Schoolboy friends Mikel Arteta and Xabi Alonso giving out lessons in coaching

Congratulations will be passing between two old friends, young for their current jobs but with a bond that goes back more than 30 years, as they ease into a fortnight’s break from the demands of elite club management. Welcome to the summit, Xabi Alonso can say to his compatriot, his fellow Basque and former schoolboy teammate, Mikel Arteta.

Both Xabi and Arteta reached rite-of-passage moments in their managerial careers at the weekend and, knowing each other as well as they do, since their childhood adventures together in San Sebastian, northern Spain, they will appreciate each other’s success.

Arteta’s Arsenal on Sunday rose to joint-top of the Premier League, a position they have held before but not by climbing such a significant rung of the ladder. By beating the reigning champions, Manchester City, Arteta has, at the very least, shifted a monkey off his back. Seven times he has taken on City as a Premier League manager. The first six of those contests were all Arsenal losses.

The same weekend, in Germany, Xabi marked 12 months in his first job as a head coach in a top division. When he started at Bayer Leverkusen, they held the penultimate spot in the Bundesliga. A year on, Leverkusen are top, with two points clearance over serial champions Bayern Munich, from whom they pickpocketed a point last month, thanks to a stoppage time goal from a substitute Exequiel Palacios.

For a coach, those sort of late gains are exhilarating, an endorsement of competitive stamina, evidence that if you can keep pace with an established champion over 90 minutes, you can believe in doing so over the course of a whole campaign. When the decisive, last-gasp hero is a player who has come off the bench, the decision-making coach is instantly