Of all the criticism thrown at Mikel Arteta in the wake of Arsenal’s disastrous defeat at Tottenham in May, none can have stung quite so much as that dished out by his opposite number.
“Arteta is a really good coach...” Antonio Conte began, in a tone that made clear that the mother of all ‘buts’ was coming. What followed, directed at the Premier League’s youngest manager, was the kind of dinner-table reality check usually reserved for cock-sure teenagers.
“... but he has just started this job and he has to be more focused on his team and not to keep complaining,” the Italian continued — a ‘welcome to the real world’ sermon dictated from the high ground seized through his side’s comprehensive victory, which irreversibly shifted the momentum in the race for the top four for all Arsenal, on paper, still held the upper hand.
“He needs to be more calm,” Conte added (translation: “Stop showing off in front of your friends”), which, as anyone who has seen Mr ‘When-I-Lose-A-Duel’ in action on Amazon will know, is rather like asking a hedgehog to be a bit less prickly.
“If he doesn’t want to accept my advice, I don’t care.” Fine. Don’t take a coat, get wet, but don’t come moaning to me.
The grim schooling handed out to a naive young Arsenal that night shattered their belief, their Champions League hopes finally imploding at Newcastle four days later, and with them Arteta’s chance of muscling in on a top-four spot that was ultimately comprised of teams led by the top-flight’s four most established, world-class coaches.
Already, one of those is gone, and the quickening conveyor belt of managerial change allows fewer club rivalries to grow synonymous with those between the incumbents of the respective dugouts. That second derby of last season is the only meeting of Arteta and Conte to date, yet while emotions may never, in a one-off game, be charged by such high stakes again, the friction between them has the potential to build steadily, so long as they both reign in north London.
Peas in a pod they are not. One is (or, at least, intends to be) a process, project manager, the other a proven win-now specialist. One is Guardiola-lite, a latter day saint of Wenger, the other influenced most by the great Italian coaches: Sacchi, Trapattoni, Lippi and Ancelotti. One believes in suffocation by domination, of ball as friend and football as art, while the other is a counter-attacking pragmatist, to whom style appears secondary to result.
Across their personal rivalry, not much ought to have altered to shift the balance of authority in favour of Arteta since May. Conte remains the senior man and, following Thomas Tuchel’s sacking at Chelsea, is now in an even more select club, alongside Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola, as managers in English football with serial, major trophy-winning pedigree.
Yet, going into tomorrow’s second meeting, Arteta’s authority within his own party, so to speak, has never been more absolute; conviction in his methods and the club’s progress under his leadership growing if not week-on-week, then certainly window-by- window. Since the summer’s, his side has finally looked like one crafted entirely by his hand; Granit Xhaka reinvented, Oleksandr Zinchenko inverted, Gabriel Jesus the spearhead.
Arsenal, despite their youth, are growing and maturing fast. Reunited with the rival who dolled out such a humiliating lesson when last they met, tomorrow is Arteta’s latest chance to show he is doing the same.
