How Did Cesc Fabregas Revolutionize Arsenal?

It seems as though nowadays there’s a bright, talented prodigy popping up in the world of football almost every day.

And while it’s hard to keep up with all the talented players coming through the ranks, it’s even harder to predict which of these players will actually live up to their potential.

Now, when it comes to subject of today’s video, knowing what we know now, I think it’s safe to say that this guy definitely lived up to the hype.

Seeing that you’ve likely read the title and seen the thumbnail by now, you’re probably well aware that I’m referring to none other than Cesc Fabregas.

He’s played all over Europe in his illustrious career, winning the biggest trophies of them all along the way.

However, in this video, I thought it would be interesting to laser focus on the start of his professional footballing career.

More specifically, how insanely talented he was, as well as how his immense playing ability changed the direction of one of the biggest clubs in England.

With that being said, how did Cesc Fabregas revolutionize Arsenal?

Barcelona beginnings

Born and bred in Barcelona, Fabregas began his footballing journey at his local club Mataro when he was just 7 years old. From very early on in his development, it was well known that he was undoubtedly the best player in his age group, by some distance.

His team would regularly play Barcelona in friendlies, but his coach at the time would actually choose not to play him, in fear that Barca’s scouts may spot him and persuade him to join the Catalan club.

Sadly, these efforts were eventually proven to be in vein, as he could not keep up the ruse for long. After not too long, Fabregas had been identified by Barcelona scouts as an incredibly special talent. And so, at 9 years of age, he joined the Barcelona youth academy, La Masia. In doing so, he joined up with another insanely talented nine-year-old, who had recently been inducted into La Masia, himself. Gerrard Pique.

And as if things couldn’t get any better for Barcelona, these two were soon joined by a shy diminutive boy from Rosario, Argentina. Lionel Messi.

So, just to give you an update on where we stand at the moment. What we have here, are three exceptional, young, generational talent type of players, all within the same age group, all at the same youth academy. These three, in addition to a few others would later come to be known as the class of 87.

It goes without saying that Barcelona were in an extremely fortunate position.

The same, however, cannot be said for the remainder of the youth division sides in Spain.

La Masia Dominance

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These three absolutely went to town on the rest of the country’s youth teams. Scoring and assisting at will. Fabregas recalls winning matches by 10, 20, even 30 goals on a very regular basis. Fabregas himself was quite a prolific goal scorer in those days too.

Although, despite his goal scoring prowess, Fabregas would play as a Defensive midfielder. However, being a La Masia product, he was educated in the school of Total football. A footballing philosophy characterised by free flowing, attacking football, where players are taught to be capable of playing in any position on the pitch.

With that in mind, you can understand why the score lines were so lopsided in the matches that they would play.

Taking his position out of the equation, Fabregas was immensely talented. He was great on the ball, with impressively quick feet, a fantastic passer in terms of both short and long range and possessed elite defensive and offensive awareness and positioning. And he was improving every day.

At 15 years of age, his youth team went an entire season undefeated, winning several trophies along the way. They were simply unstoppable. And Fabregas was one of the main reasons for this.

Sadly, all things must come to an end. At 16 years of age, Cesc Fabregas’ youth days were slowly coming to a conclusion and it was time to truly start thinking of the future. But come on. Let’s be real here. Fabregas was quite clearly amongst the best of the bunch. He was always going to be prioritized and fast tracked to the Barcelona first team, right?

This kind of talent very clearly does not pop up on a regular basis.

You would surprisingly be wrong if that’s what you thought. You see, Barcelona had a problem. Around the time that Fabregas was getting to a point where he would meet the critera to be included in the senior team, two of the greatest midfielders that the world has ever seen were just about reaching their prime.

Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernandez. Barcelona also had players such as Thiago Motta and the captain at the time, Luis Enrique in the midfield.

As a result of this, Barcelona simply could not guarantee regular playing time for the young prodigy. Now you see. This, this right here. This is what you call suffering from success.

Transition to London

In truth, from memory, as well as everything I’ve read on this story, it doesn’t even seem as though Barcelona tried particularly hard to keep Fabregas.

