new economic realities.

Where they used to win the major trophies, with Athletic and Real Sociedad both claiming two consecutive Spanish titles each between 1980 and 1984, they are now just delighted to be in the Champions League again. Truly regional institutions just can’t be as powerful in a world of global super clubs. One of them being Arsenal.

These challenges have nevertheless encouraged coaches from the area to think in a more innovative way, with the tight network of clubs having a multiplying effect. Hence Arteta becoming one of the most famous of a stellar generation of Basque coaches.

Now, he hopes that familiarity with the region will bring the ultimate contentment, and that Basque core can help Arsenal finally win that Champions League. “That’s the history of the club,” he said of that failure to yet claim the trophy. “We want to change it.”

It’s more positive manifestation. Arteta would say there’s no better place to start.

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