In 2001, Arteta was a 19-year-old La Masia graduate looking for his big break. But it started to look like Barcelona’s first team wasn’t the place for him.
Xavi Hernandez, two years Arteta’s elder, was building up his role in the team. Another teenager, this time two years younger than Arteta, was the talk of the town and would debut just a year later; that boy’s name was Andres Iniesta.
To these two, you can add Emmanuel Petit, a World Cup winner with France and a Premier League champion with Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal in 1998. Also in Arteta's way was the “Swiss army knife” of a player that Phillip Cocu was.
And most importantly, the club had an experienced double pivot of… Luis Enrique and then-Barca captain Pep Guardiola.
Many years later, Arteta would go on to beat one of them to the Premier League title and challenge the other for the Champions League crown.
But back then, young Mikel took the duo as mentors. Especially Enrique.
"I am a huge admirer of him," Arteta said at a press conference ahead of a PSG-Arsenal Champions League encounter in 2024. "I remember his personality, huge character, huge energy. He was very supportive of young players.
"What I love about him is that wherever he has been, as a player or as a manager, his fingerprints are all over the place. You can see PSG is his team.
"I learnt a lot of things from him."
First chance in Paris
Arteta knew he wouldn’t make it at Camp Nou with this competition, so he opted for a loan move. PSG, managed by Spanish-born former France international Luis Fernandez, came calling.
"I knew that Mikel would be a coach one day. He was quiet when I signed him but I was fascinated by him as a player," Fernandez later told The Telegraph.
For younger fans who have known almost nothing other than total PSG dominance in Ligue 1, it might be hard to imagine, but back then, the Parisiens were “just” a very talented side that didn’t really contend for the title. When Arteta joined midway through the 2000/01 season, Nantes ended up lifting the trophy with PSG in 9th.
The next year, in Arteta’s only full season with the team, Paris Saint-Germain finished fourth, but the title was claimed by Lyon, who started their incredible dynasty that eventually stopped at seven Ligue 1 championships in a row.
A quick look at the squad would show you just how brimming with talent Fernandez’s side was.
In defence, there was Mauricio Pochettino, who went on to manage PSG himself, and Gabriel Heinze, now an integral part of Arteta’s coaching staff. In attack, there was Nicolas Anelka, fresh off of spells at Arsenal and Real Madrid.
And in midfield, Arteta and Nigerian legend Jay Jay Okocha played alongside a talented young Brazilian fellow who joined in the summer from Gremio and went on to become PSG’s top goalscorer that year before departing to become a legend at Barcelona.
Yes, Ronaldinho.
With this squad, Arteta was able to claim one trophy, the Intertoto Cup. During the run in the now-defunct tournament, he played in a game that ended up being integral to his career. That game was against Scottish side Rangers, who liked Arteta so much that they ended up signing him at the end of that season, after he returned to Barcelona upon the end of his PSG loan deal.
Getting to Premier League level
It may sound like an exaggeration, but the Rangers spell was what turned a boy into a man. Or at the very least, prepared that young man for the physicality of English football.
“Scottish football was tough, really tough. It was really physical; people got at you, and I had to improve on that a lot. I think I did that to get to the level that the Premier League required of me,” Arteta told STV Sport all the way back in 2012.
By 2003, Arteta was a Scottish champion with Rangers. He returned to his home country for a short, not very successful spell with Real Sociedad before signing for Everton. The story from then on is widely known - he became a mainstay and even club captain with the Toffees, then transferred to Arsenal where he also ended up captaining the side, and later coaching it to the Premier League title.
The season-and-a-half loan spell with PSG was what kick-started and eventually shaped Arteta’s entire playing career. It’s only logical that in the biggest game of his managerial career so far, he faces Les Parisiens and Luis Enrique.
No, we didn’t forget about him. He wasn’t just a mentor-slash-competitor at Barcelona. There was one more moment, one more crossroads where, if a different decision was made, the fortunes of two clubs and two managers would have looked quite different.
Coaching crossroads
That was in 2019, some 18 months after Arsene Wenger’s 22-year reign at Arsenal had ended. The Gunners bet on Unai Emery as Wenger’s successor. Today, Emery is a highly regarded manager, a popular figure, and a Europa League specialist who turns every team with “Villa” in their name into winners, but for Arsenal, he wasn’t the one.
On November 29th 2019, he learned that the hard way when he was sacked by the North London club. While Freddie Ljungberg took charge as the interim boss, the Gunners were looking for a permanent solution.
Their first choice? Luis Enrique.
At the time, Enrique was out of a job after leaving the Spanish national team following the diagnosis and subsequent tragic passing of his daughter. As somebody with successful spells managing La Roja and Barcelona, Arsenal saw him as a great option for their managerial vacancy.
But instead, after much-needed time away from football, Enrique stepped back into his role with Spain and led them to the Nations League final in 2021.
So Arsenal went a different way, handing their top job to someone who was familiar with the club from his playing days, but as a coach was only known as a member of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City staff.
The rest is history, as they often say. Arteta inherited what many perceived was a toxic squad and started shaping it to his liking. He won the FA Cup and two Community Shields, but endured second-place heartbreak time and time again as his Gunners were labelled the nearly-men of the Premier League.
And then, in May 2026, he finally won the league title, beating former mentor Pep Guardiola and his Manchester City.
Now, the challenge is to do it again in the Champions League. This time against a team that gave him a proper start to his professional career, and a manager who was a mentor to him in the early playing days and then nearly took over Arsenal instead of him.
This Saturday in Budapest, Mikel Arteta’s career, all 25 years of it, can come full circle.
