An Ode to Nacho Monreal
Yesterday, one of my favorite ever soccer players announced his retirement. This is a story of how I became so inexplicably attached to a low-profile, often understated Spanish Fullback. This is a uniquely personal piece, but I feel it needs to be in order to fully communicate my feelings about the announcement and my appreciation for Nacho Monreal.
I have been watching Arsenal for about 8 years now. While this may come off as a relatively short amount of time to some die-hard fans, there are a lot of reasons for this.
For one, the Premier League was not a major topic of discussion during my early-2010’s elementary school experience. I wasn’t exposed to it naturally, even though I had a lot of friends who played and watched soccer. At that time, the infatuation of the average prepubescent American soccer fan was limited to the prime Messi vs. Ronaldo, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid space. Even though I had friends who supported Manchester United, they never seemed to care too much about the Premier League as a whole.
Secondly, I simply was not interested at the time. I had begun watching Formula One in 2011 and the NFL in 2013, but it took until the end of the 2014–15 season for me to be following Arsenal specifically.
I actually owe my introduction to Arsenal to Formula 1 in a weird way.
And I owe my introduction to Formula 1 to the cinematic masterpiece that was Disney Pixar’s Cars 2, in a much weirder way.
The original Cars move was the first move I had ever seen in theaters. It held — and still holds — a special place in my heart. My infatuation with the lore of the universe held strong until the release of the sequel in 2011. Somehow, contrary to the experience of almost every other child my age, it was the latter movie that had a markedly more profound impact on my life.
I actually wrote my personal statement for college applications about my relationship with Cars 2, and, if my acceptance to Cornell is anything to go by, it is an interesting one. Most of the details of that essay are irrelevant here. All you need to know is that I really, really liked Cars 2. I liked it so much that, after exhausting all of the other media on the DVD, I dove into the director’s commentary of the film.
During this commentary, John Lasseter — the film’s director — mentioned the inspiration the movie took from Formula 1, and pointed out that one of the Cars in the movie was voiced by British Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton. At the time, I had known Hamilton solely as a character in the movie, so I was intrigued at the prospect of watching him in real life.
My grandparents were visiting my family for thanksgiving. My grandfather has worked with cars his whole life, and, naturally, spent his free time watching car shows on the old SPEED network. At the end of one, he told me the TV was all mine again, and I prepared to switch it over to my Xbox. Before I could do this, the introduction to a Formula 1 race played, and I decided to give it a watch given what I heard in the Cars 2 director’s commentary.
That race was the last of the 2011 season, held in Brazil. It was won by Mark Webber, and Hamilton — who I was rooting for — retired from the race with a mechanical issue. Despite this, I was hooked.
I then closely followed the 2012 season. F1 fans will remember this season fondly as one of the most competitive and chaotic in history. It was a good one to start off.
I followed Hamilton — and the sport as a whole — very closely in the following years. Eventually, F1 migrated from the SPEED network to NBC sports, the same network that showed the Premier League in the US at the time. After an early morning race, an Arsenal game came on, and I decided to give it a watch.
I wish I could remember which game it was. It was probably in the latter half of the 2013/14 season, or maybe the early part of the 2014/15 season. I wasn’t instantly hooked in the same way I was for F1, but it resonated with me, and it wouldn't be the only game to conveniently follow an F1 race.
By the end of the 2014/15 season, I was watching every Arsenal game. It was a gradual progression, but I eventually knew them as my team.
There were a lot of reasons to fall for that team. They played arguably the most attractive football in the league during that time and had some special players. Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez, Theo Walcott, and Santi Cazorla were all eye-catching players who were capable of producing moments of magic.
I didn’t understand soccer well enough at the time to appreciate any of that. For some reason, what caught my eye were the routine things. Notably, I remember paying an odd amount of attention to the recycling of possession and passing between Arsenal’s defenders. These patterns of play were pretty predictable. I was able to understand what was happening and why players made the decisions they did in these simple scenarios.
I liked that I understood this. It was my first sense of command of the game, the first thing I could look at and say “hey, player x could have made a better decision in this scenario”. And I made mental notes when players made such mistakes.
