The Welsh Way: How Mikel Arteta harnessed the Welsh Way
Sam Southall
As a Welsh internationalist, I often think that more should be made of the Welsh impact on the rest of the world. From the founding of Yuzovka (Donetsk) in Ukraine to (some of) the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, Welsh people and ideas have shaped cities, nations, ideals and, of course, football. Billy Meredith was one of the game’s first superstars, John Charles was one of Wales’s finest exports, and Gareth Bale was, well, Gareth Bale. While Gareth Bale spent seven years on the white side of North London, it’s the red side where the Welsh impact on football has been felt the greatest in recent years.
Players including John Hartson and Angharad James-Turner are in a list of over 30 players to have called Arsenal home, but the primary Welsh impact on the pitch had come from two of Wales’ greatest ever players. Aaron Ramsey spent eleven years at the Emirates Stadium in which he was named Arsenal Player of the Season twice, won two Community Shields and three FA Cups, becoming the only Arsenal player to score the winning goal in two FA Cup finals. His 2013/14 season remains the stuff of legend in N5, and his celebration from the 2017 FA Cup final is remembered outside the Emirates Stadium alongside other Arsenal greats, like Thierry Henry. The Frenchman remains the Gunners’ record goalscorer to this day, but it’s a Welsh woman who is second on the list of all-time Arsenal goal-scorers. Unlike Henry, Jayne Ludlow accomplished this feat from midfield in a tenure that lasted thirteen years. During that time Ludlow and Arsenal won the league seven consecutive times (with six of them being invincible seasons), went on a 51-match winning streak, and completed a sextuple in 2006-07 that included the league, FA Cup, League Cup, and Champions League, the Community Shield and the London County FA Women’s Cup (so eat your heart out, Emma Hayes). But Jayne Ludlow left a further impact beyond the pitch – while acting as a physio for Arsenal’s youth teams, Ludlow instilled the club’s values into young players that include current Arsenal vice-captain and England captain, Leah Williamson.
But by 2019, Arsenal had lost its way. The departure of Arsène Wenger, boardroom and back-room chaos, and the disastrous 18-month tenure of Unai Emery had left the club rudderless, with a men’s squad made up of ageing players well past their prime and a handful of academy players playing out-of-position. Enter Mikel Arteta.
From the Basque Country, Mikel Arteta’s playing career saw him go first from Barcelona to PSG, with stints in Scotland and at Real Sociedad, before making his Premier League debut with Everton. But it was with his final club, Arsenal, that he found his home. In his five years at the club he won two FA Cups – the second of which as club captain. Often touted as a future manager by his teammates and coaches, Arteta spent the latter years of his playing career earning his coaching badges with the Football Association of Wales. Now a well-trodden path for former top level professionals, the FAW’s coaching education programme has trained former Gunners like Jayne Ludlow, Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and, most recently, Aaron Ramsey. Under Osian Roberts’ tutelage, the Spanish Arteta would earn his UEFA A Licence and Pro Licence with the FAW in Newport, working with Arsenal’s Hale End and coaching a Wales U-16 squad that included Ethan Ampadu and Rabbi Matondo, amongst others. Upon his retirement from playing in 2016, Arteta would be quickly snapped up by Manchester City at the request of Pep Guardiola. (As a quick aside, Arteta came close to joining Wales in 2018 when Osian Roberts asked him and Thierry Henry to come in as assistant coaches should Roberts be given the Wales manager job – the FAW instead chose Ryan Giggs, whose assistant, Albert Stuivenberg, would later join Arsenal as Arteta’s assistant.)
Since becoming Arsenal manager, much has been made about Guardiola’s influence on Arteta’s footballing philosophy. Games between Arsenal and Manchester City have been framed as master versus apprentice, Pep vs his disciple. But, while there is undoubtedly a juego de posición influence on Arteta’s football – as almost any modern possession-based style of football at the highest levels is, in some way, Pep-derived (much as Pep’s football is derived from totaalvoetbal) – the strength of that influence is often overstated in surface-level analysis that, almost exclusively, focuses purely on what happens on the pitch during matches. But football is so much more than that.
In a previous issue of Alternative Wales, I theorised that The Welsh Way was socialist football for the 21st century. Part of that was because of the politics identified in certain tactical styles (like that of El Flaco or Lobanovskyi), part of that was because of the political context in which the Welsh Way was born – a socialist Wales which, since the publication of that last piece, voted every single Tory MP out of office.
Now, there are arguments that can be made about whether Arteta’s style of play on the pitch is in keeping with the Welsh Way. I certainly believe it is – a systematised form of football with an expressive, cooperative style of play describes Arsenal’s current philosophy on the pitch, albeit one that appears to be stages further along than it currently is with Wales (thus is the nature of club football). Interestingly, there was a period early in Arteta’s tenure as Arsenal manager where multiple phases of play were nearly identical to those of Gemma Grainger’s Wales women – for almost a year, Kieran Tierney and Rachel Rowe operated as if clones of one another. Arteta’s Arsenal eventually evolved past those tactics and Grainger, well, didn’t.
However, I’m not here to make an argument solely on on-pitch matters. Nor am I going to make on based solely on the political context of the area in which Arsenal calls home. But it would be amiss of me not to mention that Arsenal resides in an area which boasts a left-leaning, if not always socialist, history which may even compete with our own. Karl Marx lived and died in Arsenal’s traditional home and is buried a mile up the road from the Emirates Stadium. In an Angel pub, Lenin and Trotsky planned to overthrow the Russian Tsar. Blair and Brown planned New Labour in a different North London pub. The Anti-Apartheid movement called the area home through the last century, while the pro-Palestinian movement calls it home today. Not only are both the current and former leader of the Labour Party North Londoners, but both are Gooners too – Corbyn sits in the lower stands, Starmer does not. Arsenal is covered in the Morning Star. I think you get the gist by now.
