Spaniard, who at 30 has been coaching for half his life, discusses Arteta, tactics and how to win players’ trust
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arlos Cuesta, towards the end of his first major interview, briefly lets himself wonder how far his journey will take him. “Maybe one day it brings the Maldives,” he says with a laugh, the joke being football managers can quickly be banished from view, twiddling their thumbs on the beach, once their star has faded. Still, would that be so bad? “It could be better or worse, it depends when or why. If it’s because you want it, or if it’s because somebody told you to go.”
If soaking up rays sounds like anathema to Cuesta it is because, in a remarkable ascent, he has barely wasted a minute. In June, shortly before turning 30, he took the reins at Parma and became the youngest head coach in Serie A since 1939. Half of his short life had been spent building up to that moment, the realisation crystallising in his late teens that no other calling would do. “I felt that I needed to coach,” he says. “It was like an inner necessity that I had inside of me.”
Cuesta had been coveted long before his arrival in Emilia-Romagna. It was during a five-year spell as one of Mikel Arteta’s assistants at Arsenal that he matured from inquisitive, ferociously diligent tyro into an elite manager in waiting. Nobody involved with the Premier League leaders would play down Cuesta’s influence; the public received a glimpse when he featured in the club’s All or Nothing documentary three years ago. Parting ways brought its own agony.
