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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Sid Lowe in A Coruña

Charlie Patiño: ‘I’d been at Arsenal a long time. I wanted a new chapter’

Charlie Patiño with a Deportivo shirt
Charlie Patiño with a Deportivo shirt. His father and grandfather passed to him a love of the club. Photograph: Susi Garcia/Deportivo de La Coruña

Old tweets can come back to bite, but not this time. This time, digging into his past made them love Charlie Patiño even more: for who he could be and always was, already an icon in A Coruña where he hadn’t lived before and hasn’t played yet but which is home.

If you’re wondering why a generational talent Arsenal’s head scout described as the best to walk through the academy doors has joined a club that spent the past four years in Spain’s third tier, look online. You might find part of the answer in a picture of him, aged 10. In his posts, the things he said years ago. And in what he says now, a calm, analytical clarity and determination making sense of it all.

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