Mikel Arteta did not rely solely on tactics or numbers when persuading Riccardo Calafiori to join Arsenal in the summer of 2024. Instead, the decisive moment came when Arteta showed the player photographs of his family.<\/p>\n
“The first time that I was in contact with Arsenal I think it was right before the Euros,” Calafiori recalls, thinking back to the summer of 2024. At that point the defender had forced his way into Luciano Spalletti\u2019s Italy squad after an influential season for Bologna.<\/p>\n
“I think throughout the season I never wanted to to hear any rumours about my next season because I wanted to be focused with my team, with the national team,” he adds. Calafiori says Arteta combined detailed analysis with an unexpectedly personal approach. “At first he [Arteta] just wanted to meet me and explain [to] me how eventually the project [would look] with me. He showed me so many things, so many details, so many statistics and they show me even images of my family actually.”<\/p>\n
The image of a manager taking time to ask about family matters stayed with Calafiori. “That was a part that I really won\u2019t forget about. Since I was a kid, obviously [I was] really close with my mom as an Italian kid [and with] my dad and my sister as well. And he just asked me what my family represent for me, you know, [showed] some images of my sister or my mom or my dad.”<\/p>\n
Other clubs were linked to the left back, but Arteta\u2019s blend of detail and care convinced him. “I can describe his mentality like he doesn\u2019t care if it\u2019s the first day of preseason or minus one [one day before] the Champions League final, he will train us in the same way,” the Italian grins. “He really wants you to train as if you\u2019re playing a game.” He also praised Arteta\u2019s constant focus: “I see how much he cares about me, how much he\u2019s focused, how much he wants me to improve.”<\/p>\n
Calafiori\u2019s path included youth years at Roma, a loan to Genoa and moves to Basel and Bologna before Arsenal: Dec. 15, 2020 signs five-year deal with Roma; Jan. 14, 2022 joins Genoa on loan; Aug. 31, 2022 sold by Roma to Basel; Aug. 31, 2023 sold by Basel to Bologna; July 29, 2024 sold by Bologna to Arsenal. Bologna\u2019s Champions League qualification elevated him to a national team regular and drew praise from senior figures. “Riccardo is different from the other defenders,” Bonucci gushed.<\/p>\n
Arteta has seen the on-field payoff. “Richy has been instrumental, especially in the way that we attack,” Arteta beamed after Calafiori returned from a month-long injury layoff. “He has unique qualities to occupy spaces and to create things that, probably, the qualities of the other fullbacks are different.” In his absence Arsenal recorded two 0\u20130 draws with Liverpool and Nottingham Forest and a 3\u20132 home defeat to Manchester United, with stand-ins unable to replicate his forward impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta won Calafiori with family photos, not stats, and his role has reshaped Arsenal’s attack. 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1163],"tags":[1081,1393,1047],"class_list":["post-6353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-transfers","tag-adaptation","tag-centre-back","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}