Ultimately, whether Arsenal is a so-called socialist football club isn’t relevant to Mikel Arteta’s implementation of the Welsh Way. When Osian Roberts talked about the Welsh Way in 2019, he said “Traditionally Wales would always have been the underdog. And therefore that mentality we took that into our philosophy and into our identity, which is consistent with our culture.” The success of the Welsh Way has come in finding and implementing a philosophy and identity that’s in keeping with the pre-existing culture of the club, area, or nation. At the start of Arteta’s tenure, the footballing philosophy and on-pitch identity was an improvement on what had come under Emery, but maybe not the best cultural match with the club’s history and the existing fan culture. In an interview with the BBC World Service on Wales’ coach education programme, the FAW’s Chief Football Office, David Adams, said “We created this environment in Wales where we didn’t impose a particular philosophy on people. We tried to get them to buy into the idea of there being a Welsh way here and a framework of player development and coaching education, and trying to give them our framework, but saying to them ‘you’ve got to find your own way, build your own values and your own philosophy’.”
Arsenal’s been around since 1886 so the club already has values for which Arteta could build around. As described by the club, they are:
Always move forward.
Actions that matter.
Be together.
While the first two are self-explanatory (‘keep pushing forward’ and ‘do the right thing’), it’s the third value which the club had struggled with most over the last eight years or so. The ‘Wenger Out’ protests and growth of AFTV, the disastrous 18 months under Emery, pandemic football, and hanging effigies of the club’s owner during the Super League debacle meant there was very little victory or harmony for the club whose motto is Victoria Concordia Crescit. Finding that harmony with the fans would be key to success for Arteta. He would just have to find his own way to do that and he would call it Togetherness.
The 2021/22 season saw the return of fans post-pandemic, with many supporters expressing a newfound gratitude for the clubs that are such a pivotal part of their lives. On the pitch, Arsenal would qualify for the Europa League after a blip late in the season saw them drop out of the Champions League positions – an improvement on previous seasons, although not wholly convincing on its own. But there were two developments off the pitch which have left long-lasting positive impacts on the club. Arsenal were followed during the season by Amazon’s cameras for their All or Nothing series, which gave a glimpse at Arteta and the players. Importantly, the series heavily featured Martin Ødegaard, who would later be named club captain, alongside Bukayo Saka, Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith Rowe – all three of which were products of the Hale End Academy – who expressed feelings and emotions that most of the fanbase shared at the time. The documentary served to rebuild the bridge between the players and supporters that had been burnt by ageing players who didn’t share the same values as the club.
The other major development was the implementation of a club anthem to be played before every match at the Emirates Stadium. The Angel by Louis Dunford, an Islington native and Gooner, had initially become popular through his local gigs in North London. A performance in Union Chapel in April 2022 would go viral amongst Arsenal supporters online, making its way to Stuart MacFarlane, Arsenal club photographer (who you may know as the “This is my club. I fucking love this football club” meme), and Lotte Wubben-Moy, Arsenal Women centreback and Hale End academy graduate, who would both champion the song for their respective teams.
So many Welsh supporters will recall the tweets during the darkest days of the pandemic – “that first anthem back is gonna hit hard” and when we returned, it really did hit hard. The Angel gave Arsenal supporters that feeling for the first time in a very long time. The anthem brought fans, players, and the club back together as one. In selecting that song, Mikel Arteta had brought togetherness back to the club and restored the club’s values. In doing so, he had restored harmony to the philosophy, identity and culture of Arsenal, and achieved what Osian Roberts described as the successful implementation of the Welsh Way.
In the two seasons since The Angel was introduced Arsenal has seen one of the most joyful periods in the history of the club, even if it’s not the most successful in the traditional footballing terms of trophies. Arsenal’s men’s team has seen successive second place league finishes which have seen the club amass more points, goals, and clean sheets than the Invincibles, along with their most successful Champions League campaign in nearly two decades. Watching Arsenal under Arteta has become the best of “1-0 to the Arsenal” and Wengerball, with so many moments and stories that will be part of Arsenal’s history forever. The redemption of Granit Xhaka, now an Invincible himself with Bayer Leverkusen, is one such story. It was so much more than just football.
Success too has come to the women’s team. Arsenal Women picked up two League Cups, the second of which ended Emma Hayes’ dream of matching Arsenal Women’s historic 2006/07 season with rivals Chelsea. But Arsenal Women’s success too has come mostly outside trophies – this season saw the team make the move to the Emirates Stadium permanent, with the team having the biggest average attendance of any women’s football team in the world. The club has broken so many attendance records that it’s, frankly, difficult to keep track but most importantly, on the 1st of May 2023, Arsenal Women drew 60,063 supporters to the Emirates Stadium for the semi-final second leg vs Wolfsburg. The Gunners lost that game but broke Dick, Kerr Ladies’ 103-year-old attendance record for a women’s club football match in the UK – the attendance record which had, in part, led to the FA banning women’s football for half a century. Football is about so much more than just football.
Much as Together Stronger heralded in the success of the Welsh Way for Wales, the Welsh Way has heralded in the success of Togetherness for Arsenal. The learnings from the FAW that Mikel Arteta brought in to Arsenal have had a much deeper and wide-ranging impact on the club that has stretched further than his own team. The Welsh Way made Arsenal whole again and brings joy, whatever the weather.