The phrase that destiny shuffles the cards, but it is us who play them, is attributed to both Shakespeare and the German philosopher Schopenhauer. You don't need to read them to play them. That's what the teenager Mikel Arteta did when he left La Masía, the idyllic place that destiny had invited him to. With his decision to go to PSG, he actually challenged it, like the Wandering Dutchman condemned to sail the oceans without ever touching port. When he did so with a return to Real Sociedad to be in San Sebastián, at home, and avoid his parents' divorce, our Spanish wanderer suffered the curse of legend. He failed and returned to the seas. Some things are written.
Arteta's decision-making, away from the days of Spanish football's wine and roses, without ever wearing the Roja of the senior team, allowed him a sum of uncommon experiences, now synthesized at 44 years old in the figure of a modern, interventionist, iconoclastic coach, not a slave to systems or traditions, neither due to his upbringing at Barça nor the time shared on the bench with Pep Guardiola, nor the sensitivities of Arsenal, which he now manages.
His team is chameleon-like, playing in continuity or in episodic moves, able to defend unlike in the Premier League, like the early Simeone's Atlético. In the fight for a compressed Champions League and Premier League, Arteta controls everything at the Emirates. He is the manager. Amid increasing noise or silence around him, he has earned the right to shuffle the cards.
With an eagle-eyed gaze and a deck-like beard, Arteta combines peripheral vision and action well, evident in the Arsenal he has built, tactical but above all effective in tactical moves. Set-pieces are just one example. In a Premier League under the colossal influence of Guardiola, a Spanish coach who passed through the Blaugrana school, played in the same position on the field, and was his assistant at Manchester City, one might see Arteta as a replica of the Catalan. Not so. The Basque knows how to dominate the game but is more pragmatic, more direct, more metallic.
The relationship between them is a story of encounters and disagreements. When Arteta debuted at Barça, he actually replaced Guardiola in a European match against Hertha Berlin. He was 16 years old. After the game, Guardiola subjected him to a third degree, asked about his feelings, and offered some advice. Arteta remembers it as a coach's speech even then. Their cohabitation on the City bench, 20 years later, was like a master's degree. When the Basque decided to leave, the relationship cooled, they stopped communicating, something they have resumed in the midst of the Premier League battle. Intense relationships are like that with Guardiola.
Guardiola's influence was not the only one for Arteta, whose time in various leagues offered him a valuable perspective. While still underage, he found in PSG Pochettino, a leader in the area who, upon arriving in Paris, took him under his wing. He was like a father on the field. In that team led by Luis Fernández, a character in himself, Ronaldinho was already dazzling.
The experience at PSG, where he was loaned, was incomparable to his time at Ibrox Park. The years at Glasgow Rangers truly toughened him, adapting to the high pace of play, with a higher physical level and aerial balls. By the time he arrived at Everton and Arsenal, he had mastered all the codes of the islands without losing those of his origin. He couldn't be Guardiola, nor Xabi Alonso, whom he unsuccessfully considered replacing during his return year to Real Sociedad, nor Cesc Fàbregas, a legend at Highbury and the Emirates. But he had managed to gather the secrets of all of them in his diary.
Some of these notes were shared with readers of EL MUNDO for two years while playing at Everton, under the heading of Correspondent in the Premier League. He wasn't a footballer in a bubble but someone with a tremendous curiosity about everything around him. "I've always been a bit of a troublemaker," he admits. He played in the Premier League and lived in England, where he eventually started a family with former Miss Spain Lorena Bernal. He wrote, set up businesses, and even managed a young bullfighter from Chiclana de la Frontera, Jesús Vela, alongside Gabi Heinze, at the request of Lorenzo Buenaventura, a magician from the south in physical preparation and physiotherapy. An oracle for many, including Arteta.
He was in one of the epicentres of the Premier League, as Liverpool welcomed Rafa Benítez, Pepe Reina, Xabi Alonso, and Fernando Torres to revive their great rival. More reunions. Reina had been his bunkmate at La Masía, whose snoring he still can't forget. During their time at Liverpool, they had more than one meal playing penalty shootouts, although he never took one against him in an official match.
With Xabi Alonso, he had played at Antiguoko, a club in San Sebastián where he also coincided with Andoni Iraola, who before moving to Athletic Bilbao is now in his final days at Bournemouth, where Arteta recently suffered a crucial defeat at the Emirates (1-2), tightening the Premier League race after having a significant lead.
The loss at the Etihad (2-1) against Guardiola's City levelled the playing field, provided the citizens win their postponed match. Before the clash with Atlético on Wednesday, Arsenal maintained their vital signs against Newcastle (1-0), just like Guardiola's team, likely in his last year before taking a sabbatical to manage a national team. He aims for his seventh Premier League title, while Arteta aims to win Arsenal's first in 22 years.
They know each other inside and out, they know each other's secrets. Simeone studies Arteta in detail, after already suffering a 4-0 defeat in the group stage this year. Today, it doesn't look like the same Arsenal, but it's best not to underestimate this erratic Spaniard who can play at full throttle or ambush his team in the fog.