Premier League managers rarely entertain discussions about their most highly-rated prospects, but such is the buzz of excitement around Arsenal midfielder Charlie Patino that Mikel Arteta felt compelled to explain his non-appearance in a Carabao Cup win over AFC Wimbledon earlier this season.
“He was very close [to being selected], but in the end, we decided that some players needed minutes,” Arteta said. “He’s been training well with us and he played a practice game with us and was good. So, give us time and we will prepare him.”
These are halcyon days for Arsenal‘s Hale End academy. Emile Smith Rowe, 21, and Bukayo Saka, 20, have established themselves as key players under Arteta and were instrumental in the 3-1 win over Spurs in September’s north London derby. Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Eddie Nketiah, Folarin Balogun and Reiss Nelson (since loaned to Feyenoord) have also featured in the Premier League for the Gunners this season.
Patino, who turned 18 in October, debuted for the England U19s during the most recent international break and is tipped to be the next player plucked from the conveyor belt after making the step up to Arsenal’s U23 team this season. The teenager was named on the bench for the Carabao Cup quarter-final against Sunderland.
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“He just ticked every box,” Dan Walder, a youth coach at Luton, tells i. “He wasn’t the quickest, but he had some key physical attributes in terms of balance and agility and his technical ability was excellent. His tactical understanding also get better and better because he wanted to learn.
“And he was fiercely competitive. I remember one training session where he sprinted the length of the pitch to stop a goal on the line and then ran up the other end to score the winner.”
Walder first spotted Patino’s potential when he was playing for St Albans City. “You could see there was something there,” he recalls of watching the then six-year-old whipping free-kicks into the top corner before a game. But while Luton benefited from being higher up football’s food chain than St Albans City, they were powerless to prevent Patino from taking another upwards step into the Premier League.
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“I was coaching for the U12s one day and Charlie was playing,” Walder recalls. “Charlie got the ball on the edge of the box, controlled it on his chest and bicycle kicked into the top corner! I looked across [the pitch] at someone dressed in a Chelsea tracksuit and just thought ‘he’s gone’. Probably a month later he was out of the door. There were enquiries from Chelsea, Tottenham, Man City but the family chose to go to Arsenal.”
Arsenal paid £12,000 compensation to Luton to enrol Patino in their academy, despite only being required to hand over £9,000. The Hatters will be entitled to further add-ons depending on whether certain clauses are met. “There’s obviously that bittersweetness to it,” Walder admits. “It’s great to see them go on and hopefully they do, but we’d love it to be the route of coming through our first-team and on from there.”
Inevitably, given his potential, Patino is already drawing comparisons to established stars. He has been likened in style to Manchester City’s Phil Foden, as well as Jack Wilshere, arguably the last homegrown Arsenal player to generate as much hype at such a young age. Wilshere also started out with Luton before making the switch to north London to continue his development and has recently been training with his former club as he eyes a return to the game after leaving Bournemouth in the summer.
“I know him. I’ve seen him play and he’s a good player,” Wilshere said of Patino to the Press Association. “He’s obviously really young still and got a lot of developing to do but he’s definitely one who everyone at the training ground is talking about.
On comparisons between the two, Wilshere added: “Yes, there are some similarities. There are quite a few but he is a different player as well and I think it is important people see him for who he is rather than say: ‘oh he is the next Jack Wilshere’.
“He has certainly got some qualities I didn’t have and there are things he needs to work on but he is going to make a name for himself in the future.”
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Patino, whose father Julio grew up in Spain supporting Deportivo La Coruna, namechecked Santi Cazorla, Cesc Fabregas and Arteta himself as players he has taken inspiration from in an in-house interview with the club in the summer.
But as the playmaker pointed out, he has no shortage of role models to learn from in training each day. “Another player I really look up to is Bukayo Saka,” he said in the same article. “He’s two years older than me and I’m working my hardest to try and follow in his footsteps. That’s the pathway I want to take at Arsenal.”
All the signs suggest that he is firmly on the right track.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3Bzohnn
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