Mikel Arteta and Xabi Alonso's incredible journey from beach buddies to football's top bosses

The journey from childhood friends to football's managerial elite is a tale of two of the game's brightest minds — Mikel Arteta and Xabi Alonso. From their early days playing together on the beaches of San Sebastian, they've risen through the ranks to become potential title winners in their respective leagues.

Arteta, at the helm of Arsenal, is steering the Gunners towards their first Premier League title in 20 years, while Alonso's Bayer Leverkusen is on the cusp of possibly clinching the Bundesliga crown this Sunday.

Their shared history traces back to Antiguoko, the small Spanish youth club where they both honed their skills as ten-year-olds. Roberto Montiel, their former coach and now vice-president of the club has nothing but admiration for his two star pupils.

Montiel recalls Arteta's exceptional talent and maturity even as a youngster: «Mikel always played ahead of his age group and showed a lot of maturity despite being a little boy,» he told The Sun. «Right away, we knew he could make it at a professional level.

»He's the best player I have ever seen at Antiguoko, better even than Alonso, and I think he had the idea of being a coach a long time before he hung up his boots.

«Arteta would watch me coach some of the teams and afterwards bombard me with ideas and suggestions of how to change things around. He was still only young but I could see he was engineering the idea of coaching.

»I would laugh because he'd tell me where my team was failing and where I had to use the scalpel to make changes!"

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While Arteta's path seemed almost preordained,