Timeline of Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta’s relationship
From the sun-drenched pitches of La Masia to the rain-soaked dugout at Manchester City and now the glory-ridden summit of the Premier League, Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta have kept on coming back to one other.
Like any deep-rooted relationship, Guardiola and Arteta share a bond that immediately reignites even after years apart. Both found themselves in Barcelona at the end of the 20th century but have taken wildly contrasting routes to end up duking it out for the Premier League title in charge of Manchester City and Arsenal respectively.
Here’s a look at how the winding road of the relationship between the two leading Premier League managers has unfolded over the years.
A young Mikel Arteta in action for Barcelona. pic.twitter.com/Uh7HC77JtL
— 90s Football (@90sfootball) February 18, 2023
Arteta grew up with a fondness for Barcelona but is a native of San Sebastian in the Basque region. Unlike Guardiola – who was raised an hour’s drive from Camp Nou – Arteta had to move more than 500km to join La Masia.
One of three players from his Antiguoko youth team to make the trek to Catalonia for a week’s trial in July 1997, Arteta – and his friends – secured a spot in the club’s famed academy.
„We met when I was 15,“ Arteta remembered of his first encounter with Guardiola. „He was my idol. He was the one to try to emulate if I wanted to be a first-team player at Barcelona and we built that relationship from there.”
Louis van Gaal with a young Mikel Arteta at Barcelona. pic.twitter.com/48BNjwoJei
— 90s Football (@90sfootball) March 12, 2016
Arteta regularly trained with Barcelona’s senior team but was never afforded a competitive bow. However, the then-manager Louis van Gaal did give the teenager a run out in a pre-season friendly against Hertha Berlin in the summer of 1999.
As fate would have it, Arteta came on at half-time to replace Barcelona’s number four. “I was 16 when I played my first game,“ he told The Guardian in 2008. „I came on in the second half to replace Pep Guardiola.”
While Guardiola – at the time Barcelona’s captain – prepared himself for the Spanish Supercopa against Valencia which would take place two days later, Arteta was sent back to the B team.
Unable to displace his idol, Arteta was also competing for a midfield berth with Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta – two more players that looked up to Guardiola. After two years with the B team, Arteta joined Paris Saint-Germain on an initial loan deal during the 2000/01 season.
At the end of the same campaign, Guardiola also left Camp Nou, embarking upon an itinerant swansong to his playing career where he picked the brains of the managers he most respected.
Guardiola indirectly facilitated Arteta’s move to Arsenal as a player in 2011. Arsenal’s captain Cesc Fabregas finally got his wish to rejoin Barcelona that summer, linking up with Guardiola who inspired the midfielder to wear the number four shirt. Gunners boss Arsene Wenger then lured Arteta away from Everton as a replacement in north London.
Incidentally, Arteta moved to the same area of London as Guardiola’s brother and agent Pere. The pair had always stayed in touch but Guardiola gave a new edge to the relationship when he called Arteta ahead of Barcelona’s Champions League tie with Chelsea in April 2012, asking for the midfielder’s tactical analysis, according to Lu Martin and Pol Ballus’ book Pep’s City: The Making of a Superteam.
Barcelona lost the first leg 1-0 in London and ultimately fell to a 3-2 aggregate defeat but Guardiola didn’t blame Arteta’s analysis. In fact, Arteta revealed that the practice continued after Guardiola moved to Bayern Munich in 2013.
Guardiola first floated the idea of making Arteta his assistant in 2012. “When I was 30, I remember that Pep made the first call to say, ‘I might be coming to England, would you become my assistant?’“ Arteta revealed. „I said: ‘I’m still playing! It’s still too early…’“
Three years later, as injuries increasingly limited his playing time, Arteta had warmed to the offer. When Guardiola brought his Bayern Munich team to the Emirates for a 2015 Champions League group stage clash – one which Arteta watched from the bench while struggling for fitness – he managed to grab a word with Guardiola.
„We had a good chat and at the end he told me that he wanted to work with me if he ever moved to England,“ Arteta remembered. „So when I retired I called him and said: ‚Is that job still available?‘ It was.“
Arteta was the first member of Guardiola’s coaching staff at Manchester City to be officially announced in the summer of 2016. Arsenal’s skipper turned down a role at Arsenal’s academy and rumoured overtures from Mauricio Pochettino – his former PSG teammate – at Tottenham to finally professionally reconnect with his childhood idol.
Lorenzo Buenaventura is a key figure often overlooked in Arteta’s arrival at City. The revered fitness coach has followed Guardiola from Barcelona to Manchester via Munich after he tutored the Catalan manager at the Spanish Federation while studying for his coaching badges.
Buenaventura and Arteta have known each other for even longer. The Arsenal manager described himself and the fitness expert as ‚a long-established couple‘. Guardiola was undoubtedly behind Arteta’s appointment but a sign-off from the much-trusted Buenaventura can’t have hurt.
Originally on the long list to replace Wenger in 2018, Arteta returned to Arsenal as head coach in December 2019. Guardiola gave Arteta his blessing to leave 18 months before he actually did, explaining: „I want the best for my friends and he is a friend.
„We were so smart to pick him up and now the others want him,“ Guardiola wryly admitted shortly before Arteta took over at the Emirates, „I’m not surprised.“
Arteta’s first managerial head-to-head with Guardiola had to wait until after the COVID-enforced hiatus during the 2019/20 campaign. Arsenal returned to Premier League action with a 3-0 loss at the Etihad Stadium but the roles would be reversed in an empty Wembley the following month.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored twice in a carefully constructed tactical battle which Arsenal’s altered back three came out on top of. The former teammates and colleagues may have turned into rivals but there was still plenty of good will between the two.
„I high-fived him after the game and wished him luck,“ Arteta reported. „I love him like yesterday or this morning the same way.“
Arteta has not overseen a victory against Guardiola since, losing all seven subsequent matches. Whatever the outcome when the pair meet in a title showdown on Wednesday, they are bound to find a way back to one another eventually.
LISTEN NOW
On this edition of The Chronicles of a Gooner, part of the 90min podcast network, Harry Symeou looks back on Arsenal 3-3 Southampton in the Premier League and the effect the result will have on the Gunners‘ title aspirations. If you can’t see this embed, click here to listen to the podcast!