As the Lorient team regrouped for half-time in the dressing room, an 18-year-old Matteo Guendouzi was apoplectic. His team were trailing 2-0 away to Valenciennes, but it wasn’t their lack of quality that had so infuriated him — it was their lack of fight.
Frustration spilled out from Guendouzi as he took his team-mates to task, including one more than 10 years his senior. Inevitably, manager Mickael Landreau stepped in, prompting a furious row that would see Guendouzi not only substituted before play resumed but subsequently banished from the team for more than three months.
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It seems that for Guendouzi, clashing with a manager is nothing new. In context, missing a single game after misdemeanours during Arsenal’s Dubai training camp looks comparatively minor. There is a prickliness and playfulness to Guendouzi, an unquenchable competitive spirit, that means trouble can sometimes seem to follow him around.
Sylvain Ripoll, who gave him his debut at Lorient in 2016 and has since coached him for France Under-21s, believes the key is simply to apply those characteristics appropriately: “He certainly has a lively, competitive side, which does not want to sit back and suffer things,” he told local newspaper Ouest-France. “Given that, it must be channelled, oriented towards the collective. But these are positive personality traits.”
There are times when Guendouzi’s sheer force of personality can be problematic. Those who know him best, however, are convinced it remains his greatest strength.
“I’ve never seen such a competitor in my career,” says Cedric Cattenoy, who served in a variety of roles in the Paris Saint-Germain academy between 2001 and 2016. Guendouzi spent nine years with PSG, and despite leaving for Lorient before he broke through into the first team, made quite the impression. “You cannot understand him without precisely defining his personality… He is someone loveable but who absolutely refuses to accept defeat. We felt that every setback touched him deep inside.”
“I hate losing,” Guendouzi has admitted to So Foot magazine. It’s something he attributes to his upbringing — his father, Mohamed Guendouzi, is a karate coach and most of the family have trained in the martial art. “Karate is a fight — if you lose it, it’s because the person in front of you is better than you,” Guendouzi explains. “And I hate to think that the person in front of me is better than me.”
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Guendouzi was part of the 1999 PSG academy generation, which included Dan Axel-Zagadou, Boubakary Soumare, and Stanley Nsoki — and occasionally shared Parisian pitches with the likes of Odsonne Edouard and Jonathan Ikone.
Sabri Haddadou was another who played with Guendouzi in those early years. “Matteo is someone who, from a very young age, has a great determination,” Haddadou confirms to French football site Stadito. “At about 10 years old, he already had the will to win in him, but he was also very mature. It looked like he was older than us and that he was about 16. Honestly, he showed that he was pure talent.”
However, Guendouzi’s intrinsic restlessness soon reared its head. French journalist Arnaud Huchet tells The Athletic, “There is something impatient in Guendouzi’s character.” It’s certainly true that his career path suggests a young man in a hurry — in 2014, aged just 15, he took the surprise step of leaving PSG’s academy to join Lorient’s.
Guendouzi and his long-time agent Philippe Nabe wanted a club where they could see a clearer path to first-team football. “There were peculiarities in relation to his playing profile,” Nabe has explained to radio station RMC. Guendouzi suffered somewhat from not being clearly defined as either a No 6, No 8 or No 10, instead excelling as an all-rounder. There were also concerns over his physicality. “He was relatively frail at the time, and PSG rely more on athletic profiles, including Boubakary Soumare [now of Lille, and linked with Manchester United, Chelsea and Newcastle United last month], who was competing with Matteo,” continues Nabe. “So we had a choice to make relatively early, and the contract situation allowed us to leave at that time.”
Lorient pitched a clear plan for Guendouzi’s development, and the deal was set. Throughout his time in their academy, he played in year groups in advance of his age. Before long, Guendouzi had the opportunity to exact a measure of revenge on his former club: in 2015, Lorient faced the PSG of Edouard and Ikone in the French Under-17 Championship final. Guendouzi ran the midfield in a 2-1 victory. His one-time rival, Soumare, was ineffective and got substituted in the 58th minute.
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In September 2016, Guendouzi was rewarded with a first professional contract. “The jump from your first contract to starting in Ligue 1 requires a very particular attitude,” said Regis Le Bris, director of Lorient’s development centre. “Few players are able to do it, but we have great belief that [Guendouzi] will rise to the challenge.”
It was telling that Le Bris spoke not of athleticism, nor of talent, but of “attitude”. That is where Guendouzi most obviously excels. One month after putting pen to paper, Ripoll gave him his first start in Ligue 1. Within a few weeks, he was Lorient’s player of the month. His striking appearance, association with PSG and progressive midfield play saw him earn the nickname “Le Rabiot des Merlus” (The Rabiot of ‘The Hakes’ — Lorient’s nickname) because of his similarity of then-Parc des Princes counterpart Adrien Rabiot.
His bond with manager Ripoll was considerable. In an interview with Ouest-France, the Lorient manager explained the qualities that persuaded him to show faith in the teenage midfielder: “His ability to be very active in recovery and his ease in making the ball travel, installing the team’s collective game.” This complex character has a seductively simple game.
Unfortunately, despite Guendouzi’s individual performances attracting a host of admirers, Lorient’s struggles that season saw Ripoll dismissed and the team eventually relegated. Landreau took over the following summer, and although Guendouzi started the season well in Ligue 2, that November incident at Valenciennes soon saw him fall out of favour.
