Héctor Bellerín says leaving Arsenal was frightening and painful, but he has come to see the move as necessary. The 31-year-old Real Betis full-back also says Mikel Arteta helped transform his career, and he remains delighted by Arsenal’s title success under his former teammate.
How did Arteta shape Bellerín’s early years?
Bellerín says Arteta was the first player to make him feel important, and he still carries the lesson he learned from a meeting in which Arteta and a financial adviser questioned his spending when he was 18 or 19. The experience left him embarrassed, but also humbled.
“When I arrived that afternoon, he was sitting with a financial adviser and they started to ask: ‘How much do you spend on this?’ ‘How much do you spend on that?’. I was young, I’d just started to make money and spend money: on clothes, cars, the things we all do when you’re not really aware. I was pitching low. I felt embarrassed, ashamed, but I left with a lesson in humility and affection.
“Mikel 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: ‘Thank you.’ He said: ‘If you do the same for a teammate one day I’m happy.’ The legacy he left is one I try to pass on so young players feel looked after and that’s an experience that defines Mikel very well.”
More than a decade later, Bellerín says those experiences, many of them in London, continue to shape him. He and Arteta were teammates, then later player and coach, and on Wednesday they will be opponents in a pre-season friendly at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.
Although the match is not at the Emirates Stadium, Bellerín says it remains special because he has never played against Arsenal. The only time he could have done so was while on loan at Sporting, when a knee injury ruled him out at exactly the wrong moment.
He says it is hard not to wonder whether the timing of that injury was psychological, given the significance of facing his old club for the first time.
“I have an incredible feeling of love for the club,” 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 José 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’s the way he is, the personality built.
“I have an incredible feeling of love for the club,”
He also talks about an industry which, he admits, often makes his “blood boil”, football becoming the “maximum exponent of greed”. He discusses pressure, abuse and his love of the game, saying that despite all the other facets of his personality he is a footballer and always has been, “addicted” to the sport, committed to it and deserving of his place. In this conversation, though, he mostly speaks about Arsenal, and there is warmth in every word.
“There 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’m 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.”
He arrived at Arsenal at 16 and lived with the Twitching family in Enfield, on the Ridgeway: Donna and John and their children, Tia and Ben. Jon Toral, a teammate since they were eight, joined him and shared the experience of a new world.
“Roast dinner was a tradition. I didn’t understand that on Sunday you only ate once and then leftovers. That ‘journey’ was funny: last time I was in London I went to a pub to find a Sunday roast … but by then it’s vegan. Kentish Town. Elements of my personality totally come from England.
“Roast dinner was a tradition. I didn’t understand that on Sunday you only ate once and then leftovers. That ‘journey’ was funny: last time I was in London I went to a pub to find a Sunday roast … but by then it’s vegan. Kentish Town. Elements of my personality totally come from England.
“The 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 €400 a month but there was a feeling of independence. I would ask Donna: ‘Where can I go?’ Camden, Covent Garden … to Brixton to play pool. We didn’t 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.
He says he would have loved to attend Arsenal’s title-winning parade, but the team still had games. Bellerín was there during the transition in Arteta’s first year as manager and says winning the FA Cup was an important moment. When Arsenal finally won the league, he received messages and felt part of the celebration.
“I 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’s 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’re all Gunners, and it was like a liberation, a release after so long.
“I 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’s 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’re all Gunners, and it was like a liberation, a release after so long.
He says he spoke to Nacho Monreal and Santi Cazorla about going to a game together, and describes himself as part of the group with Arteta that knew Arsenal would one day win the league. He says Arteta’s sessions made him question his previous football education, and later, after a year and a half under him as coach, he believed that 80% of his football had come through Arteta’s mind.
“I 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: ‘What did you do at Barcelona? I would do this …’ [Later] I was with him a year and a half [as coach] and I could say that 80% of my football came through Mikel’s mind. His is a totally different vision. There’s an understanding, an observation, he sees patterns, and has a very specific language. I’d 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’s 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.”
“I 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: ‘What did you do at Barcelona? I would do this …’ [Later] I was with him a year and a half [as coach] and I could say that 80% of my football came through Mikel’s mind. His is a totally different vision. There’s an understanding, an observation, he sees patterns, and has a very specific language. I’d 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’s 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.”
On the transition from teammates to coach and player, Bellerín says the relationship was difficult to define but that they could always speak honestly because of their shared past. He says leaving Arsenal was something he had already decided, but the conversations about it stretched over a year.
“Our relationship going from teammates to coach and player was strange,” Bellerín says, pausing a moment. “I’m 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’t 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.”
“Our relationship going from teammates to coach and player was strange,” Bellerín says, pausing a moment. “I’m 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’t 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.”
Asked why he needed Betis, he pauses before saying there was no single defining reason. He says there was a disconnect, one in which he felt unable to help Arsenal and Arsenal could no longer help him, and that the separation was handled amicably. He adds that returning closer to his roots may also have mattered after a long time away.
“There’s not a specific reason. Something happened but it’s not a thing; it’s more that there’s 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’s 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 … you don’t know what you are going to find on the other side. I was lucky.”
“There’s not a specific reason. Something happened but it’s not a thing; it’s more that there’s 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’s 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 … you don’t know what you are going to find on the other side. I was lucky.”
He says there is something about Betis, the club supported by his grandmother and father, and about Seville itself. He found a place there through football, but also through the club’s culture and his own interests outside the sport.
Those interests include the daily cycle into training, writing classes, fashion designing, veganism, environmental activism, sustainability and speaking about toxic masculinity and greed in football. He says what stood out most was the dressing room and the “horizontal” relationship with other employees, something he had not experienced at other clubs, and says it fits his values.
“What most struck me was the dressing room. There is something ‘horizontal’ in the relationship with other employees. At my other clubs that didn’t exist. That’s 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.”
“What most struck me was the dressing room. There is something ‘horizontal’ in the relationship with other employees. At my other clubs that didn’t exist. That’s 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.”
He says the move has worked out for him, for Betis and for Arsenal. Bellerín believes Arsenal are in a strong position now, having won the cup and returned to the Champions League, while he himself is also in a very good moment.
“It’s been good for both of us. Look where Arsenal are. We’re in the Champions League, we won the cup. I’m in a very good moment. It was right. hurt but it’s important that doesn’t overshadow Arsenal’s progress. They are where they deserve to be; it’s a very sweet moment. To be able to face them now, the best team in Europe, is the business.”
“It’s been good for both of us. Look where Arsenal are. We’re in the Champions League, we won the cup. I’m in a very good moment. It was right. hurt but it’s important that doesn’t overshadow Arsenal’s progress. They are where they deserve to be; it’s a very sweet moment. To be able to face them now, the best team in Europe, is the business.”
