Mikel Arteta ‘in talks’ with Man Utd cult hero and ex-team-mate about becoming Arsenal assistant manager next season
ARSENAL are in talks over appointing Gabriel Heinze as Mikel Arteta’s new assistant, according to reports.
Gunners coaches Albert Stuivenberg and Carlos Cuesta have both been tipped to leave this summer to become managers.
With Arsenal on the lookout for new staff, reports suggest that Heinze is in the running to replace them at the Emirates.
ESPN Argentina claim Arteta has made contact with the ex-Manchester United star and is trying to persuade Heinze to make the move to Arsenal.
The duo know each other from their days as team-mates at PSG in the 2001/02 season.
Heinze played for Man Utd for three seasons from 2004, making 83 appearances and winning the club’s Player of the Year award in his first campaign.
The 45-year-old former full-back also played for the likes of Real Madrid, Marseille and Roma.
Overall, he won three league titles, including the Premier League in 2006.
Since hanging up his boots ten years ago, Heinze has ventured into management.
He has worked with four clubs in his homeland – Godoy Cruz, Argentinos Juniors, Velez Sarsfield and Newell’s Old Boys.
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Heinze also spent a year in charge of MLS side Atlanta United before he was axed.
Meanwhile, Arteta has refused to stand in Stuivenberg and Cuesta’s way should they want to move on.
The boss explained: “You cannot stop them. I wouldn’t, no.
“I think everybody needs to feel that there is a path, there is a development plan for everyone.
“People don’t want to do the same thing for three, four, five years and there is a way to incentivise people, to inspire other people, and then to explore.
“You don’t really know the limit of a person unless you expose him to certain things. I think curiosity is a really important quality that we have within our young staff.”
How Arteta made Arsenal horrible again, with Tony Pulis tactic and gentle star turned into Diego Costa-style hate figure
By Dave Kidd
BOTTLERS, chokers, shandy-drinking southern softies.
These were the charges levelled at Arsenal when they blew the title last season.
And even if the actual reason they failed was because William Saliba got injured and Rob Holding had to start, Mikel Arteta clearly took those accusations to heart.
If his team are not crowned champions next month, the Gunners boss has categorically ensured that they won’t go down being accused of nicey-niceyness.
Because, as well as being thrillingly entertaining and free-scoring when they want to be, this season’s Arsenal are also thoroughly horrible.
They are not here to make friends. They are not interested in being anybody’s second-favourite team.
And so, six days after stink-bombing the Etihad with a display of Mourinho-esque anti-football for a 0-0 draw, Arsenal turned up at the home of former bogey-team Brighton and s***housed their way to a thoroughly impressive 3-0 win.
How wonderful for the travelling Gooners to witness Ben White — against his former club — going down as if he’d taken a bullet to his neck when Brighton’s Pervis Estupinan brushed against him.
White is renowned as a gentle and decent bloke, intelligent enough to challenge the zeitgeist and claim there might be things in life other than football.
And yet suddenly he’s become some Diego Costa-style anti-hero hate figure, his wife goading the masses by posting social-media pictures of them playing a childish card game on a sun lounger after he’d refused an international call-up.
Because Arsenal are horrible again. Even Ben White is a villain.
And that might just be Arteta’s greatest triumph.
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