Goodison’s returning Spaniard is ready to make up for lost time in midfield after year on the sidelines with a serious knee injury
A confessional in the latest edition of the Evertonian fanzine When Skies Are Grey shows there is still a place for idolatry in the Premier League and at Goodison Park that place is reserved for Mikel Arteta Amatriain. “As I saw him run on to the Goodison pitch after far too long away,” writes the author of an article on whether it is permissible to cry at the match, “tears streamed down my face and my wife looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and resignation. It was a wonderful moment and proof to me that, along with Duncan Ferguson, Peter Reid and Bob Latchford, he will always be, forgive me for a Kenwright-ism, a God to me.” And Everton lost that day too.
There were many upset Evertonians on 23 January, mainly due to an FA Cup exit at home to Birmingham City. The return of Arteta to the substitutes’ bench against Alex McLeish’s side was to provide immense consolation, however. Eleven months and three operations since rupturing a cruciate ligament at Newcastle United, the midfielder whose composure and creativity had been painfully missed by David Moyes’s team replaced Landon Donovan to a riotous reception with 15 minutes remaining. There was to be no fairytale comeback to save interest in the Cup but, after almost a year in professional purgatory, when every setback fuelled Merseyside rumours that he might never play again, preserving a career was all that mattered.
Arteta, an affable and optimistic soul, says he never allowed the worst fears to fester in his mind. But there were plenty of dark moments, not least when his scheduled return was aborted due to a third unforeseen complication. “The lowest point was after the third setback in November,” the Spaniard recalls. “I was in Barcelona at the time and came down for dinner about 8pm. I walked downstairs but felt a bit sick and my missus said: ‘Look at the size of your knee.’ It had really ballooned, so I went straight back to hospital that night. They told me it didn’t look good, so they drained it, but the next day it was the same again. They had to go inside it to have a proper look, get the fluid out and test everything again.
“The stitches in my knee had flaked and had to be repaired. I’d gone through it all before, having the brace on, working on mobility and strength and I was back at the start. That was a really bad time. It put me back a few months because the bacteria could have affected the cruciate too and the cartilage. I feel like I’ve done a masters in medicine, I’ve learned that much.”
That he hit the depths in Barcelona is a painful coincidence not lost on the 27-year-old. It was in Catalonia that Arteta launched what became a nomadic career until finding a connection with Everton. Invited to join the Barcelona academy at 15 from Antiguoko – his boyhood team in San Sebastián, where he played alongside his close friend Xabi Alonso – the midfielder made his senior debut at 16 as a substitute for his childhood hero Pep Guardiola. That fleeting appearance in the first team found the teenager in the company of Luis Figo, Rivaldo and Luis Enrique but more recent experiences in the city have been far removed from Camp Nou’s glamour.
“I travelled between here and Spain about 15 times in the last year and made a lot of friends in the [Quirón] hospital,” he adds. “I went to see Ramón Cugat in Barcelona, who is in the top three knee surgeons in the world, and it was just very fortunate that when the knee did swell up I was still in Barcelona. I was due to come back but because I had started running that week he asked me to stay a bit longer and see if there was any reaction from the impact.
“If I’d been in England when it happened, I wouldn’t have been able to fly back and would have had to wait until he was free to come here, which would have set things back even further. But staying in the hospital in Barcelona put a lot of things into perspective for me. I saw a lot of things with the kids that were unbelievable. I’d just had a baby and when you see youngsters who are ill it is even worse. I knew that at the end of all I was going through I would be fine but a lot of the kids in there wouldn’t be.”
Gabriel Arteta was born last July with an eye condition that required frequent medical attention but, like father, like son, his recovery is now well underway. On a professional level, tThe torment of being sidelined as an injury-plagued Everton team lost last season’s FA Cup final and toiled through the first half of this campaign also had an impact. “I watched every match from last season while I was doing my rehab and, while I love watching football, it was really hard watching Everton. I hated it,” he recalls. “You know what they’re going to do because they’re your mates and you work with them every day. Watching them win was beautiful but losing is even worse because you can’t do anything to help. When we played Benfica in Europe and lost 5-0 [in October] I felt embarrassed because I hated the image of us that it gave to everyone else.”
It may surprise those at Rangers who recall a talented but fragile midfielder that Everton’s adulation towards Arteta is based on spirit as well as quality. The characteristics that prompted the club’s effusive chairman, Bill Kenwright, to draw comparisons between Moyes’ £2.2m signing – repeat, £2.2m signing – and Alex Young, ‘The Golden Vision’, have not diminished during Arteta’s prolonged spell on the sidelines.
As the Everton manager has stressed, his No10 should be making only cameo appearances as he builds match fitness and still has a psychological barrier to overcome regarding fully committed tackles. But he has started in Everton’s last two important victories, against Chelsea and Sporting Lisbon, due to the ankle injury to Marouane Fellaini that will deprive the team of a captivating central midfield partnership for the next six months. Despite being back in action for only a month, it is typical of Arteta’s standing at Goodison that much will depend on his influence when Manchester United arrive on Merseyside today.
“We were planning for me to have three or four weeks just training with the lads but we got a few more injuries so I had to speed it up,” Arteta says matter-of-factly. “Everyone at Everton has been really good to me, keeping in touch with texts and calls from the lads, the medical staff, the manager and the chairman. They told me to take as long as I needed, to stay with my family and friends. They trusted me basically, they knew I wasn’t going to be lying around on the beach and to come back and beat Chelsea last week was fantastic. You know you can pretty much beat anyone if you can beat them but for me it’s just great to be involved in everything again.”
EvertonPremier LeagueAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk
