Football: Mikel Arteta’s surprising training method

Mikel Arteta is one of those young coaches who have been made aware of tactics during their playing career or their training on the benches. Game ideas, these men have their blackboards full of them. But when it comes to the question of managing a group of footballers – the most important thing in the coaching profession – there is no ready-made method. So the Arsenal boss is getting creative.

The scene was revealed in the documentary All or Nothing, in which we can follow the 2021/2022 season of the Gunners, relentlessly tracked by the cameras of Prime Video. Before the match against Liverpool, Arteta made his proteges practice on the soundtrack of the Reds supporters, the legendary You’ll Never Walk Alone.

The reason? A bad experience experienced by Arteta when he was still a player. “Once at Anfield the game was going well and suddenly I could only see red shirts around me and the game was going over me. I couldn’t react. Emotionally, physically, I couldn’t handle it. Everything was going too fast. I have only had this feeling once in my career, and it was at Anfield,” recalls the former Everton midfielder.

So, in order to prevent his players from losing their footing in the atmosphere instigated by the Liverpuldian Kop, Granit Xhaka’s coach turned up the volume in training. Ingenious, of course, but Arsenal was still run over by Jürgen Klopp’s troops at Anfield (4-0). Enough to give Liverpool supporters room for at least a few months…