Over time, I realized that there was one player who was almost never culpable for these mistakes. This player was Nacho Monreal.
I grew to like him a lot. As I started playing soccer myself, he was the one player I could definitively say I wanted to emulate.
Was I successful in doing that? Absolutely not. My technical ability at age 12 was laughable, but it was worth a shot. And, in playing the game, I grew a greater fondness for watching it. I think that in order to really appreciate soccer, one has to play the game at a somewhat competitive level. You grow to understand that even the most simple patterns of play are not as straightforward as they look when players who have dedicated their lives to the sport perform them. It’s really impressive.
As a left-footer, and with the first touch of bouncy house, I was arbitrarily placed at left back during my first season. This gave me even more reason to focus on Arsenal’s left back. While I had given up on my ludicrous desires to emulate the clean-and-proper game of Monreal, my fondness for him as a player grew. Week in and week out, in a frustratingly inconsistent Arsenal side, he never let the team down.
The 2015/16 season was the first Arsenal season that I really followed. It was a magical season in some respects, and unspeakably disappointing in others. The moment I remember most fondly was Danny Welbeck’s 94th-minute winning header against Leicester at the Emirates. To this day, that feels like the most hope-inducing Arsenal goal I have ever witnessed; we had just won a title-race 6-pointer — I could see Arsenal lift a Premier League trophy already!
Obviously, it did not end this way. Leicester’s fairytale season ended with them as champions, and no one (except for Spurs fans) could really complain about that. Arsenal miraculously finished 2nd after a very inconsistent final 2 months.
In a near-historic season for both Alexis Sanchez and (particularly) Mesut Ozil, I still focused on Monreal. He was still doing the business, proving that he could be a top fullback in a top side. As I began to venture into the media on the Arsenal Youtube and Instagram pages, I began to appreciate his humble-yet-fun personality as well. I really enjoyed his dynamic with Santi Cazorla, and remember their rendition of “un-classic” commentary very fondly. It helped me feel a greater sense of connection to the club, despite the thousands of miles that separated me from them.
The 2016/17 season was an incredibly mixed bag for Arsenal. There were some great moments in the Champions’ League group stages, but our first-round elimination was no surprise. Sadly, this would be the last bit of Champions’ League football I would ever see from Arsenal, as the club fell out of the top 4 that season for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, and failed to qualify. The magic that drew me to Arsenal — and the sport of soccer as a whole — was dying.
But it was not dead. In fact, it manifested in an odd way that season. Instead of the free-flowing intricate passing moves that defined much of the Wenger era, Arsenal’s FA cup run that season saw a makeshift, gritty side capable of playing on the back foot.
The back 3 was in vogue at the time, as Antonio Conte brought the formation to England with Chelsea, and with instant success. Arsene Wenger, partly to accommodate for Arsenal’s relative slip in quality and partially because of an Injury crisis in other positions, mirrored this switch in the FA cup.
In the semi-final against Manchester City, Monreal played as a left wing-back. He made a rare mistake on City’s opening goal, not realizing that Sergio Aguero was onside as the Argentine carried the ball half the length of the Wembley pitch to score. I was devastated. We did not seem to have the quality to find a goal against the Cityzens at the time. I had lost hope.
Nacho Monreal did not.
A tenacious run to the back post saw him volley an over-hit cross into the back of the net. The celebrations that ensued may or may not have brought a tear to my eye. It was another one of those moments that reaffirm your commitment to something that may not be so easy to love. All the pain throughout the season was washed away at that moment. The Spaniard's emphatic celebration — made almost comical by his visible surprise at the fact he scored — is a moment I will never forget.
In the final, Arsenal played Nacho as a left center back in the back 3. It was a weird game. One of the rarest events in the game occurred: a sending-off for simulation. Victor Moses made the Gunners’ job unspeakably easier that day, but the gap in quality still showed through; Chelsea was by far the superior side for long spells of the game. Our back 3 were being bombarded.
And it was not a back 3 most fans would feel comfortable being bombarded.
