Per Mertesacker: ‘Jack Wilshere has proved me wrong – it’s brilliant to see’

W hen Mikel Arteta departed Arsenal in 2016, his playing days finished and a transformative apprenticeship in coaching with Pep Guardiola around the corner, he left a note for his chief executive. One extraordinary football mind was about to up sticks, for a few years at least, but another remained within reach. Arteta knew Arsenal could not afford to let Per Mertesacker slip away. “You can’t lose this guy,” he told Ivan Gazidis. “Just put him somewhere.”

Gazidis obliged. Two years later Mertesacker, once his centre-back career had wound down, became Arsenal’s academy manager; he had been offered the role at the beginning of his final season, smoothing the transition. He was known to be methodical, organised, cut out for the kind upstairs position that might not necessarily be gratified with immediate rewards.

Some of those fruits will be in evidence on Tuesday night at the Emirates, where Arsenal face West Ham in the FA Youth Cup final. It will be their first appearance on that stage since Mertesacker’s debut season in the job and, while academies do not live or die by the amount of trophies in their possession, there are worse indicators of a healthy setup. Back in 2018, Arsenal lost to Chelsea in what was then a two-leg affair but Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe were both in their side.

“When I started I thought I’d see stuff after two years but I got rid of that notion because you have to look at a 10-year cycle in the academy,” Mertesacker says. “I’m looking at the next three years thinking: ‘This is when the real work starts.’”

If Mertesacker harboured any doubts about his long-term path everything was crystallised when, after Unai Emery was dismissed in November 2019, he was asked to assist Freddie Ljungberg in