Mikel Arteta’s ‘finishers’ that could prove Arsenal’s cutting edge in the Champions League

While Mikel Arteta understood how to give his team this crucial final touch in a fervent San Mames, he looked through the bench and could not help noticing the way in which Gabriel Martinelli leaned forward.

“In his eyes, I could see that he was ready,” said Arteta, before making a gesture towards Leandro Trossard. “Leo too.”

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They were more than ready. They were impatient to go. In less than 36 seconds later, Trossard had hung a ball to Martinelli to score an elegant opening goal in this 2-0 victory against Athletic. A few minutes before the end, Martinelli made the favor of Trossard to seal the three points.

Talk about inspired substitutions. Except that it is not really a sentence that Artata likes to use. The Basque is one of the “leadership” groups involving elite coaches of many different sports, where they share ideas, and a thought of rugby has struck. Like Eddie Jones and Joe Schmidt, Arteta describes these players as “finishers”.

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“I love it,” he said about the sentence, “because I don’t like other words to describe players.”

It is a pointed message from him to the team in the first weeks of this campaign, “that the ends will be more important this season than the starters”.

This could also be a particularly important message, since Artata has the new challenge to manage a huge and costly team. It has already been discussed on the training field of players who had to use other locations they did not expect. This feeling of being sidelined will be multiplied for the start of selections.

“Whenever you call the programming, you disappoint a lot of players,” said Arteta. “I know how much they want to play this competition and what it means for them.”

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He could see him in Martinelli. Everyone could see how much it meant for the team for Martinelli to mark such a goal, since their career had blocked.

It may have been an important moment. The Brazilian is not a forgotten man, but a recall of his real qualities was necessary.

After being one of the brilliant prospects for the future of the club – that Paris Saint -Germain was ready to pay a fortune – Martinelli fell from the favorite program of Arsenal, while Artata signed a series of players who can play in his positions. The speech throughout the summer was that the team could do with someone on the left and that it was open for the 24 -year sale.

Martinelli remained instead and, in Bilbao, showed its true value. He quickly passed the campaign of the Arsenal Champions League, this beautiful second touch so elegantly finished it to finish Unai Simon. The whole team has notably joined around him.

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“It’s the mind,” said Arteta. “This is why I really appreciate every day to work with them and to be part of this team, because the way they take care of each other is authentic, and they really want the best for each other. And they recognize someone who works every day in a way that Gabby does. And you can browse the struggles or through moments, and recognize this and have this ability to connect with him, I think that would mean him a lot.

“I was sure Gabby was going to react like that. You raise the level in Gabby and he was going to do it. He has such a mentality. He is a player who is constantly willing to learn and he broke.

“And this is the moment that, hopefully, will give him the confidence to go there, because he is an exceptional player.”

Here, these “finishers” gave Arsenal this crucial edge – literal “finishes”.

Many has already been made of the strength of the team in depth, but this game showed him another dimension.

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The team had already reaffirmed its robustness before the substitutions. Athletic had really set them up in the first 25 minutes, a road to which Arteta said he was expecting.

“So intense, a lot of direct game,” said the manager. “What an incredible place for playing football, and one of the best atmospheres I played.”

This famous atmosphere has only been amplified by long anticipation and the excitement to finally return to the Champions League after an absence of 11 years. Athletics fans presented a banner before the match that said “unique in the world”, and it really felt like the scenes they created.

Arsenal nevertheless resisted this, to dig and then start to push. They had the best chances of the game even in the previous steps, while Viktor Gyokerres approached twice with the headers.

It was an impressive display of control, which will take a test to anyone against Arsenal this season. They will not be intimidated and do not do a lot about them.

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Many would rightly say that this is precisely what should happen when you meet a very lower resource club.

Arteta’s “finishers” were not only a showcase of the new quality of his team, after all, but also a crucial difference between Arsenal and Athletic as well as most European football. They are much richer.

While sports director Ernesto Valverde explained how his team seemed to start losing duels late, he simply said: “They pay a lot of money to have physically stronger players with a higher technique”. That said something.

He was put in Valverde after the match that his team had cost 60 million euros and that Arsenal is close to a billion.

“Well, we should have lost 40-0,” he joked, before adding that the real height is always the different.

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Except that the land has also shown realities. In this case, Noni Madueke had exhausted athletic defense without final product, only for these same Basque players to face Martinelli. If they couldn’t necessarily see the look in his eyes like Arteta, it was only because he was too fast. He had all this energy.

It has been written several times in these pages that all of this is a problem for European football, because about 12 clubs are so much richer than the others. Valverde even used the term “super club”.

It is however to whom Arsenal must overcome. This first match in the Champions League could have been a sign that Artata found the final touch.