Days after professing his “love” and “respect” for Pep Guardiola, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has spoken in an equally effusive manner about another influential Spanish coach he will face in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Luis Enrique takes his Paris Saint-Germain team to Emirates Stadium for the most high-profile fixture in the second round of games in the new-look competition.
Arteta and Enrique go way back, having been together at Barcelona in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Arteta was starting out his professional career and Enrique was coming toward the end of his.
Arteta said he “learnt a lot of things” from Enrique as a player and now as a coach, saying on Monday that his compatriot “brings a smile on my face.”
“I am a huge admirer of him,” Arteta said. “I remember his personality, huge character, huge energy, very supportive of his young players. What I love about him is that wherever he has been, as a player or as a manager, his fingerprints are all over place. You can see it’s his team. You can see PSG is his team.
“He has this unbelievable power … Then there’s his approach to life, his profession — it’s something to really look at and I learnt a lot of things from him.”
Arteta spent much of last week talking about Guardiola and Manchester City amid the fallout from Arsenal’s feisty 2-2 draw at the Premier League champions that appears to have ignited a rivalry between the teams.
He has long been viewed as a protégé of Guardiola, yet it seems that Enrique has been an influence, too.
“I love his honesty — he is very straightforward, he looks you in the eyes and tells you what he thinks,” Arteta said. “I think in the end, players appreciate that.”
Arteta described PSG, where he enjoyed a spell on loan in 2000-01 alongside players like Ronaldinho and Nicolas Anelka, as a team “probably at the highest level you can find in European football.”
Enrique’s side leads the French league with five wins and a draw from the opening six games of its title defense and began the Champions League with a 1-0 win over Girona — albeit courtesy of a 90th-minute own-goal.
Arsenal started with a 0-0 draw at Atalanta. Arteta said Arsenal will check on the fitness of fullbacks Ben White and Riccardo Calafiori on Monday.
PSG forward Ousmane Dembele has reportedly been left out of the squad for disciplinary reasons. L’Equipe newspaper and RMC Sport both reported that PSG coach Enrique decided to snub the France player for Tuesday’s league phase match at the Emirates Stadium.
According to the reports, Enrique and Dembele verbally clashed after PSG’s 3-1 win against Rennes in the French league. Dembele delivered an assist during the match.
PSG are unbeaten in all competitions this season. They beat Girona in their Champions League opener earlier this month.
Leverkusen ‘ready’
Bayer Leverkusen expect a typically dangerous game against Italian opposition when they host AC Milan and are honoured to take on a team with a massive European pedigree, manager Xabi Alonso said on Monday.
Milan made a poor start to the season, failing to earn a win in their opening three games, and while they also lost their Champions League game to Liverpool they have turned things around on the domestic front with three successive victories.
“It’s one of those games when you have to play smart. With the ball, without the ball, you have to be patient, you have to be ready, you have to be focused,” Alonso told reporters before Tuesday’s game with Milan.
“An Italian team is always dangerous. They know how to have patience. They are ready to defend low or to play with possession. Milan don’t have to be dominant to be dangerous. Sometimes they have good possession, sometimes they have good counter-attacks.”
Milan are the most successful Italian side in the competition, with seven titles to their name, and the last time they lifted the trophy in 2007, Alonso was on the losing Liverpool team.
