The rise of Bukayo Saka and Mikel Arteta’s eureka moment with ‘Starboy’

One is that at 21 he is the talisman of a side chasing the title. No club have won the Premier League with their most important player so young. The second is just how thoroughly Saka is cherished. “Honestly, I love him. I’d just love it if he was my child,” Luke Shaw said during Euro 2020 – and somehow it didn’t sound weird.

Against Crystal Palace today (Sunday), Saka will spearhead Mikel Arteta’s efforts to get Arsenal back on track after Thursday’s Europa League exit against Sporting. “You feel a warmth [in Saka],” Southgate says. “You feel a fabulous human being who has broken into the team at Arsenal at a time they weren’t playing so well and excelled. And now here they are pushing for the title – and he’s excelling again.”

Bukayo means “adds to happiness” in Yoruba and in any portrait of the player you have to start with the people who gave him that name. An agent who represents two players who came through Arsenal’s academy with Saka got to know him and his family. Despite being a leading talent Saka had “the least ego of any of the players” and his father, Yomi, who was always at games and tournaments, is also a special person.

While most parents focus only on their sons – how they are performing, whether coaches are favouring them – Yomi “is a lovely, thoughtful man who was interested in all the kids, never one of those guys who’d say, ‘Oh, the coach is subbing my boy.’ If that happened he would reflect on why,” the agent recalls.

Yomi and Saka’s mother, Adenike, are devout Christians from Nigeria. He is a building surveyor, she is a chartered accountant. They raised Saka and his older brother – also Yomi – in Greenford, west London. It was a household where schoolwork and respect were non-negotiables.

Saka was spotted by Arsenal aged seven. The scout gave Yomi Sr his card, but his son snatched it from him and kept the treasured square of paper for days. He joined Arsenal’s under-eights after attending the club’s development centre in west London and when he started going to Arsenal’s academy at Hale End it was a big familial commitment, not least because Yomi Jr, a defender, was already attending Watford’s academy.

Saka has spoken about the hour-plus drive from Greenford to Hale End in northeast London; the roadworks on the North Circular that always slowed them down, driving past Wembley and daydreaming about playing there.

Steve Morrow became Arsenal’s head of youth development when Saka was 13. “He immediately impressed me,” Morrow says, “and not just as a player. It’s no surprise when you see what his family’s all about. If anything was surprising, it was that there weren’t too many, staff-wise, at under-16s, who would have predicted the speed at which he did develop. Some even thought, ‘Is there a lot beyond the physical power?’ But I always thought there was more.

“What impressed me was he was always able to receive the ball in tight situations and make good decisions. That’s very important for a kid to have early. If they have not just technical ability but intelligence and awareness on the ball, when they step into the higher level – for example, first-team training – they’re going to survive.”

Morrow worked closely with Arsene Wenger, and Saka epitomised that “Arsenal DNA” player that Morrow and Wenger strove to produce, one who fulfilled Wenger’s ideal that a footballer should have four corners: technique, physical gifts, mentality and, above all, intelligence.

Saka was in the last cohort of youngsters Wenger brought into the first-team environment at London Colney in his final season as manager, in 2017-18. If there were doubts, it is because some coaches saw him as a left back. He fitted the physical profile and his steady, unshowy personality seemed more that of a defender than an attacker. He ran in efficient straight lines with the ball rather than jinking and weaving in traditional winger style, like the academy’s leading left-wing prospect, Reiss Nelson. Yet there was a flaw with Saka as a full back, a glitch in his tackling technique, where he would put his left leg across the opponent, which led to him conceding penalties.

His first serious international games were at left back, in the 2018 European Under-17 Championship, held in England. Steve Cooper was the England manager. “Bukayo was one you looked at thinking, ‘He has the X factor,’” Cooper says, doing a Southgate and grinning fondly at mention of Saka’s name. England had won the Under-17 World Cup, with Phil Foden’s cohort, the year before, and a home Euros was a big thing. “A lot of the players hadn’t experienced anything like that, but Bukayo took it in his stride,” Cooper says.

“Because schooling and football years are different, the under-17s were always made up of half the guys who would be first-year [club] scholars and half who would still be at school – and Bukayo was one of the schoolboys. He excelled in the tournament while studying for his GCSEs, in which he did really well. I remember speaking to Caitlin Hawkins, who was the FA’s player education manager, and she was like, ‘Wow, this guy is a grade-A pupil as well.’ And just really humble.”

Saka left Greenford High School with four A*s and three As. A few months later, aged 17 and 85 days, he made his senior debut against Vorskla Poltava, becoming Arsenal’s youngest European player since Jack Wilshere – whose picture he once walked past at Hale End every day, telling himself: “It’s possible.”

His Premier League debut was against Fulham a few weeks later. Unai Emery was the Arsenal manager. “I always tell this little anecdote about Bukayo. He made his debut against Fulham and he played the last eight to ten minutes and didn’t touch the ball. Now he’s establishing himself at a high level,” Emery told Uefa’s website.

Emery used him regularly at the start of the next season and the manager’s replacement, Arteta, kept Saka in the team, using him at left back until a eureka moment away to Wolverhampton Wanderers in Arsenal’s second game after the Covid break. He put Saka on the right wing and he timed a brilliant run into the box to score his first Premier League goal, a volley with his left foot.

That sowed the seed for how Arteta deploys him now: an inverted winger, who uses a blend of game understanding, technique and explosive running to wreak havoc from wide right.

In 2021 Morrow became the FA’s head of player selection and talent strategy (a role from which he has just stepped down). “It was around the time of Euro 2020 and I remember joining England at St George’s Park, he came straight up to me, because that’s the type of kid he is – just a big smile and quite shy and humble,” Morrow recalls.

“He said, ‘Steve, it’s great to see you again, I’m so pleased you’ve joined England.’ I made a joke with him – ‘I’m going to be watching your right foot in training today.’ I did, and he was able to drag the ball to his right side and shoot with it. That certainly wasn’t the case a few years before, but he’s improved all aspects of the game.”

It was a surprise when Southgate put Saka in his starting line-up at Euro 2020. He was 19, with only two competitive international appearances before the tournament, and Southgate used him on the right – where he had only ever played for his club. He shone, but it ended with him missing the last penalty as England lost a shootout to Italy in the final. Images of first Conor Coady and Harry Kane, then Southgate himself, cradling a sobbing Saka as the Italians celebrated cannot be forgotten.

Nor can the racial abuse he suffered in the aftermath on social media. But what should also be remembered is the way so many fans rallied round – filling a wall at London Colney with their letters of support for him.

“He’s recovered from the obvious setback, he has the warmth of the fans with him who can see what he’s about, the genuine nature of his personality,” Southgate says.

“I’d say that key for us in the last couple of tournaments is there was that outpouring towards Bukayo, Marcus [Rashford] and Jadon [Sancho, who were also both racially abused after their penalty misses] in the aftermath, but then that tide turned.

“That was hugely important, because if the players hadn’t felt that warmth they might always be worried about what might go wrong with England. You don’t want an environment where people are reluctant to be all-in.”

Saka is still very close to his family – they live in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, now – still reads the Bible nightly, still has a smiling, wide-eyed, innocent way that delights those around him, yet he is tough.

He told Time: “I just want young people to realise I was like them one day – with a dream. There were some tough days, there were some good days, but you just have to keep going, keep dreaming.”

Originally published as The rise of Bukayo Saka and Mikel Arteta’s eureka moment with ‘Starboy’