Mikel Arteta has revealed the emotional moment he learned Arsenal had been crowned Premier League champions for the first time in 22 years – not from watching the match, but from his tearful son while building a fire in the garden.
Speaking publicly for the first time since Arsenal secured the title, Arteta admitted the “relief” of proving his doubters wrong and issued a warning to rivals: “Now we want more.”
Manchester City’s 1-1 draw against Bournemouth allowed Arsenal to clinch the championship with a game to spare, turning Sunday’s finale at Crystal Palace into the first leg of their victory parade.
While Arsenal’s players and staff watched Tuesday’s drama unfold at the club’s training base, Arteta chose to head home to be with his family.
“It’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever had,” said Arteta. “I was supposed to be here, at the training ground, watching the game with the boys and the staff because that’s what they wanted – but I couldn’t.”
“Twenty minutes before the game I had to leave. I couldn’t bring the energy that I wanted, and ultimately it was their moment to watch it together and be themselves.”
“I went home, I went outside to the garden, and I started to build some fire and started to do some barbecue. I didn’t watch any of it. I was just hearing some noises in the background, in the living room and suddenly the magic happened.”
“My oldest son (Gabriel, who plays for Arsenal Under 18s) opened the garden door, he started to run towards me, he started to cry, gave me a hug, and said: ‘We are champions, Daddy’. Just to see the joy, it was magical.”
“And a minute later, Martin (Odegaard) sent over a video: ‘Where are you? Come over.’ I said: ‘Guys, enjoy it for a while and I’ll see you in a few hours somewhere in London’. It was beautiful.”
Arsenal’s success sparked wild celebrations outside the Emirates Stadium, and the team later partied at the exclusive Tape nightclub in Mayfair, where Arteta joined them. The Spaniard, whose side face Paris St Germain in the Champions League final in Budapest a week on Saturday, admitted he had doubted himself along the way.
“There is a lot of emotion, joy, happiness, being proud. And as well, relief,” he said. “But I’m most proud of how we won it. We showed a very important value, not only in sport, but in life which is perseverance, to be resilient, to be composed in moments when people are doubting you, to be vulnerable because I’ve asked that question to myself: ‘Am I good enough to lead this team, this club, these players to win a major trophy?’”
“And until you do it, you cannot validate yourself. And I thought about the best way to do it. We brought people in from outside and speakers to inspire them. But you have to find your own way.”
“The big lesson here is to stay humble, stay curious and focus on what you want to achieve. And if you give your very best, you give yourself a good chance, and we gave ourselves a very good chance for three years and this season we’ve done it.”
“Of course, the thing now is you want more, and we have the biggest one to play in Budapest in a few days.”
Arsenal, runners-up in the league for the previous three seasons, had faced accusations of “bottling” their trophy bid after a 2-1 defeat at Manchester City on April 19. However, they bounced back by winning their next four matches without conceding a goal.
Arteta added: “In our job, you have to respect every opinion. The difficulty is to place those opinions in the place that they belong. Some of them can be extremely useful and they can help you to be better, or open your eyes to something that maybe you don’t have the capacity to look at. But others can be just damaging and that is the only purpose. You have to keep them away from you otherwise it’s going to affect you in a way that you’re going to transmit it to the team, and that cannot happen as a manager.”
