17/08/2026
Mikel Arteta is the most complete manager in the world because Arsenal are routinely the most difficult team to play against in every single moment.
The defensive co-ordination, understanding, and relentless adherence to being as intense and as focused as possible (even when the ball is out of play) is unmatched.
It doesn't matter if the opposition are building out from the back, if they have possession high, or if they have a throw-in, Arsenal are optimally prepared to manage each moment.
Arteta respects the defensive side of the game and gives even more attention to it than the in-possession moment. This is rare for a coach who is also elite at coaching his team with the ball. Oftentimes coaches are obsessed with positional play, build-up solutions, and systematic methods of chance creation and subsequently focus most of their training ground work around these aspects of play. The negative aspect of that lopsided approach to coaching is that the team isn't prepared to suffer defensively when things go wrong in games.
For example, if your team want to dominate the ball and the main defensive approach is to counter-press high as soon as possession is lost with the positional play structure providing strong rest defence coverage, it doesn't account for what happens when your team are defending low in your own half without pressure on the ball.
To use Enzo Maresca's Chelsea team as an example, they exclusively defended man-to-man across the thirds, even when they lacked pressure on the ball. Arsenal defend man-to-man high but when they defend in the mid-block or the low block and lack pressure on the ball they reset into a 4-4-2 to protect key spaces before transitioning into an aggressive and compact press once again.
Combine the defensive structure and elite culture and adherence to those rules and you get a team that is quite clearly the best defensive team in the world.
Then, when you factor in incredible on-ball solutions on top of that, you begin to see the most complete team in the world.
Looking at the images below, Arteta's build-up plan caused Maresca's City also sorted of problems.
Lewis-Skelly and GuimarΓ£es positioned themselves on the same vertical line which created complications for Maresca and City's zonal 4-2-4 press. The distance between both of Arsenal's pivot players was large. Because of that combined with the fact that City want to defend zonally, it left their midfield with a tricky decision to make: do they jump and lock on man-to-man leaving their defenders 1v1 or do they stay and let Bruno be a clear +1 in the build-up?
Ben White also picked up excellent positions inside the pitch which caused O'Reilly problems. Maresca wants his fullbacks to jump to Arsenal's fullbacks to back up the press, but it's much more awkward for the fullback to jump into a central areas than it is into a wide area. Again, it leaves them in a tough predicament, especially with Madueke constantly staying high and wide to pin O'Reilly.
If City locked on man-to-man, Arsenal could use Havertz to dominate City aerially or find accurate passes into another 1v1 on the top line.
If City defended zonally, Arsenal could either find Bruno as the spare man or Ben White as the spare man.
This was one of several build-up solutions Arsenal used to get control in the game.
Arsenal remain the very best coached team in the world, and this has been the case ever since Mikel Arteta was hired.
There were and are other very special coaches throughout that time period (Guardiola, Enrique, Klopp, etc), and Arteta has work to do to match all of their legacies and to reach their level, but there has never been any doubt that he is the most complete tactician in the world. His team are spectacularly coached in every moment whereas PSG, for example, are not as competent at defending low as Arsenal are, thus making their game-model slightly inferior (even if it makes total sense for them because their week-to-week competition is not comparable to Arsenal's so they don't have to prepare to suffer as much).
Arsenal's biggest asset is their manager. They are very lucky to have him.
[EBL2017]
