Santi Cazorla recalls agonising TV analysis with Mikel Arteta, loving life playing for boyhood club Oviedo after demanding to be paid minimum wage and how Arsenal CAN win the Premier League title

It sounds like something you might see on reality TV show Gogglebox – Mikel Arteta and Santi Cazorla were sitting on the sofa together watching Premier League football.

Cazorla sets the tone from 2016: “I always watched games with him when we were both injured,” he says. ‘He grabbed the remote and froze the action and I said to him, “Why are you stopping it?”

“He rewinded it another thirty seconds, paused it again and said, ‘What do you see? I would say, “I see the action frozen. I do not see anything!”‘

Arteta would point to a poorly positioned player, a defensive line that was too low, or a move a team had made to free up space.

“I would look at him and think, this guy has already started as a coach,” says Cazorla, not the least bit surprised that his friend is now in charge of Arsenal’s best chance of a league title in 20 years.

“With so much stopping and rewinding the match would be over and we would only be at minute 35,” he laughs. “It’s a gift to see the things he sees, because I know that’s not what I’m focusing on.”

A single couple would eventually make it to the end of the matches because Cazorla developed the perfect strategy: ‘I would say yes to everything! He questioned me and I said, “Yes, you’re absolutely right now, press play and let’s see if we can finish the match!”

Now 39, Cazorla is back at his boyhood club Oviedo and trying to get them promoted back to the first division – a feat he believes would top anything in his career.

Last summer he agreed to join them, but only if the club paid him no more than a minimum wage and 10 percent of his shirt sales went directly to the academy.

‘I would play for free, but [league rules mean] you have to accept the minimum, otherwise you can’t play at all. “I want to contribute to the growth of the club,” he says.

It was worth it and in ways he might not have imagined.

“Opposition players remember my time with the national team and Arsenal and they see me playing in the second division and they thank me for that,” he says. ‘And at the slightest kick they give me, they say sorry. That never used to happen!’

They all want his shirt too. ‘Unfortunately I can’t give them to everyone because I only have two per match. They now even write to me on Instagram during the week. There’s a point where the game starts and I say “only five of you asked for it and I only have two”.’

Asked to look back on his career and pick a five-a-side team he has played with, he picks out Andres Iniesta, Xavi, David Silva, Juan Riquelme and Mesut Ozil without too much thought.

‘We’re not going to defend!’ he says. ‘They will have to take the ball from us, but if they do, we will suffer. I love the ballplayers and there are five that impressed me.”

There is a young player at Arsenal who wouldn’t look out of place in that team. ‘I love [Martin] Odegaard,” says Cazorla. ‘He wanted to be an important player somewhere and he found that at Arsenal. I see myself in him because when I went to Arsenal I found a coach in Arsène Wenger who had so much confidence in me. In the second season he made me captain, almost before I knew how to say hello in English!’

He is also a fan of Declan Rice. ‘I saw him at West Ham and loved him. He is the typical box-to-box as they say in England. He reminds me of Aaron Ramsay when I was at Arsenal – a player who will appear in so many places on the pitch that sometimes you think: what is this man doing here when he should be there! But he has such an engine.’

Can this Odegaard-Rice-powered Arsenal win the league under Arteta? “Yes,” is Cazorla’s emphatic answer. ‘The year Leicester won the league I think we were halfway through the season with a seven-point lead. We lost it due to a lack of mentality. I think Mikel has changed that.”

That mentality will be sorely tested against Wolves on Saturday, with the players having to put the disappointment of their Champions League exit against Bayern Munich behind them.

European success also eluded Arsenal when Cazorla was there; they were eliminated twice by the Germans. ‘Bavaria again, we always said after the draw. And if we didn’t get them, it would be Barcelona or Monaco that year.’

If Arteta becomes the first coach since Wenger to lead Arsenal to a title, can’t Cazorla take some of the credit? He confided in Santi when he was first offered the chance to work with Pep Guardiola.

“No,” Cazorla laughs. ‘Mikel had to make the decision. We talked about it for a while because he had just come back from an injury and was starting to feel good again. He said: “What should I do Santi, keep playing, which I like, or take this opportunity to work as Pep’s assistant? There will be no better teacher for me.”

“I told him that if the challenge got him excited, he should go ahead with it. It worked out well for him.’

For Cazorla, a few drops still need to be squeezed out of his playing career. Will he then coach?

Speaking about another old friend, Xavi, he recalls playing for him when he was manager of Al Sadd in Qatar: ‘As a player, Xavi was very calm and never raised his voice, and now!’ Cazorla says back in sparkling storytelling mode.

“My first game in Qatar we lost at half-time and I saw him throw a boot at the backboard. He was shouting and swearing and I thought: someone has replaced Xavi with someone else!

‘I can’t see myself like that. But hey, I wouldn’t have seen him like that!’

‘He always had character, he was a leader and he spoke well and calmly. As a coach, the blood boils more and the character emerges in a different way.’

He sympathizes with his old friend, who leaves at the end of the season. “He arrived at an extremely complicated time, with one of the worst economic situations in Barcelona’s history,” Cazorla said. “He won the competition, but it seems like it’s never enough.”

All this reminds Cazorla of his own homecoming, although he seems to enjoy it much more. Does he stagger through the supermarket on days off because of the physical toll?

“No, because I don’t want people to see me limping,” he laughs. ‘The sensation of playing at home again takes away all the pain!

‘If I still play, I just want to enjoy it. It’s happening so fast, it feels like yesterday I started here as a youngster, and now I’m 39 and at the end of my career, but every stage has something great.”

It would be a great year to retire if he gets his boyhood club promoted just as one of his best football friends wins the Premier League title.