How room-mate Ronaldinho helped shape Mikel Arteta’s early career

Mikel Arteta was 18 years old, playing for Barcelona’s reserve team, when he received the phone call that changed the course of his career. “You need to pack your bags and fly to Paris,” he was told. “Now.”

Arteta’s first thought was that there must have been some mistake (“are they sure?” he asked) but there was no time for doubt or hesitation. Within a few hours, he and his mother had gathered their things and, together, flown to France.

Arteta’s subsequent 18-month spell at Paris St-Germain proved to be one of the formative experiences of his life. As the Arsenal manager reminisced about that time on Monday, ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League match against PSG, he spoke with such warmth that you wondered if these were even the best years of his career. “Great times,” he said.

In fairness, it must have been enormous fun. Few teenage footballers will ever experience the delights of living in Paris and training every day with players such as Nicolas Anelka, Jay-Jay Okocha and the great Ronaldinho. Arteta even roomed with Ronaldinho, who at the time was still a few years away from reaching his glorious peak.

“He had an aura, an energy, a smile on his face,” said Arteta. “It was impossible to be next to him and be in a bad mood. And then I never saw a talent like this. In training, in every drill, it was like: how is this possible? He is the only player that I have seen in history that could transform, by himself, two clubs. He did it in Paris, and he went to Barcelona in one of their worst moments and transformed them.”

Was Ronaldinho, a famous enjoyer of the world’s nightlife, a good room-mate? “So much energy, so much fun, everything was good,” said Arteta. “With me, he was always perfect.”

Arteta’s assessment of Paris is that it is “probably the most beautiful city in Europe” but it would be wrong to assume his time there was entirely straightforward. On Monday, he agreed with the suggestion that it must have been terrifying to move to such a club at such an age.

After all, within a few days of joining PSG he was playing against AC Milan in the Champions League. In the tunnel at San Siro, he stood opposite the likes of Paolo Maldini and Andriy Shevchenko. “I was thrown to the lions, really,” Arteta said.

In those days, Arteta required the support of team-mates such as Mauricio Pochettino and Gabriel Heinze, two Argentines who became close friends. He needed help on the pitch, too. “I had to do all the defending because I had Ronaldinho and Okocha in front of me,” he said. “Imagine! It was super, almost unreal.”

Arteta’s move to France was the idea of Luis Fernández, the PSG manager. Fernández had previously wanted to sign Arteta for Athletic Bilbao, when he was just 16, and this time he finally got his man. As he made his pitch to Arteta on the phone, Fernandez simply said: “Trust me, I believe in you.”

One wonders how much these early experiences have shaped Arteta’s treatment of the young players in his Arsenal squad. His use of 17-year-old Ethan Nwaneri in the north London derby against Tottenham Hotspur could certainly be considered an example of Arteta throwing one of his players “to the lions”, to see how he fared. Nwaneri did well, as he has done in subsequent matches, and will hope to feature against PSG this week.

Arteta wanted to stay at PSG as a player but, at the end of his loan, an agreement could not be reached with Barcelona. Instead, he began his career in British football by joining Rangers. From there, to Everton (via a brief spell at Real Sociedad) and Arsenal.

“It was an experience that will stay with me forever,” Arteta said of his time with PSG. “With team-mates 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.”

It is another quirk of fate that Arteta also has history with his opposite number on Tuesday. Luis Enrique, the PSG head coach, was a Barcelona first-team player during Arteta’s time at the Catalan club. The young Arteta occasionally trained with those senior stars. “Wherever he has been, as a player or a manager, his fingerprints are all over the place,” said the Arsenal manager of Enrique.

A result of the new Champions League format is that a heavyweight tie such as this, the best team in London going up against the stars of Paris, has come earlier in the season than usual. For Arteta, it represents an opportunity to claim another statement victory as a coach, against the club which helped turn him from a boy into a man.

Merino makes crunching return to Arsenal training to prove fitness

New Arsenal signing Mikel Merino is close to making his comeback from a serious shoulder injury after returning to contact training with the first team.

Merino, a £32 million summer arrival from Real Sociedad, was injured in his first training session for the club after colliding painfully with centre-back Gabriel Magalhaes.

The Spain international is therefore yet to make his Arsenal debut, although his long wait appears to be coming to an end after he was cleared to join his team-mates on the training pitches.

Merino trained with the team ahead of the meeting with Paris St-Germain and was pictured sliding into tackles during the session, with one image appearing to display his readiness for action by crunching into forward Gabriel Jesus.

Mikel Arteta said last week that Arsenal had been trying to keep Merino “in the cage” in order to allow his shoulder to heal.

“He’s been working so hard,” said Arteta last week. “It’s looking good. It’s about the healing of the bone and how mature that is to expose him to contact basically.”

“We are trying to keep him in the cage, because he’s been pushing everyone – the physios, the doctors, everybody – and he’s ready to go, and he really wants it. I think we are comfortable now to start exposing him with contact, and he looked really good in training.”