Mikel Arteta, Manager of Arsenal, interacts with Pep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City
Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola go way back (Image credit: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
A lie will make its way around a rondo before the truth has even put in a tackle. Sometimes, it's easier for us all to make assumptions based on the knowledge we have, rather than waiting to know for certain.
Mikel Arteta turned down Arsenal once before, before they turned him down – if rumours are true, of course: another assumption we're all making with little confirmation from those involved. 10 years ago this May, the midfielder called time on a 17-year playing career at the Emirates Stadium, having completed his coaching badges and impressed those closest to him. It's been repeated that Arteta was always a manager in a player's body – and it's no surprise he was apparently offered a role in Arsenal's very own Hale End set-up. He declined.
Instead, Arteta answered the call from childhood hero Pep Guardiola to serve as an assistant in his coaching staff when he arrived at Manchester City. Two years later, the Basque interviewed to replace the very man who brought him to North London. With Arsene Wenger departing the club he had chiselled in his own image, Arteta was the most leftfield of a handful of options on the shortlist to become Arsenal's next manager – a man with no previous experience on the touchline but with the very best references in the sport. This time, Arsenal declined.
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Just as in the mid-‘90s, the Gunners weren't quite brave enough – back then, opting for Bruce Rioch to replace George Graham, before getting the decision right the second time with Wenger. By the time Arteta arrived in 2019 – just like Wenger – the pressure wasn't quite so monumental. He had time to shape this team in his image.
It was assumed that he had gone to study tactically under Guardiola. Yet this was never the case. The Catalan confirmed it himself, telling reporters in 2021, “I didn't inspire him.” It wasn't faint praise. It wasn't his customary, “They are so good, more than you believe” response that Pep seemed to bring out against any team who dared to press his side in their pomp and concede five goals for their troubles.
No, there was real respect there. He had rung Arteta personally while Barcelona manager to pick his brains about Chelsea, back when Arteta was a player. When he claimed, “He knows everything,” of Arteta after one of many victories over Arsenal, it wasn't said with the condescension of a parent to a teenager: it was real.
Over the past six years though, City's burgeoning rivalry with an ever-improving Arsenal has been headlined as ‘Mentor vs Protege’, the ongoing saga between manager Pep Guardiola and his former assistant manager. It's the axis that has come to define the clash – far more than Gabriel's tussles with Erling Haaland or a fight between homegrown heroes Bukayo Saka and Phil Foden. Like Pep vs Klopp before it, and Pep vs Jose before it, this is a heavyweight clash between the minds in the dugout – and yet for some, this fixture has never quite felt like a match between equals. The greatest brain in the game against the man who put the cones out for him, according to idiots you should probably block.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola look on during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur at Etihad Stadium on August 17, 2019
Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola look on in August 2019 (Image credit: Matt McNulty - Manchester City/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
Even Arsenal fans assumed that when Arteta came to the club, in the absolute nadir of Unai Emery deploying a back three and two defensive midfielders against Huddersfield Town, the point of bringing back their former skipper was to play more like City. Arteta was a man hired not because of his experience, but apparently, because of his philosophy.
It was all one big hypothesis. Arteta never learned how to coach from Guardiola: he learned how to manage.
Guardiola doesn't play pretty tiki-taka because it's attractive, or because it's the way of a protagonist: that might be what attracts fans or what board owners want from their investments, but Guardiola plays the way he does because it's effective. It's only to come to light in the last decade that, actually, the man who changed the very sport at Barcelona is far more than a tactician. The ideas were revolutionary, but Guardiola has far more in common with Sir Alex Ferguson than was ever noted in those early days.
He exhausted himself with the politics at Camp Nou and had to take a sabbatical; he felt friction with the Bayern Munich hierarchy, too. So Guardiola went to a club that he'd be a king at, rather than a pawn. He supplied two huge institutions with a passing era, yet he's rebuilt Manchester City in his image – just as Wenger did at Arsenal. It's exactly what Arteta wanted to do when he eventually got a managerial gig.
There are so few figureheads in football anymore. In 2018, Arsenal were desperate to move away from the model of a manager being responsible for recruitment and style, as well as matters on the pitch, yet they've wound up in the same position with Arteta and found that it's the only way that works. He didn't just get them playing more free-flowing football: he united the fanbase, improved the atmosphere at home games, identified his own transfer targets, convinced them personally to join – as claimed by players themselves – and evolved his own tactical blueprint as the Premier League has shifted. Head coaches follow orders: managers dish them out.
His success, like Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Ferguson before, has hinged on the collective of coaches around him. Arsenal owe their set-piece threat to Nicolas Jover, while Carlos Cuesta was last year poached by Parma, similar to how Arteta was by Arsenal. Arteta insisted early on that his coaching team were photographed with him after winning managerial accolades, such was their input.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta receives the Premier League January Manager Of The Month award with coaching staff
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta receives the Premier League's Manager Of The Month award for January 2023
And as a result throughout, Arteta's job has never ever been under threat. He weathered the storm of 2020/21, finishing eighth in the Premier League and given adequate patience when he lost the first three games of the following season. He was trusted by his bosses when he chose to freeze out captain, top scorer and highest-paid player, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. He was backed with serious investment after three second-place finishes.
Even in the fire of a fourth title challenge faltering, with murmurs on social media of Cesc Fabregas being a ready-made replacement in case of Arteta's time running out, the Basque's job has never been safer. Talks are ongoing over a new contract and a fifth title challenge is expected by the board next season, regardless of how this one ends.
The problem with the idea of a student becoming a master is that often, you can never shake the student tag while the master's still around. But just as Mikel Arteta went to Manchester City to learn from Pep Guardiola, Guardiola hired Arteta to learn from him. Arteta remains one of a handful of men to really give his old friend a proper title race; he may well be one of the few keeping him competitive now. And he's someone that Guardiola clearly valued a great deal. It's Arsenal vs City now – not the disciple taking on his guru. The dynamic is ever-shifting.