In the car park at Arsenal’s training centre on Friday afternoon, a scene played out which captured the peculiar juncture teenage Premier League stars must pass en route to stardom.
When the coach arrived to take the club’s under-21s to play Manchester United that evening, 17-year-old midfielder Ethan Nwaneri was stood alone at the collection point. But he was not early. Nwaneri was waiting instead for a taxi home to rest up for the following day’s Premier League opener against Wolves at the Emirates.
He has superseded the tests youth football can offer him and cemented himself as part of Mikel Arteta’s senior squad this season. Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ayden Heaven are the other teenagers who impressed enough in pre-season to be included in the first team’s official photograph — but both were involved in Friday’s 4-2 Under-21 win over Manchester United rather than the senior squad. Nwaneri was an unused sub against Wolves.
Arteta’s willingness to give youth a chance has been questioned. This makes successfully bringing Nwaneri — who became the Premier League’s youngest-ever player in September 2022 at 15 years and 181 days — into the fold feel important. He and Lewis-Skelly are widely regarded as being in a different class from others who did not make the jump and have since left Arsenal.
Still, making the transition from an academy player into an elite team competing for Premier League and Champions League honours is a bar only a handful of players clear each generation. So, how do Arsenal and Arteta ensure the path is paved for Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly to follow in the footsteps of Bukayo Saka?
The Athletic spoke to those with experience in this final transition phase from academy to first-team to find out how to do it…
“Arsene (Wenger) used to come over to me in the middle of training and say, ‘What do you think?’ when a new kid came up to train,” recalls Neil Banfield, who served as first-team coach under the manager between 2012 and 2018.
“With Jack Wilshere, the first thing I said was: ‘The big players are passing to him’. If they don’t fancy you, they won’t pass to you. They have a way of easing you out of the game and you can see it the more you are around them.
“Jack wanted the ball and wanted to do something with it every time. He had that strut about him like he was 16 going on 28.”
Impressing peers is important for young players to win respect and feel like they belong in that company, but Nwaneri has been around the squad for over two years and only made two substitute appearances. Wilshere also took over two years, including a six-month loan at Bolton Wanderers, before he was deemed ready at 18.
“It is phenomenally hard to break in at the top level,” says Banfield. “Jack had Cesc Fabregas, Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky and Samir Nasri in front of him.
“Wenger thought he couldn’t give him the exposure he needed at that point, so he wanted him somewhere that he would play and have a good education.
“It made him a man. He started influencing training more, playing right at the sharp end. It is about mental toughness at that point. Are you strong enough to go in day after day, week after week and improve the team? It is not enough to do it for three or four weeks.”
Wilshere training with Arsenal in 2008 (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Banfield spent over a decade in Arsenal’s youth academy, where he worked with hundreds of talents.
Some made it, some did not and some had to go elsewhere to kickstart their senior career. “Arsene was great with the youth,” Banfield says. “I remember having a conversation with him about Alex Iwobi. He said, ‘You like him, I like him, if I sign a midfield player, it stunts him’. He thought he was good enough to be given a chance and he ended up being sold for nearly £40million (to Everton).
“Sometimes your position is blocked. Sometimes players feel like they won’t get their opening and go and search out their career elsewhere.”
Few players have been able to go from academy player to regular Premier League starter overnight. Wayne Rooney was one of the exceptions when he burst through at Everton aged 16. He had physically matured well beyond his years.
Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly are explosive players whose stocky builds belie their age, but that is no accident.
Des Ryan was recruited by the former head of medical Colin Lewin to take up a newly created role as head of sports medicine and athletic development at Arsenal’s academy in 2013. He observed the game evolving and knew that the gap to the first team was going to grow physically unless they put in place a holistic programme to develop elite athletes from a young age.
That physical development framework remains in place at the club and is mapped out from the under-nine level up to the transition phase that Nwaneri finds himself in.
Academy director Per Mertesacker created an overarching mission to produce ‘Strong Young Gunners’. This is defined by being an effective team player (technical/tactical), having a champion mentality (psychology), being a lifelong learner (education) and being a most efficient mover (physical).
“The culture lives and breathes,” says Ryan, who is now director of sport and physical wellbeing at the University of Galway.
