Mikel Arteta has spent five years building something at Arsenal, and now, with a Premier League title finally in his hands, he has begun to say out loud the thing he has only ever hinted at before. Arsenal, he believes, can become the best club in the world.
The claim, made in the afterglow of a 3-0 Community Shield demolition of Manchester City, is the clearest statement yet of the ambition that has driven Arteta since the day he walked back into the Emirates as a manager. It is the kind of thing managers usually avoid saying, the kind of claim that invites mockery if it goes wrong. Arteta said it anyway.
For the first time in 22 years, Arsenal begin a Premier League campaign as the preeminent force in English football. They are the champions, the team everyone else is measuring themselves against, and the question that has hung over them all summer is whether they can do what their predecessors could not: win it again.
The burden of defence
It is worth dwelling on what Arsenal are attempting, because the history of it is sobering. They ended a 22 year wait for the title last season, and they are now seeking to win back to back top flight crowns for the first time since the 1930s. That is the scale of the challenge.
Defending a title is, in almost every sport, harder than winning one. The hunger that drives a first triumph is difficult to replicate, the opposition arrives with extra motivation, and the scrutiny intensifies. Arsenal will discover all of this over the coming months.
Arteta, to his credit, is not pretending otherwise. “We know what it’s going to take. We know the difficulty of the task. We’ve never done it at this club, to win it again,” he said after the Community Shield. “We know that it’s going to demand something special and we are ready for it.”
The statement in Cardiff
The Community Shield is, by tradition, a glorified friendly, a curtain raiser that tells you very little about the season to come. But Arsenal’s performance against City felt like something more.
They scored after 24 seconds, Riccardo Calafiori finishing a move that spoke of a team in complete command of its game. Kai Havertz headed a second before half time. Martin Odegaard added a third after the break, a goal of such composure that it seemed to encapsulate everything Arsenal have become under Arteta: patient, precise, and utterly assured.
It was a statement performance, and Arteta did not downplay it. “That’s the standard,” he said. “If we drive the standards at this level, I’m sure that we’re going to be really, really competitive.”
The manager was particularly taken with the performance of Christos Tzolis, the new signing who was involved in all three goals. “He has a massive quality, which is when he is in the last 20 to 30 metres he is so composed to pick people out,” Arteta said. “He was decisive.”
The hunger remains
Perhaps the most striking thing about Arteta’s comments was the insistence that the hunger has not dimmed. Winning, he suggested, has only sharpened the appetite.
“We want to go straight again,” he said. “The desire comes because I want to live that moment again. I want to live other moments, even bigger than them.”
There is something genuinely compelling about that framing. The fear for any champion is that the summit, once reached, leaves nothing left to climb. Arteta is insisting the opposite, that the taste of success has only made his team want more.
It is easy to say such things in August, of course. The real test comes in the grim winter months, when the injuries pile up and the fixtures come thick and fast and the memory of last season’s triumph has faded. That is when champions are truly made or unmade.
The challengers
Arsenal will not have it their own way. Manchester City, humbled in the Community Shield, remain a formidable proposition under their new manager, and the expectation is that they will push Arsenal hard once again. Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea have all strengthened, and the league, as ever, offers no easy fixtures.
The absence of a runaway favourite is, in some ways, a reflection of Arsenal’s own excellence. They have raised the bar, and everyone else is scrambling to match it. But it also means the margin for error is slim, and a poor run of form could quickly see them reeled in.
Arteta’s confidence is not misplaced, but it will be tested. The Premier League is unforgiving, and the gap between the champions and the chasing pack, however wide it may look in August, has a habit of narrowing by April.
What the season promises
For Arsenal fans, the season ahead carries a significance that is hard to overstate. This is the campaign that will define whether last season’s triumph was the beginning of an era or a glorious one-off.
Arteta has spoken of his ambition to win the Champions League, the one trophy that has eluded Arsenal throughout their history, and of building a side that can dominate English football for years. Those are lofty goals, but they are no longer the fantasies of a hopeful manager. They are the stated ambitions of a club that has, at last, put itself in a position to pursue them.
The Premier League season begins this weekend, and Arsenal will begin it as champions. How they finish it will depend on whether the hunger Arteta speaks of is real, or whether it was just the language of a man enjoying his moment in the sun.
For now, the message is clear. Arsenal believe they can be the best club in the world. And after what they showed in Cardiff, it is becoming harder to dismiss that belief as mere talk.