There was, however, one man who very eager to secure the services of Fabregas and was even willing to guarantee him first team playing time.

That man was none other than Arsène Wenger.

Just to give you an idea of the faith that Arsène Wenger had in this young man. Fabregas signed for Arsenal in September of 2003, at the beginning of the 2003/2004 Premier League season. Now, I don’t think I need to remind anyone of how formidable the Arsenal line-up was that season.

However, if you do need reminding, this Arsenal team went unbeaten the entire season, becoming the only team to ever accomplish this feat. To this day, this achievement is yet to be repeated.

As a side note, if you’re interested in a detailed breakdown of this legendary Arsenal side, and how they went unbeaten, I actually made a article on them recently, you can check it out here.

Taking things back to Fabregas. If at this point in this article, you’re still unconvinced of how talented this man was, just think of how good you have to be for Arsène Wenger to guarantee you first team game time when his first team literally consists of the Invincibles? Did I mention that he was only 16 at this point? Sorry, must’ve slipped my mind.

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However, in his first season with the club, he was confined to only making appearances in the league cup. The drastically changed the following season.

Big break

At the beginning of the 2004/2005 season of the Premier League, Fabregas, for the most part, started off as a bench player. The idea here was for him to get a taste of professional football, coming on a sub here and there. Really feeling his way into things, you know. After all, he was only 17.

Well.

Due to a flurry of injuries to firstly Patrick Viera, and later Gilberto Silva, Fabregas ended up not only playing, but starting in several matches. All in all, he made 33 appearances for the senior team this season. Taking into consideration that a regular season has 38 games, this amount of games is substantial, to say the least.

Despite his age, he was proving to be an extremely effective midfielder. He didn’t quite have the physical or defensive prowess the majority of Arsenal’s midfielders had over the past couple of decades, but he was still highly mobile, had a decent tackle and definitely found ways to use his strengths to his advantage.

It’s important that you take note of this, as it become highly relevant over the next season or two.

He retained just about all of his defining characteristics from his time in La Masia and continued to build on them. Although, he did lose his goal scoring touch. However, this was to be expected as he moved into more senior teams, in a more physical league.

Pizza Gate

Although this isn’t particularly a testament to his playing ability, or how he revolutionized Arsenal, I’d be remiss if I neglected to mention my personal favourite moment of his during his first full season in the Premier League. The infamous Pizza Gate event, otherwise known as the Battle of the Buffet.

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Let me set the scene for you. Arsenal had just gone 49 games unbeaten in the Premier League and were very much in from at the start of the 2004/2005 season. They were looking to make it 50 games unbeaten against Manchester United at Old Trafford on the 24^th of October 2004.

The game didn’t go quite as planned. United finished the game victories after beating Arsenal 2-0, ending their unbeaten streak.

The main reason this result was so controversial is that Wayne Rooney seemingly dived to win the penalty that made the game 1-0. There was also some previous history between van Nistelrooy, who scored the penalty, and members of the Arsenal defence. Although, we can get into that another time.

So, yes. It’s all a bit dicey. But, Fabregas was an unused substitute in this match, so why he even being mentioned? Well at the end of the match, a fight is said to have broken out in the Old Trafford tunnel between both sets of players and the managers.

As the story goes, at the heat of this fight, someone ended up throwing pizza at Sir Alex Ferguson, prompting Ferguson to change from his usual suit into the United tracksuit before doing his post-match interviews.

There was unfortunately no video footage of this e vent, which really is a shame.

While the culprit remained unknown for over a decade, many have suspected that it was a 17-year-old Fabregas. This was confirmed by the Spaniard himself in 2017 on the game show “A league of their own”. Fabregas does admit, he wasn’t aiming for Sir Alex Ferguson, and apologised immediately, but it doesn’t make this any less hilarious.

First team regular

Jumping back to matters on the pitch, by the time the 2005/2006 season came along, Arsenal’s long serving captain, Patrick Viera, had left the club, essentially vacating two significant roles in the squad. One being the captaincy of course. Thierry Henry was the obvious choice to fill that role.

