Spanish full-back on moving on from the Emirates Stadium, his elation at his old club ending their title drought, and how Mikel Arteta has helped prolong his career<\/p>\n
One day when he was 18 or 19, still near the start of his journey, H\u00e9ctor Beller\u00edn got a call from Mikel Arteta inviting him round. He remembers asking lunch or dinner but this was neither. \u201cWhen I arrived that afternoon, he was sitting with a financial adviser and they started to ask: \u2018How much do you spend on this?\u2019 \u2018How much do you spend on that?\u2019. I was young, I\u2019d just started to make money and spend money: on clothes, cars, the things we all do when you\u2019re not really aware. I was pitching low. I felt embarrassed, ashamed, but I left with a lesson in humility and affection.<\/p>\n
\u201cMikel was the first player who showed me that I was important to him, that I mattered. He demonstrates real care, if not through a hug. I said: \u2018Thank you.\u2019 He said: \u2018If you do the same for a teammate one day I\u2019m happy.\u2019 The legacy he left is one I try to pass on so young players feel looked after and that\u2019s an experience that defines Mikel very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than a decade later, it is one of many experiences, a lot of them in London, that help to define Beller\u00edn too. Thirteen years between them, Arteta and Beller\u00edn were teammates then; real mates, too. They have been player and coach, a shift in roles that was not always simple. On Wednesday they will be opponents. It is a pre-season friendly at the Aviva Stadium, not the Emirates Stadium, but for Beller\u00edn it is special. The Real Betis full-back, 31 now, has never faced his former club. Only once could he have, on loan at Sporting, and then he got a knee injury \u2013 the timing so inconveniently exact that he cannot help wondering if it was in his head. He does so with his former club, led by his friend, as Premier League champions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have an incredible feeling of love for the club,\u201d he says, settling into a sofa 30 miles west of Dublin, still in his training kit. Fascinating company, he talks Serge Gnabry, Santi Cazorla and Nacho Monreal. He recalls the kindness of Tomas Rosicky telling him how to get the better of him in training, an experience he is repeating with Jos\u00e9 Antonio Morante, the 19-year-old winger who faces him daily, and the darker side of the sport, too. And he talks life and people and politics, having a voice and refusing to be silent: not because he sought one, not even because he is sure it changes things much, but because that\u2019s the way he is, the personality built.<\/p>\n
He talks about an industry which, he admits, often makes his \u201cblood boil\u201d, football becoming the \u201cmaximum exponent of greed\u201d. About the pressure and the abuse. But he talks about how he loves the game too, how for all those other facets to him he is a footballer and always has been, how he is \u201caddicted\u201d to it, committed to it, and deserves his place here. On this occasion, though, he talks mostly about Arsenal, and there is warmth in every word.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are still players I grew up with: Bukayo [Saka], Ben White, the manager, coaches, staff. It still feels like family for me. My appreciation and affection for them is immense. I became a footballer there. I\u2019m sure that my life, my way of being, of thinking, my conscience, all the things that represent me, were latent in me but they needed a place where they could be expressed. London gave me that space where I could explore my world, mature. There are places that could constrain you, but London was somewhere I could expand, explore life.\u201d<\/p>\n
It started lodging with the Twitching family in Enfield, on the Ridgeway: Donna and John and their kids, Tia and Ben. Beller\u00edn was 16 from Barcelona. He was joined by Jon Toral, a teammate since they were eight, who played in India last season, and who embraced a new world with him then. \u201cRoast dinner was a tradition. I didn\u2019t understand that on Sunday you only ate once and then leftovers. That \u2018journey\u2019 was funny: last time I was in London I went to a pub to find a Sunday roast \u2026 but by then it\u2019s vegan. Kentish Town. Elements of my personality totally come from England.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing Liam Brady, the academy director, gave me and Jon was an Oyster card. Jon would put on Sky, watch all the games, then the darts, then the snooker. We were earning \u20ac400 a month but there was a feeling of independence. I would ask Donna: \u2018Where can I go?\u2019 Camden, Covent Garden \u2026 to Brixton to play pool. We didn\u2019t feel either overprotected or abandoned. We had to catch two buses and the tube for training. Over 12 years, I lived in all different places. I spent the pandemic living in a 17th-century farm in St Albans where the only way in was down a sand track.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have loved to have been to the title-winning parade, but we still had games here. I was there in that moment of transition in Mikel\u2019s first year as manager. But we won the FA Cup which was a key moment. One of the lovely things when they won the league was lots of people sent messages and I felt part of it. There are so many people I talk to, we\u2019re all Gunners, and it was like a liberation, a release after so long.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was talking to Nacho [Monreal] and Santi [Cazorla]: it would be great if the three of us could go for a game. We were the group with Mikel. We knew that with Mikel one day Arsenal would win the league. In training he would ask: \u2018What did you do at Barcelona? I would do this \u2026\u2019 [Later] I was with him a year and a half [as coach] and I could say that 80% of my football came through Mikel\u2019s mind. His is a totally different vision. There\u2019s an understanding, an observation, he sees patterns, and has a very specific language. I\u2019d go so far as to say that he has put extra years on my career. I play totally differently to how I did at 19. That\u2019s about experience but also a lot about what I learnt from Mikel: how to help my teammate, create advantages in my space. Bloody hell, I owe Mikel so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football<\/p>\n
\u201cOur relationship going from teammates to coach and player was strange,\u201d Beller\u00edn says, pausing a moment. \u201cI\u2019m not sure we knew how to manage the transition. But face to face there was always that past there which meant we could talk honestly. I had decided that I had to go, but it wasn\u2019t a conversation; it was lots of them going back a year. I feel huge admiration for him. And Betis arrived in the moment that I needed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why did you need it? There\u2019s a pause. \u201cThere\u2019s not a specific reason. Something happened but it\u2019s not a thing; it\u2019s more that there\u2019s a kind of disconnect in which I felt that I could no longer help the club and the club could no longer help me. We managed that in the most amicable way. Maybe I needed to be close to my roots, home. It had been a long time. When you leave a club like Arsenal, it\u2019s scary, eh. Scary. It hurts, mate: look, however much you know that your moment is over, it was your home. You were there for 10 years, you leave friends behind, a life \u2026 you don\u2019t know what you are going to find on the other side. I was lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is something about Betis, the club his grandmother and father supported, and about the city. Beller\u00edn found a place. From the daily cycle into training to the writing classes, the fashion designing, the veganism and environmental activism, the commitment to sustainability and willingness to speak about toxic masculinity and the avarice of the game. The refuge from that: \u201cWhat most struck me was the dressing room. There is something \u2018horizontal\u2019 in the relationship with other employees. At my other clubs that didn\u2019t exist. That\u2019s the essence of us, what sustains us. And it fits with my values. In Seville I have found a city that embraced me, allowed my existence beyond football.\u201d<\/p>\n