“There are loads of places that have things on the wall, but the visions and values don’t come alive in the environment. It was there. That’s why I enjoyed it. It was a world-class performance plan brought to life.
“EPPP (Premier League Elite Player Performance Plan introduced in 2012) was fantastic for English football but Arsenal have maximised that advantage. The grounding they get means they arrive at the first team aged 16 or 17 and are powerful, fast, durable, and understand their bodies.
Ryan (right) watching a training session with Sir Mo Farah in 2017 (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
“Physically, the boys were comfortable in the first team and on the leaderboards for endurance, power, speed, endurance, repeatability. It would always be Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Bukayo (Saka), Eddie Nketiah, or Joe Willock at the top end.”
The focus was on stability and mobility in their junior years. Any gym work was confined to body weight so they could perfect the movements and techniques before gradually adding extra load and extra units as they progressed, ramping up to three a week from under 15 and up.
There is no greater attribute of a footballer than availability. That requires a body that can withstand the ever-growing demands on elite players. Saka has proven that, having played 267 games for club and country since his debut in November 2018.
Most players Arsenal recruited from other teams or countries had little experience in the gym and would be graded at the most basic level (one) when it came to training age. Saka was already at the top band — level four — by the time he started training with the first team.
Ryan left in 2021 when Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly were 14 but even then he remembers them being earmarked as fellow early developers.
“Every six weeks, there is a player progress meeting and every two weeks there is a more detailed one with the heads of every department,” he says. “There is a place for every type of player. Just look at Santi Cazorla. I would never restrict or count out any player, but the trend is that you need to be athletic.
“The pace of the game, the accelerations, repeated sprints are all getting higher. The under-18s had a player profile with their physical test numbers and position average alongside the first-team average in their position so they had a target to climb towards. That is a huge motivator for the player.”
For transition players, there is the challenge of how to continue improving if they are continually an unused sub at first-team level and not playing under-23 matches.
“There have been players caught in no man’s land at periods, ” Ryan says. “It takes huge communication between the two coaching groups and someone man-marking these players to ensure they are ready to perform with the first team but are also still developing.
“The day after a game, instead of training with the first team they need to have a recovery day separately. If it is two days after an under-23s game and the first team is doing a high-intensity session, their session has to be modified. Three days after it is when they should be doing high intensity, but the first team will be doing a moderate session so they need to top it up.
Nwaneri has to balance his training given his lack of Under-23s appearances (Warren Little/Getty Images)
“I think professional footballers are built at under-18 (level). It is a fantastic time for them as they move to full-time football, have only one match a week and can build. A year or two of that can be very beneficial.”
The very best tend to skip that stage, though, as their talent demands more difficult challenges. Nwaneri, for example, has been fast-tracked.
That brings its own pressures but most agencies now have a full 360 service that offers support with their contract negotiations, financial planning, sponsorship deals, nutrition, psychology, analysis, individual training and any other aspect they require help with.
At the under-14 and under-15 levels, the competition between agents to convince a player and their family to choose their service begins in earnest. Even though they can only officially commit at 16, parents spend time ascertaining how the industry works and what support each agency can offer.
Nwaneri has been through that part. Chelsea made strong attempts to sign him before he penned his first professional contract with Arsenal in March. Unlike Chido Obi-Martin — the 16-year-old striker who rejected a contract offer at Arsenal to move to Manchester United this summer — Nwaneri chose to stay at Arsenal.
One agent with experience in bringing through top talents says there’s an important element to securing a big financial package for the player: it makes the club determined to get a return on their investment.
Saka went somewhat under the radar until he made his professional debut. But those privy to his rise over the last six years know how important it is to keep young players focused on football in the face of media and commercial attention.
Clubs tend to put cotton wool around their young players when it comes to media duties. They try to comfort and educate before gently easing them in with written interviews rather than having a camera lens beamed on them. Saka had to go through the process of being taught not to fear the media, as did Emile Smith Rowe.
Clubs and agencies will also do deep dives into their social media profiles to ensure that a comment from their childhood is not made into a headline.
Nwaneri, therefore, will be aware of all the trimmings that come with life as a superstar in the making if he is to burst onto the scene this season.
(Top photo — design: Eamonn Dalton, photos: Getty Images)
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