A former Arsenal teammate of Mikel Arteta has claimed the Spaniard has achieved something he once thought was impossible.
Emiliano Viviano, the Italian goalkeeper who spent the 2013/14 season on loan at Arsenal, made the comments in an interview with Radio TV Serie A, drawing a comparison between Arteta and Pep Guardiola — two players he shared a dressing room with during his career.
“What I remember about Guardiola, even today when I see him every now and then, is his stratospheric intelligence, out of the ordinary,” Viviano said.
“On the pitch he was already very curious, someone who wanted to know everything, who asked questions. That role is the position of coaches.
“Imagining that he became what he became is impossible to imagine, but certainly that he was a coach. The same goes for Arteta, who I played with at Arsenal.”
It’s not that Viviano didn’t believe in Arteta’s qualities to become a coach, but he is simply amazed at what both men have achieved.
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Emiliano Viviano’s stint at Arsenal analysed
With six Italy caps to his name and a decent record in Serie A, Viviano arrived at the Emirates on loan in the summer of 2013 with a reasonable enough reputation.
None of this mattered even slightly, because he never made a single first-team appearance, spending the season as third-choice goalkeeper behind Wojciech Szczesny and Lukas Fabianski.
He played once for the under-21s and shipped five goals, according to Transfermarkt.
He returned to Palermo the following summer before joining Sampdoria, where he went on to make over 100 appearances, before retiring in 2024.
He returned to Palermo the following summer, joined Sampdoria, made over 100 appearances there, and retired in 2024, having had, by most measures, a perfectly respectable career. Just not at Arsenal.
That a man with such an eventful, if largely invisible, Arsenal career is now marvelling at Mikel Arteta’s journey to a Champions League final says everything, really, about how dramatically things have changed.
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