There are many similarities between Bukayo Saka, Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly. The most obvious of these is that they are all graduates of the Arsenal academy who are now members of Mikel Arteta’s first-team squad. They are also all left-footed, versatile, determined and exceptionally talented young footballers.
If you were to ask Per Mertesacker what this trio has in common, though, then you might receive a different answer. The Arsenal academy manager sees these situations from a different angle and he would point out that Saka, Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly have another shared trait: they all joined the club before the age of nine.
Could Arsenal have known back then, when these players were at such a young age, that they would one day make it to the first team? Of course not. But the club’s coaches could certainly see the potential, and they definitely knew the significance of attracting these youngsters to Arsenal at the earliest possible age.
“The under-nine group is almost like the most important age group every single year,” says Mertesacker. “That is where the resources go and also where I need to present to parents. At that stage, when you are an under-eight, you might have offers from five or six clubs in London.”
Not so long ago, Mertesacker’s professional life involved scrapping with opposition centre-forwards, as a towering defender for Arsenal and Germany.
These days his battles are often for young talent instead, as Arsenal’s academy competes with the other clubs in the capital for the same gifted youngsters. “I would not call it an under-eight transfer market [but] it is probably close to that,” he says.
Can you even tell, at the age of seven or eight, how good a player might be? “When you come down to Hale End, where the pre-academy trains, you see their skills,” says Mertesacker. “I compare that to my time – I think I could just run in straight lines. There is a technical element to it now. You can see it.
‘Under-nine really builds the foundation of your team’
“Obviously it is early, and at that age you make it fun. You make it playtime, you make it musical. It’s a foundation phase, where they need to express themselves as much as possible.
“But still, there are traits. You see the player’s behaviour, you see the parents. You want to build a really positive and inclusive environment there. Under-nine really builds the foundation of your team.”
On Wednesday night, Arsenal’s League Cup campaign continues with a trip to face Preston North End. So far this season, the competition has been a memorable one for the club’s academy: against Bolton Wanderers in the previous round, seven current or former academy players featured in their 5-1 win.
Four teenagers made their debuts, including 16-year-old goalkeeper Jack Porter. “A really inspirational night,” says Mertesacker. “We want to build on that.”
For Mertesacker and the Arsenal academy staff, producing a first-team player is obviously the ultimate goal. But it is far from the only measure of success, and the German makes it clear that the club is as focused on the development of good people as it is on good players.
“Football talent gets you in the building,” he says. “It’s the character that sets the ceiling. Kicking the ball around is not enough. We are big on respect and humility – you are here to respect yourself and make yourself better, but you have to respect others and the environment as well.
“Respect, discipline and humility: those are three key traits to being a decent human being, but there is also the foundation that you will 100 per cent become a better player if you have those traits. By doing that, you put yourself in with the best chance of becoming a professional footballer.”
Lewis-Skelly, the 18-year-old left-back, is evidently one of those who has the required personality for the senior game. He showed as much on his Premier League debut, against Manchester City, when he confronted Erling Haaland after the final whistle.
“He wants to be the best team-mate he can be,” says Mertesacker. “It is simply coming from those traits – how can he include himself and integrate himself into the first team, how can he protect and be around his team-mates? That is what he did there.”
An unavoidable truth for Mertesacker is that the improvement of Arteta’s first team in recent seasons has made life more challenging for the academy. As the senior squad has progressed, it has become increasingly difficult for young players to make the jump from youth football to Premier League action.
Perhaps fearing that the leap would be too big, or that the opportunities would be too few, some promising players have chosen to leave Arsenal in recent times. The likes of Chido Obi-Martin, Amario Cozier-Duberry, Reuell Walters and Lino Sousa have all departed for other clubs.
Interestingly, all of those players had joined Arsenal well past the under-nine group. They were not as enmeshed in the club and its culture as the likes of Saka, Lewis-Skelly and Nwaneri.
Clearly, another benefit of signing players at the earliest opportunity is that it strengthens their bond with the institution. Nwaneri, for example, declined lucrative offers from other Premier League teams to remain with Arsenal.
None of this is to say that Arsenal’s academy recruitment team are only interested in signing the best eight-year-olds. Post-Brexit, the club has renewed its focus on identifying and attracting the most exciting teenage talent in the country, and more investment is now being made in those areas.
“Brexit restricted movement of European talent coming here,” says Mertesacker. “Arsenal had been really successful in getting that mixture. That was really important but it’s closed now, so domestic recruitment is more important and London recruitment is more important.”
As ever with academy football, it will be years before Arsenal know whether the decisions they make today are the best decisions for the future. Youth football is an uncertain world.
The presence of all those academy players on the pitch against Bolton, though, and perhaps again against Preston, is a sign that the pipeline from their academy to the first-team remains strong. For players such as Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly, that pipeline was almost a decade in the making.
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