There were other factors in his demotion. Guendouzi’s contract was due to expire at the end of the following season, and negotiations over an extension had broken down. He trained with the first team, but come match day was continually confined to the academy. Le Bris reflects, “I find that he quickly managed this period. He played with me, with the reserves, and I think he even put in some good performances. Every footballer encounters obstacles in his career. You just have to be able to do something positive with it. This is precisely what Matteo has done by continuing to want to progress.”
Guendouzi refused to be permanently exiled. By March 2018, he had forced his way back into the fold.
Guendouzi’s precocious talent has made him a regular fixture in the French international set-up, with caps at every level between under-18 and under-21.
There have nevertheless been bumps in the road. The same summer Guendouzi joined Arsenal, Bernard Diomede left him out of his squad for Under-19 European Championship. When he was recalled a few months later, he confronted Diomede and insisted he should be playing. “He immediately wanted to show me that I was wrong”, Diomede told L’Equipe. “It reminds me of a time when, the day before a match, I put him on the replacement team. He was motivated and played like never before to make his team win. It is important not to take away this competitive side, it must be regulated.”
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Guendouzi has become a fixture of the under-21 side, where he is reunited with Ripoll. The coach regards Guendouzi as a leading figure for that team. “He is young, but he releases something… he stimulates vitality in a group,” he told Ouest-France. When Guendouzi earned a first-call up to the senior France squad this past September, Ripoll again remarked on the pervasive power of his character: “He also has an atypical personality. He exudes a lot of enthusiasm, energy. These are things that must have seduced Didier and his staff.”
Deschamps is regarded as a deeply principled coach, and one unwilling to tolerate problematic personalities. He has discarded the likes of Karim Benzema and Rabiot without compunction. His faith in Guendouzi is a significant commendation. Coaches within the France set-up were particularly impressed with the player’s attitude when, having been called up to the senior side, he then reverted to the under-21s in the October international break. There was no sulking, no sense of entitlement — just hard work and humility.
If Ripoll is the major coaching mentor in Guendouzi’s life, Unai Emery probably comes a close second. Although it was Sven Mislintat who initiated Arsenal’s pursuit of the midfielder, it was Emery who had the faith to start a 19-year-old Guendouzi on the opening day of the 2018-19 Premier League season against champions Manchester City. When Guendouzi won that France call-up just over a year later, Emery was one of the first to congratulate him.
Emery and his staff were impressed by Guendouzi’s application in training, and the physical transformation he underwent in that first season. “When he arrived, from a physical perspective he certainly wasn’t in a position to play in central midfield for a top-six Premier League club,” former Arsenal performance director Darren Burgess tells The Athletic. “He worked really hard at improving himself physically so that by the end of that first year, he was absolutely capable. He showed massive improvement.”
While there were players in the squad prepared to toast Emery’s departure, Guendouzi was not one. A regular starter under the Spaniard, he has found first-team football a little harder to come by under interim coach Freddie Ljungberg and subsequently successor Mikel Arteta. Ljungberg was particularly mindful of wanting to clip Guendouzi’s wings, with several on the Arsenal staff feeling he might have had a little too much, a little too young.
Perhaps slowing down will do him good. “We must not forget that he is only 20 years old,” says Ripoll. “His journey has seriously accelerated over the past year and a half. Above all, he showed that he had broad enough shoulders to handle these changes”.
Guendouzi is already an influential figure in the dressing room. It’s not in his nature to be a wall-flower: within weeks of arriving in north London, he was joining superstar striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and family at a barbecue. He never defers, never shies away, on or off the pitch. “He is someone who knows how to join a collective — he likes to share, to go to others,” Ripoll tells L’Equipe. “The problem is different for Matteo. He is a passionate, enthusiastic person who does not want to suffer things. This tendency to seize the initiative, he must learn to verbalise it better and to channel himself. But I prefer a player like that with energy rather than amorphous characters.”
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There was clearly a natural chemistry between Ripoll and Guendouzi. The question now is whether the player will be able to find that with Arteta. “It’s a matter of matching characters,” journalist Huchet tells The Athletic. “If he has a coach that he gels with, everything will be good. If there’s a little something — a lack of trust, or something — it could be bad. He needs a guy who trusts him.”
His agent Philippe Nabe says the player’s behaviour can be misconstrued. “All his life, Matteo will hate defeat,” he told L’Equipe. “But there will never be anything nasty. Arsenal players, like the staff, understand that Matteo is a competitor. And what it can also bring them.”
Guendouzi, by his own admission, is unlikely to change too much. “My personality has always remained the same,” he says. “I think that is also why today I can do everything I do at Arsenal, and why I got here.”
Arteta is right to instil discipline in a young player with much still to learn. It’s easy to forget that Guendouzi only turns 21 in April. He’s still figuring out how to be a man, let alone a professional footballer. There remain rough edges on this diamond. Providing him with structure and direction will help to channel his talent. Arteta must take care, however, to avoid robbing Guendouzi of the very bravado that makes him such an intriguing talent.
Arsenal fans will hope that player and coach can find some common ground. Ultimately, they may bond over their one shared and consuming desire: the need to win.
(Photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
