TNT Sports Reload - Episode 13
Oct 10Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has revealed what he learned from Pep Guardiola while working as assitant to the Catalan at Manchester City.
The Gunners boss has, since leaving City in 2019, gone on to spearhead an impressive rebuild in north London, with his side sitting top of the Premier League eight games in.
And Arteta has credited Guardiola for allowing him an insight into the day-to-day realities of being a top-level football manager.
Ahead of Arsenal's Europa League clash with Bodo/Glimt, exclusively live on BT Sport, the 40-year-old sat down for an in-depth interview with Michael Calvin on his Football People podcast.
"The greatest thing with Pep was that I was able to see and feel what the role [as a football manager] meant," Arteta said told Calvin.
"Working in another office and looking through the window or trying to read what he was feeling. He gave me the opportunity to get an inside view and really verbalise how he was feeling, fears that he had, the reason why he was doing it [his role], the periods that he had difficulties, or he had good moments.
"He really deeply shared his emotions with me and that was an incredible lesson. Obviously we worked together before, but he did it in a way that transformed my way of understanding the profession."
Arteta, whose side are one point ahead of City in the early Premier League standings, also discussed his long-term goals at Arsenal, highlighting the challenge of competing at the top of the division.
"It depends what you call success - if it’s winning titles or it's bringing our club together," he added. "For me, bringing the club together is much more powerful.
"We have a club that was in a difficult state, with a lot of cracks, with a lot of division. At the moment, this is a very different club. And that's an incredible credit that everybody has to take from the top of the club to every player. Because we did that together.
"The next step is, now we have the foundation, to win. And we are building a team to win, knowing that this era is unprecedented in English football, because nobody has ever had in this league teams that are capable of winning 100 points.
"And they are doing that for many years now, something that we haven't done ever in the history of this football club, even in our best times. So that's the aim and the challenge."
You can hear the full interview with Arteta on the latest episode of Michael Calvin's Football People, available to download now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast platforms.
