Mikel Arteta isn’t given to excessive displays of sentiment but the Spaniard has made no attempt to hide his fondness for Paris Saint-Germain as they head to London to face his Arsenal team in the Champions League on Tuesday.
As a young player trying to force his way into Barcelona’s all-star midfield, Arteta spent a formative 18-month loan spell with the Parisians at the turn of the century that saw him play alongside Ronaldinho, Nicolas Anelka and Jay-Jay Okocha.
Both he and PSG manager Luis Fernandez were keen to make the move permanent but could not strike a deal with Barca. Instead Arteta joined Rangers, the first step of a 20-year association with British football that endures to this day.
“It was my first professional experience,” he said of PSG. “It was an unbelievable time that I spent there and I loved every minute of it. I will always be grateful to the club and Luis Fernandez because he was the one who believed in me when I was 17, 18 years old.
“I played professional football and from there it was a platform to share an experience in a club of that size and a city that is probably the most beautiful in Europe.
“It was an experience that will stay with me forever, with teammates who helped me and shaped who I wanted to be as a player, and ignited something in me to become a manager in the future. There were some very important individuals in that part of my career.
“I wanted to stay there but I was at that moment owned by Barcelona and they didn’t find an agreement and then I had to do something else. I was so happy there, I wanted to stay there but in the end, I had to do something. This is football.”
PSG’s loss was Arsenal’s gain and the same has been true of Arteta the manager. When the French club were seeking a successor to Christophe Galtier in the summer of 2023, sporting director Luis Campos reportedly wooed their former player.
Arteta resisted their overtures and last month agreed a new three-year contract to stay in north London until 2027. PSG hired one of the men who used to be ahead of him in the Barca pecking order, Luis Enrique, and he won the domestic treble last year.
“I’m a huge admirer of him. An unbelievable personality, huge character, huge energy, always very supportive with young players,” said Arteta, who signed a new three-year contract at Arsenal last month.
“What I love about him is wherever he’s been, as a player or a manager, his fingerprints are all over the place. You can sense it’s his team the way his players behave, the way they want to attack and dominate games. The spirit, the energy they have.
“And then his approach to life, to his profession – it’s something to really look at and I learnt a lot of things from him.
“I admire his honesty. He’s straightforward – he will look in your eyes and tell you what he thinks. In the end, players appreciate that.
“They might like it more or less, depending how it happens, but I have had two or three players here who were with him in the national team, and they always said the same thing. They all enjoy playing under him.”