Cesc Fàbregas Praises Arsenal's Project and Patience
Cesc Fàbregas knows exactly what a restless club looks like. Arsenal, he insists, are no longer that club.
Back at the Emirates Stadium, the former captain – 303 games deep in Arsenal colours – paused to pay tribute not just to Mikel Arteta, but to the people above him who refused to blink when the project creaked.
“Congratulations to the club in general starting from seven, eight years ago when they first started with this project,” he said, reflecting on the long road that has led to Arsenal’s current status as champions. “Because what you see in football every day, what Arsenal did, especially in the difficult moments, it doesn’t exist.”
Those difficult moments were real. Arteta’s early years were laced with doubt, noise and league finishes that would usually trigger panic in a boardroom. Fàbregas spelled it out: three seasons stuck in mid-table territory, and then a near miss that could easily have shattered the whole idea.
“I told Edu, I told Andrea [Berta] when I came last year to a Champions League game, I said congratulations to the whole club for the patience, for sticking together, for sticking to the plan when for three years in a row, correct me if I’m wrong, finished eighth, eighth, eighth, fourth year nearly Champions League, it was a big disappointment, Tottenham came, you finish fifth,” he recalled. “But you keep going because you have a plan, because you have an objective, because you have progression, you keep going forward.”
In an era where three bad results can cost a manager his job, Arsenal chose the hard road: consistency. No shortcuts, no wild lurches in style, no ripping it up every time the wind changed. That, Fàbregas argued, is exactly what the modern game is losing.
“We lack this in football today,” he said. “You lose three games, change the coach, he was playing one style, now you play another, at the end of the day I don’t believe in this a lot.”
His admiration is not abstract. It’s a template. Now working at Como, Fàbregas is trying to build something that, while far smaller in scale, borrows from the same foundations he sees at Arsenal.
“I’m very lucky I’m in a project, of course with much lower level, the history, everything, but we’re trying to look at the stability Arsenal had, the values, the culture that they are bringing,” he explained.
The praise for Arteta was unfiltered. For Fàbregas, the transformation under his former team-mate goes beyond tactics and titles.
“I think Mikel has done a tremendous job. So I can only wish them the best, really,” he said. “Because most of the group, these guys now you talk to them, I don’t know… they’re good guys, they want to play good football, they are respectful, you can see how they stick to the plan all the time. Really, I’m super happy to come back here and smell this feeling.”
That “feeling” now runs straight into another test of Arsenal’s authority. The champions meet Manchester City in the Community Shield in Cardiff on Sunday, 16 August, a familiar measuring stick against the side that once set the standard they are now challenging.
Six days later comes the real business: the start of their Premier League title defence against newly promoted Coventry City. A fresh campaign, a new target on their backs, the same project Arteta and the board refused to abandon when eighth place was their ceiling.
While Arsenal sharpen their edge against City, Fàbregas will be on a different touchline. Como face a double-header of friendlies against Liverpool that same Sunday, the first behind closed doors, the second in front of fans, before turning fully towards their Serie A opener against Udinese the following Saturday.
Two clubs, two very different stages. One shared question: can patience and a clear plan still beat the chaos that rules so much of modern football?
