This season, Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly have graduated from Arsenal's academy to the first team and are expected to play against Brighton on Saturday. Arteta, who began his career at Barcelona, once shared a dorm room with Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta, and Victor Valdés at La Masia. However, he has expressed frustration with replicating that environment at Arsenal due to rules such as restrictions on signing international players under 18.
“For example, we lived in La Masia. To replicate that here is impossible. We cannot do it,” Arteta said. “It is the most unique environment I have seen in my life, the most competitive, the most inspiring and the most professional environment at any club or academy that I have seen that replicates a first-team environment at 14 or 15 years old. To do that with the capacity to recruit from all over Spain, or all over the world if you wanted at that time, that is very difficult to achieve.”
When asked if he would like to see the same thing at Arsenal, Arteta added: “Yes because we were 32 players there and I think 29 of them made it to the highest level. The six that shared a room with me were legends in the football world. That is unheard of. There is something special there, that is not a coincidence. And they have done it for decades now.”
Premier League clubs have been unable to sign overseas players under 18 since new post-Brexit regulations were implemented. Arteta emphasized that these rules make it challenging to compete with other top European clubs. “It’s so limited, that’s why with the financial situation that all the clubs have at the moment,” he said. “But that’s a regulation – it might change, it might not. We just need to be so good with the actual regulation right now. But it is very different in Europe. That’s the thing that I don’t think is very, very fair.”
It is understood that Arsenal has been exploring the creation of a multi-club network to keep pace with rivals, such as City Football Group, owned by Manchester City's owners, which now includes 14 clubs globally.
Arteta believes this growing trend is a response to the academy player regulations. “That’s something that a lot of clubs have at the moment,” he said. “So, that restriction in the country has provoked many other clubs to have sister clubs or multi-club systems to be able to do that.
“Looking ahead in the future [the multi-club model] is something basically to explore, because obviously with the actual system it’s very, very difficult. Every club is very different in the way that they are set up and the clubs that they have picked. But in our way it’s obviously a decision from our ownership and the board to understand what is the best thing for the club in the future.”
