Arsenal: Matteo Guendouzi’s confidence wonderful and worrying

Matteo Guendouzi is a supremely confident young player. His self-belief is wonderful and sets him up perfectly for a long and successful Arsenal career. But there are some worrying elements also.

When Arsenal signed an unknown 19-year-old Frenchman who had played only four senior appearances in his career, was fighting for a place in a Ligue 2 squad, found himself released by the Paris Saint-Germain Academy at 14 and was roundly seen as a project on which the club was willing to take a punt, few expected him to be starting the opening game of the Premier League season.

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And yet, fast-forward a little over a month from the time he was signed and you would have seen Matteo Guendouzi contending with Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan at the heart of a spacious and daunting Emirates pitch, the first time that he had ever played there. It really is quite the rise.

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Such a surge into prominence does come without an element of self-belief and grounded confidence that is unshaken in adversity and failure. And indeed, Guendouzi is an extremely confident individual, sure of his abilities and certain that he deserves his place in the team. It is an admirable quality. Every professional footballer, to get where they are, must at least exhibit some extent of this same assurance in themselves. But oftentimes, it is the ones who are most secure that work their way to the top. Guendouzi is well on his way.

But that inner-confidence does come with a cost. As this excellent profiling piece by Jack Pitt-Brooke details, Guendouzi did have some temperament issues growing up, falling out with his managers and teammates, sometimes being a little abrasive in his character, a little overbearing in his ambition. As Lorient vice-president Alex Hayes states, his self-belief can get him into trouble every now and then:

"“He believes so much in himself that he is outraged with anyone who doesn’t place him on the same pedestal that he believes he should be placed on. He has real issues with that side of his temperament. He is not a bad kid, he’s not nasty, he’s just got an innate, deep belief in himself.”"

It is difficult to criticise a young player for being confident. So often, young prospects break into the first team and they don’t look ready, not necessarily because they aren’t good enough, but because they lack the belief in their own ability that they cower into their shells, they retreat into a lesser version of themselves, their nerves get the better of them and they do not perform. Guendouzi is very much the opposite. It is refreshing to see.

But there is a need to balance his insatiable desperation and expectation of individual success with an element of realism and humility. Continually upsetting your managers is not a good way to go about building your career. I am sure that Unai Emery can handle Guendouzi. He has managed far more tempestuous players than a verging-on-arrogant 19-year-old. But that does not mean that Guendouzi must be careful with his behaviour.

He has enjoyed a wonderful start to his Arsenal career. No one would have thought he would be at this point so soon. Much of that is down to his confidence. And that’s wonderful. But there are also some worrying elements that cannot be overlooked in favour of his sheer potential. Like with everything, there is a balance to be found. Let’s hope that he can find it.