Francis Coquelin is the new Arsenal king of counter-bling

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/may/09/francis-coquelin-arsenal-king-counter-bling

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Asked for a signature to embellish the dressing room wall of the Arsenal Hub, the brand new community centre which has been built to support local folk, Francis Coquelin does not just grab the pen for a quick scribble. He thinks for a moment. He wants his message to be meaningful. He begins writing, carefully and neatly. The sentiment is absolutely him: “The most important thing in life is to never GIVE UP.”

If anybody at Arsenal embodies that impulse, it is this persistent Frenchman. Ever since he arrived at the club as a 17-year-old on a week’s trial, and felt the inimitable wrath of Jens Lehmann when he did not understand someone behind him yelling: “Keeeeper!” and kicked the ball away before the goalie could grab it, the pathway has been demanding. Coquelin has faced challenges that might have provoked more fragile characters to throw in the towel. He is no giver-upper, however, whatever the circumstances.

Five months ago, Coquelin was sitting in the manager’s office at Charlton. He had been given the green light by Arsenal to extend his loan stay there and it was understood a permanent deal away from his parent club was on the cards. Bob Peeters, who had taken him to the Valley, wanted him to play in a deep midfield role and build the side around him. “Five days later I was on the sofa with my wife watching TV and I got a call from Arsenal saying: ‘You have to come back,’” he says. It was a career-changing call. Coquelin was Arsène Wenger’s last joker in the pack.

Since returning to the Arsenal lineup as an emergency option to cover for a spate of midfield injuries, Coquelin has become the surprise answer to the balance question which had nagged for years. His expert interpretation of the Claude Makelele role has underpinned a progressive 2015 that has the club eyeing second place in the Premier League and the FA Cup final. The way he sees it, it is all about the blend between his interceptions and Santi Cazorla, Mesut Özil and Alexis Sánchez’s creations. “If I can take away 10% of their defensive duties then they can have 10% more to attack and score goals and win us the game and I’m delighted,” he says of the team’s improved equilibrium.

“I remember Zidane and a lot of great players saying when you took out Makelele you took out the heart of their team,” Coquelin explains. “I think players who play this position don’t want the spotlight. They like to do their job and then they leave the bling-bling for other players.”

Coquelin, Arsenal’s king of counter-bling, has become so important that when he was substituted in the FA Cup semi-final as Wenger searched for a winning goal, the response from the red and white crowd was a sharp intake of panicky breath, as if it all might collapse without the glue they call Le Coq.

This status, as a vital player, has been a long time coming. Perhaps he just likes being fashionably late. He only came to football at around 10 years old. Before that his grandmother took him to judo and he was keen on tennis. “I couldn’t serve properly and I remember we had a tournament and at the semi-final this guy beat me. It was the first game I lost and I stopped.” He went off tennis abruptly. A friend told him to come and join his football team, so Coquelin gave it a try, just for fun.

In his early teens he progressed to Stade Lavallois, the biggest club in his area of western France, and before long his mother was fielding calls from numerous Ligue 1 clubs. Arsenal’s French scout, their former defender Gilles Grimandi, spotted him playing for France’s Under‑17s and Coquelin was invited for a week’s trial at London Colney. He remembers the experience with mirth. “I thought I was going to have a nice little week in the reserves,” he recalls. “I never trained with the first team in Laval. I saw Gallas, Bac Sagna, Clichy, from the French national team, and I was thinking: ‘What am I doing here?’” First there was the Lehmann incident – “He went absolutely crazy on me! I didn’t know what was happening.” Then Emmanuel Eboué and Cesc Fàbregas had a fight because one kicked the other. “I was thinking: ‘Is every training like this? It’s war in here!’”

He returned to Laval without great expectations. “I had missed a week of school and everyone was asking how it was at Arsenal. I was in my class and my phone rang and I looked at it. It was some weird number +44. I couldn’t answer the phone so they left a voicemail. It was the boss. In France he used to do the commentating on TV so obviously everyone knows his voice. I was listening: ‘Hello, Francis, how are you?’” Coquelin passed the phone to his amazed school friends.