Rob Holding was, at the time, a little-known young center-half signed earlier that season from Bolton. Aside from the odd Arsenal fan calling him a future England Captain, there really was no fanfare from him. However, he held his own that season, and in that game in particular. In the center of the 3 was Per Mertesacker, a respected veteran whose best days for the club were far in the past. He didn’t have the physical capabilities to play in a back 4 anymore, but his intelligence and aerial presence were critical in winning that game.
And then there was Nacho. With little-to-no experience playing as a center-back, Monreal showed his commitment to the badge and tactical versatility in a very impressive manner during that match. There were no more bombing forward runs and goal-scoring opportunities. In the course of one round, all of that became crunching tackles and game-winning blocks.
His performance that day was special, in a very different way to the semi-final against City. Those two games really embodied the player he was: a real team player in a growingly rare mold, and a damn good player.
Nacho’s latter years at Arsenal were some of his most exciting. During the 2017/18 season, Monreal would notch 5 league goals, an impressive amount for a fullback. That season, Sead Kolasinac was bought from Schalke with the intention of giving the Spaniard a run for this place, but the Bosnian struggled to do this. Although the season as a whole proved to be very disappointing, it was ever-so-on-brand that Nacho Monreal played his best football during some of the club’s darkest times.
Arsene Wenger left at the end of that season. It was difficult to reconcile for many Arsenal fans, but it had to happen. The magic was gone, results were regressing, and Arsenal’s best players were becoming shadows of their former selves.
Enter Unai Emery.
His reign at Arsenal was weird. While he almost certainly wasn’t given enough time, it’s also more than possible that it was never meant to work. I have my own theories for why this is, but that is a discussion for another time. The important thing is that domestically speaking, things did not improve. He did, however, get us to our first European Final in over a decade.
And that final did not go well. Playing against Chelsea again, and again employing a back 3, Arsenal were bad. It signaled the early death of the transitional period between the Wenger and post-Wenger era.
Like in the 2017 FA cup final, Monreal played that game in a back 3. This time he disappointed. Moved to LCB to accommodate for Kolasinac at left wing-back, there were no heroics to display in this match. Arsenal lost 4–1. It was one of the most deflating results in recent memory.
Nacho Monreal left that summer. He held off the presumed competition presented by Kolasinac for two seasons. The intuition at the time was that Kolasinac would be Arsenal’s long-term left back when he was purchased, but, ironically, his hopes of grabbing the starting spot were gone as soon as Monreal left, with the signing of Keiran Tierney.
Monreal’s departure came at the right time. Arsenal was changing its identity, and in doing so there was a lot of turnover. A few staples from the late Wenger Era survived, but none as senior as Monreal. It was a completely different team to the one the Pamplona native joined, and the team that I fell in love with.
Nacho Monreal was known as “La Cabra,” or the goat, an homage to his undying work rate and determination. He embodied this nickname throughout his stint at Arsenal, but he was a player that the Emery-era Arsenal could not appreciate. He brought his talents to San Sebastian, playing for Real Sociedad for three more seasons before ultimately retiring. At La Real, he was well-appreciated but eventually fell out of favor after a number of injuries. He cited knee problems as the main reason he retired.
Both his departure from Arsenal and his retirement were unfortunate events that did not reflect the passion and dedication that Monreal gave to the world of football. While far from the greatest player to grace a grass pitch, la Cabra was uniquely special in his own respect. A dependable player in a time of chaos, Nacho was one of the only players I have never had doubts about in my time watching Arsenal. You never had to worry about his decision-making, work rate, or dedication to the club. This is all the more impressive given the calamity of the environment around him.
I’ve always been slyly mocked for my infatuation with Nacho Monreal, and it isn’t hard to understand why. He isn’t flashy, he isn’t super dynamic, and he just isn't that great in general when compared to the world’s best. That being said, I feel strongly that his career has gone too far under the radar. He was a player who embodied what it means to be an Arsenal player at a time when such players were hard to come by. He seldom put a foot wrong, and there were never any doubts about his love for the club.
I, for one, will miss la Cabra.
