When Bukayo Saka returned to Arsenal after his Euro 2020 penalty pain last summer, Mikel Arteta urged him to use the “scar” of that miss as motivation.
In the six months since, Saka has left the disappointment of those events at Wembley, and the subsequent fall-out, trailing in his wake and gone from being a breakthrough star into a talisman in the Arsenal side.
After a steady start to the season, he hit top gear around Christmas, scoring four goals in three games as the Gunners established themselves in the mix for a top-four finish, and only obvious fatigue led to his performances levels dropping in the weeks before the winter break.
“I was worried with everything that happened in the summer with him,” Arteta said last month. “But when I first met him after the holiday period, I realised he would cope with it well. His reaction was incredible and then the support he had from everybody in football was something that gave him a big lift.”
The support Saka received from Arsenal after the Euro 2020 Final, in which he missed the decisive penalty and then received racist abuse by online trolls, was swift.
Director Josh Kroenke, son of owner Stan, chief executive Vinai Venkatesham and Arteta all made contact with him, while staff from the academy, who have known Saka since he was eight, reached out too.
After a three-week holiday in July, Saka returned to Arsenal for pre-season training in the first week of August and was greeted by a wall with thousands of messages of support which the club had received.
Still a month away from his 20th birthday, he was overwhelmed by the outpouring and organised for every message to be boxed up and sent to his family home, where he could go through them properly.
The following weekend Saka returned to action in a friendly at Tottenham. The customary boos by Spurs fans for a visiting Arsenal player were replaced by a standing ovation from the home crowd for the winger, who was touched by the incident.
Arsenal were sure Saka had mentally dealt with the trauma of the summer and that his slow start to the campaign was more down to the amount of football he played last season.
Saka has a close relationship with Arteta, who has helped develop him into an England international, and they have become closer since the events of last summer.
“I think that is now part of him and his history as a football player,” said Arteta on the eve of this season. “That scar is going to be there and he is taking a lot from that, and he is going to use it in the future. That’s for certain.”
Saka has developed into a leader for Arsenal this season, helping young newcomers into the squad including 18-year-old Charlie Patino.
He has always been loved at the training ground, partly because he is known by so many having come through the ranks at the club, and that bond has grown stronger over the past year.
Saka received plenty of support last summer, but he has always enjoyed helping others too and that was evident once again in November.
A young player at Ipswich Town Women, Sophie Peskett, tore her anterior cruciate ligament and when Saka got wind of it he reached out to her. Peskett is a big Arsenal fan, Saka is her hero, and the England star sent her a video message of support as she began her recovery.
Those at Arsenal say that type of gesture is par for the course with Saka, who, along with his mother, organised a Zoom call with the Arsenal in the Community team in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic to see how they could help.
Saka’s family have played a huge role in his career, right back from the days when his dad would drive him to Arsenal training while he did his homework in the back of the car.
Their hard work has helped turn him into a star and it feels telling that, in an Arsenal team now shorn of forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Saka is emerging as a talisman.
There is a gap at Arsenal for a star player to emerge and Saka fits the bill, both and off the field.
The next challenge for him is to add goals to his game on a consistent basis, but he showed over Christmas that is capable of doing that.
“His talent is obviously unquestionable,” said Arteta, when asked how good Saka could one day become. “But he needs his teammates, he needs his environment, he needs a cool head and he needs a very clear direction of what he wants to become. Time will tell.”
Time will indeed tell, but right now Saka looks back on the path that has everyone at Arsenal so excited about what the future could hold.