He was back in a classroom this week, looking around the spacious new facility built by his club to house their far-reaching community work. As well as providing England’s first 4G indoor pitch, there are classrooms to help local primary school children learn languages and guide older teenagers who need tools to help prepare them for getting a job. Within the hub and out in three local boroughs, more than 5,000 Londoners participate in the programmes Arsenal run each week. “It’s a massive thing,” says Coquelin. “This kind of stuff can put you on the right track.”

He is a big believer in opportunities, considering how his were not the most straightforward. His debut was harrowing – he was part of the inexperienced group humiliated 8-2 by Manchester United at Old Trafford in 2011, and namechecked by Sir Alex Ferguson as a player out of his depth. Even then he was an emergency measure, rushed back from playing with France’s Under-20 team in Colombia. “The team was not ready for a game like that,” he recalls. “It was basically the reserves playing. To be honest they could shoot from anywhere that game, it was going top corner. It was one of those games you want to forget.”

His loans were character building. In particular, a spell with Freiburg last season tested him to the limits. “Very tough,” he says, exhaling. “I didn’t get on with the manager, I was played out of position all season, left wing or right wing.”

The manager, Christian Streich, seemed down on him from day one. “I went many times to his office and said: ‘You know what? I am not asking a lot, I am just asking give me one game in the middle of the park, so you can see what I can do. Then if you are not happy with me, play someone else in that position.’ He never gave me that opportunity.”

Coming back from the mid-season break, things got worse. “We played friendly games and I was always a sub. The last game of the friendlies they were losing 5-0 at half-time against a German second division club. I came on, we scored, and lost 5-1. We had a meeting after, the whole group, and he didn’t say a word about the team who were losing 5-0, it was all about me. I went to see him and asked to go back to Arsenal. He said: ‘No, we are counting on you.’ Then I played zero games.”

Isolated, in a different country, frustrated by a manager who seemed to bait him and not playing, he dealt with the situation with personal resilience. Rather than breaking his spirit, the experience merely strengthened his resolve. “Mentally it was tough. Then one day I woke up and realised: ‘OK, I am not going to play. Now I am training to be ready for next season at Arsenal.’”

The maturity and discipline that Wenger wanted came when Coquelin accepted he had to cut out the bling and learn to love simplicity in holding midfield. “When you are young, every time you get a minute and he tells you to go and sit you want to show you can do loads of things. Obviously with time you understand what you are good at,” he says. So much of his game is based on shrewd reading of situations. Coquelin is quite small for a dominant defensive midfielder (Nemanja Matic is about six inches taller) but his stocky strength and stamina serves him well.

A new contract and some standout moments in his whirlwind past few months symbolise how significant he has become to Arsenal. “It was nice to go back to Old Trafford,” he grins, having played his part in a victory in the FA Cup. “A big one is probably Man City because people were thinking: ‘You’re going in with Coquelin in midfield? Against Man City? You’re going to get smashed.’ And we won 2-0.”

Since then he has performed with admirable regularity. Arsenal’s recent run makes him feel they are getting close to a serious assault on the Premier League. “After what we’ve done in 2015 we will be aiming, next season, to fight for the title. I think there was a point where big players were leaving the club and it didn’t look attractive to the top players. And then I think signing Santi was the first step. I remember his first training session. Everyone knew: this one is from another planet. If you’re someone who doesn’t love football, you will love it after looking at him. And Mesut was a turning point. The very top players want to come to Arsenal because they can see the team is strong.”

All the stronger for the boy from Laval who never gave up.

Francis Coquelin joined Per Mertesacker and guests to celebrate the opening of The Arsenal Hub – Home of Arsenal in the Community. The Hub will be used by 1,500 Londoners every week for sports, education and social programmes. For further information visit Arsenal.com/Community