n 1999, a week before the Spanish Super Cup, Mikel Arteta played his only game for Barcelona’s first team, coming off the substitutes’ bench in a 2-1 friendly defeat to Hertha Berlin. He was only 17, and his performance seems to have been memorable for nobody but him and his immediate circle. But it is telling that he grew up amid one of the greatest concatenations of coaching talent the world has known. The manager was Louis van Gaal. His assistants were Jose
