It’s not often that you hear a professional athlete refer to themselves as “s***”, especially when they are in the sort of goalscoring form that the young Arsenal striker Mika Biereth is in.
The 21-year-old has made an immediate impact at Austrian Bundesliga title chasers Sturm Graz, scoring four goals in his first six matches in all competitions since arriving in January on loan until the end of this season.
So what’s with the self-deprecation?
“I’ve said before if I can compare myself to another player I’d say a s*** [Erling] Haaland and a s*** [Harry] Kane! A hybrid of them at a much worse level,” he tells i with a smile.
“Like Haaland, all I really care about is scoring goals. If you’d offer me two touches of the ball and two goals I’d take that. For me, it’s all about scoring goals.
“[But] There are different aspects of the game when scoring goals isn’t possible when the ball is deep so then it’s about combining, linking the play, holding the ball up like Kane does. Those are the two different variables on the pitch.”
There are a couple of easy parallels to draw between Biereth and arguably the two best strikers in world football.
Like Haaland, who moved to Red Bull Salzburg as a teenager, he is sharpening his goalscoring instincts in Austria, in a competitive if not elite environment. And like Kane, he has experienced both positive and negative aspects of being loaned out by a big club based in north London.
Kane was sent away by Tottenham Hotspur on four separate occasions prior to making his explosive breakthrough at the same age Biereth is now during the 2014-15 season.
Before joining Sturm Graz, Biereth enjoyed a successful half-season at Motherwell where he scored six goals in 15 appearances, which followed a far less beneficial stint at Dutch club RKC Waalwijk in 2022-23.
“Motherwell was massive, almost like a comeback because the first loan spell went nowhere near the plan we had,” he recalls.
“There were loads of reasons but I don’t feel like I ever got a fair opportunity to play. I needed to play games and Motherwell sounded very willing to do that before I came and then thankfully when I did come they did play me a lot and I was able to return the favour with a few goals.”
Motherwell were unhappy at Arsenal’s decision to recall Biereth with manager Stuart Kettlewell admitting it was “hugely disappointing” to lose a player who had made a “huge impact” and was “well loved” by the supporters.
But a move to Sturm Graz, who are not only competing for a league title – they are currently second in the table and two points behind serial champions Salzburg – but are also playing European football in the Conference League, appealed to both Arsenal and Biereth. So much so that he was eager to join permanently rather than temporarily.
“He [Andreas Schicker, Sturm Graz’s sporting director] even said himself that they tried to do a permanent [transfer]. I was open to that as well but Arsenal weren’t looking to allow me to leave,” Biereth reveals.
Why did he want to go?
“The idea of settling down somewhere and not having to think about all the extra stuff of different houses, different places and different cars and all of that, it gets a bit boring after a while. Trying to find a home,” he says, succinctly revealing a side to the loan system that is rarely discussed: the upheaval and the uncertainty. “[But] It was kind of simple that I wasn’t for sale in January.”
There were other reasons too.
“And the club plays in European competitions, they are towards the top of their league. It’s a very good club in terms of a stepping club, a lot of players in the past have come [here] and then been allowed to be sold to take the next step in their career.”
It’s an accurate assessment. Schicker outlined the club’s recruitment strategy in an interview with i in January.
“The idea is to have success on the pitch with a team that is built around a few more experienced leaders who are surrounded by young, talented players who we want to develop, who can get ready for the next step in their career at Sturm and who we can sell for profit,” he explained.
Sturm Graz’s appeal is especially strong for forward players given their recent track record. The club have sold their star striker to a club in one of Europe’s “Big Five” leagues in each of the last three seasons, including Rasmus Hojlund, a former strike partner of Biereth’s for Denmark’s U21s, to Atalanta in 2022.
“The whole team is kind of functioned towards allowing strikers to have lots of opportunities to score lots of goals,” Biereth says. “That was also a big factor in me coming in. I was under the impression that if I came here I could score and I’ve done that so far.”
Arsenal will be monitoring his progress closely. Mikel Arteta’s squad have hit a purple patch recently plundering 31 Premier League goals in just seven games in 2024, but that hasn’t quelled speculation that a potential reshuffle of the striker department could take place in the summer.
Gabriel Jesus’ spell at Arsenal has been plagued by injuries while Eddie Nketiah has slipped down the pecking order and not started a league game since New Year’s Eve.
A rejig could potentially work in Biereth’s favour, but either way, his future at the club will be decided at the end of this season when his contract will have just a year left to run.
“I’m on loan so all I can do is score as many goals and play as well as I can so that when I come back in the summer hopefully I can get an opportunity,” he says.
But Biereth is realistic too. He acknowledges that it will be harder to break into the first-team squad now than it might have been a few years ago when he signed from Fulham given Arsenal’s upward trajectory since.
“When Bukayo [Saka] and Gabi [Martinelli] broke into the team and Emile [Smith Rowe] it was kind of when Arsenal were struggling,” he says.
“It was still very difficult to break through but easier than it is now. Now every game matters because one loss… City and Liverpool aren’t going to lose are they? So those three [clubs] are really competing game for game.”
Nevertheless, even though he hasn’t played a first-team game for the Gunners, it is evident that he has learned plenty from working with the club’s youth coaches and training with international stars.
“It is a simple game but just [learning] how much goes into it and how much detail there is, I learned all of that at Arsenal,” he says.
“The more you train with the first-team, the more used to it you get and those kinds of training sessions put me in good stead for playing with the 21s and then out on my loans.
“One of the first sessions I was over there I was trying to hold the ball up and big Gabi [Magalhaes] just clattered through the back of me. It felt like a car crash! He is massive and I would have only been 18 at the time. Just things like that, the speed and the physicality of it [helped].”
Biereth cites Rob Holding, Kieran Tierney and Aaron Ramsdale as the players who helped him out the most and Gabriel Martinelli as the best player he’s trained with. “He’s just so quick and so sharp with everything that he does.”
Establishing himself at Arsenal would be the ideal outcome but Biereth is philosophical about his future.
“My biggest priority is I need to be playing first-team football. I’m not overly keen on sitting on benches and just watching. I want it to be like the six months I had at Motherwell and the start here: playing games and scoring goals.
“If there is a high level I can do to where I’ll just be watching I’d rather drop down a level so I can play games. That whole process will just be me finding out where that best place is.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/vG3DFe4
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