Mikel Arteta Amatriain is a professional football manager and former player from Spain. He was born on March 26, 1982. Sure, we all know that he’s the current Arsenal coach, but no one knew much about him before he became the boss and there’s still so much to know.
Mikel Arteta was known as one of the best players of his generation, playing as an attacking and defensive midfielder during his professional playing time. Not long ago, Mikel Arteta, the club’s former midfielder replaced the team’s interim head coach, Freddie Ljungberg, after Unai Emery was sacked in November 2019.
Here are some of the top facts you didn’t know about Gunners boss Mikel Arteta!
Rare heart disease as a kid
He was just a toddler when he suffered a rare health condition where his heart did not get the right supply of clean blood. As a result, he required an emergency heart operation that only a few doctors in Spain had practical knowledge of.
This is while he had a strong passion for football that his parents couldn’t stop. Therefore, they were forced to consult medical experts to see how great was the risk for young Arteta to play football.
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His partner is a former Miss Spain
The stunning former Miss Spain, Lorena Bernal, is Mikel Arteta’s wife. When she was just 17 years old, she won the title in 1999. She has appeared in several shows, including CSI: Miami, as an actress. The three sons that Lorena Bernal and Mikel Arteta share were born in 2009, 2012, and 2015.
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Net Worth
The 37-year-old has earned the sum of a good amount of money and salary from his current profession in the field of sports industry since 1991.
It is said that currently, his net worth is $19 million. It has been said that his current contract is based on the same amount Unai Emery received as Arsenal coach as he earns almost $6 million annually from coaching the team.
Command over 7 Languages
He can speak 4 languages fluently, which are Spanish, Basque, Catalan, and English. The other three languages are French, Italian and Portuguese, which he can speak a fair amount of! Managers usually need to know several languages due to their career requirements since they have to travel a lot and might have to manage different clubs in different countries. For Arteta to know seven languages is an important managerial skill.
Never had an international call-up
Arteta played at a time when Spain had several high-quality players available in his position. He is frequently regarded as one of the best players in contemporary times to have gone without a senior international cap.
When Arteta retired, he was promptly added to Pep Guardiola’s coaching team, and in 2019, he was picked as the next manager of Arsenal over far more seasoned competitors, which says a lot about how highly regarded he is. The fact that Arteta was never given a chance to play speaks eloquently about the abundance of tremendously excellent midfielders Spain has at their disposal.
In August 2010, several British news organisations reported that Arteta would be eligible to play for the England national football team due to his eligibility for a British passport.
However, he was not able to do so because FIFA Statutes stipulate that the player needs to have held a British passport at the time when he represented Spain at the U16 European Championships and in addition he would have required five years of education in Britain before turning 18.
In demand post-retirement
When Arteta retired, he had three choices. He had been given the choice of joining Arsene Wenger’s coaching staff at Arsenal, Mauricio Pochettino’s backroom staff at Tottenham Hotspur, or Pep Guardiola’s coaching staff at Manchester City. Along with Brian Kidd and Domenec Torrent, who served as Pep Guardiola’s assistant coaches at Manchester City, Arteta was hired on July 3, 2016, to fill that position.
Following the resignation of his former manager Arsène Wenger in 2018, Arteta was closely associated with the position of Arsenal manager, but Unai Emery was ultimately appointed.
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A part of Amazon All or Nothing – TWICE!
Arteta took part in the Amazon Sports Original docuseries All or Nothing: Arsenal, which followed the club’s 2021–22 season by spending time with its players, coaches, and staff off the field and in the locker rooms.
Additionally, he contributed to All or Nothing: Manchester City. The series followed the development of English Premier League team Manchester City throughout the 2017–18 campaign, during which they won two of the four trophies up for grabs and set numerous Premier League performance-related records.
La Masia graduate
This is a very little-known fact about the Arsenal manager. Although now a successful manager, at the start of his career, the first major club he signed with was FC Barcelona. However, his time with FC Barcelona was not the best, mainly due to the fact that he didn’t have many chances to play and exhibit his talent.
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