The second being a rather large, 6ft4 sized hole in the Arsenal midfield. While he didn’t quite match up to that size description in physical stature, Fabregas had done enough over the previous two seasons to convince Wenger that he was an adequate replacement for Viera.

This decision generated quite a bit of backlash and confusion by journalists and the mainstream media, as well as several fans of English football, not only of Arsenal.

As I’ve already mentioned, Fabregas was not the same kind of player as Viera, by some distance. Taking physical characteristics out of the discussion, they had vastly different playstyles. One being a dominant box to box player and the other being a creative powerhouse, with an extremely delicate touch.

Ashley Cole, Arsenal’s left back at the time, even once referred to Fabregas as a “an unproven featherweight”.

To be fair, all of this criticism wasn’t unfounded. Arsenal were a different side with Fabregas in the starting line-up. They had slowly shifted from being a fast-paced team with electric counterattacking potential in the invincible season, to one that favoured more intricate well-knit passing play.

By 2007, Henry left for Barcelona. This undoubtedly made Fabregas the best and most important player at the club, at 20 years of age. However, he was well aware of this, and it did not seem to faze him.

After all, he did make 20 assists in the 2007/2008 season, scoring 4 goals in the process. As a side note, this season is probably the closest Arsenal have truly come to reclaiming the premier league trophy since their invincible season, although they finished 3^rd, they were only 4 points from the top.

By 21 years of age, in 2008, he was made the Arsenal Captain. And by 2009, his influence was as prevalent as ever. From this year onwards, he truly embodied the title of this video, revolutionizing how Arsenal played the very game of football.

How did Fabregas change Arsenal?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. How exactly has he gone and done that? To understand this, we have to go back a little bit, to when he first arrived.

Fabregas’s arrival at Arsenal was peculiar for a few reasons. He arrived at the club simultaneously in the clubs best ever period in the Premier League era, as well as at the beginning of their worst period in the history of the same competition.

Following the invincible season, Arsenal failed to keep up with an ever-evolving Premier League roster. Just about every top team was innovating, chopping and changing and, realistically, trying to keep up with Chelsea and Manchester United.

Arsenal didn’t really seem to get the memo.

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And while they did come close to the league in 2008, as previously mentioned, realistically, they were pretty far off, quite consistently.

You see, while the rest of the league were making massive changes to their teams in hopes of gaining an inch, Arsenal were stuck in a rut. A mixture of lacklustre signings, a massive stadium debt, a few tactical miscalculations and an obsession with the 442-formation kept them out of title contention indefinitely.

In 2009, Wenger switched to a 433 formation, clearly looking to build the team around their Spanish captain. This change pushed Fabregas further up the pitch and gave him much more liberty to operate freely in a more attacking role.

This paid dividends as he went on to score 15 goals and provide 15 assists this season. Despite this, Arsenal only managed to finish 3^rdthis season, 11 points off the top.

He kept his fine form up in the 2010/2011. His goal scoring form did drop, as he only scored 3. However, that was only due to the upturn in form that Robin van Persie experienced. Fabregas thus focussed more on providing the goals, creating 13 goals this season.

This was unfortunately his final season in an Arsenal shirt. As we all know, he went on to join Barcelona at 24 years old, reuniting with his former La Masia teammates, Lionel Messi, Gerrard Pique, and many more.

Later joining Chelsea, and then Monaco.

Closing Thoughts

In closing, the story of Fabregas and Arsenal is an interesting one to say the least. I haven’t even really gone into the prolonged transfer saga from Fabregas’ much anticipated return to Barcelona in 2011. Or his controversial return to England in 2014, where he went on to play for Arsenal’s City rivals, Chelsea.

If you are interested in learning more about those topics, I suggest going over to the Arsenal Report.com and also listening to an interview that Fabregas did on Arseblog.com. Here they have laid out a detailed timeline regarding exactly how both of these sagas played out.

You can find the link for these resources, as well all of the other information used in this video in the description below.

Leaving all of this aside, it’s no doubt that he was a truly special player for the gunners. He was a man that changed the very footballing philosophy of one of the greatest managers of all time. Albeit, a standout in an Arsenal side that was struggling to keep up with the opposition.

Still an Arsenal legend, in my opinion.

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