Carlos Cuesta: ‘Leaving was maybe the most difficult decision of my life’

The Parma manager Carlos Cuesta on his Arsenal exit, Arteta’s impact and coaching for half of his lifetime at 30

‘You can feel there has been success here and also there have been many ups and downs’

27 Dec 2025 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport

Nick Ames

Carlos Cuesta, towards the end of his first major interview, briefly lets himself wonder how far his journey will take him. “Maybe one day it brings the Maldives,” he says with a laugh, the joke being football managers can quickly be banished from view, twiddling their thumbs on the beach, once their star has faded. Still, would that be so bad? “It could be better or worse, it depends when or why. If it’s because you want it, or if it’s because somebody told you to go.”

If soaking up rays sounds like anathema to Cuesta it is because he has barely wasted a minute. In June, shortly before turning 30, he took the reins at Parma and became the youngest head coach in Serie A since 1939. Half of his life had been spent building up to that moment. “I felt that I needed to coach,” he says. “It was like an inner necessity that I had inside of me.”

Cuesta had been coveted long before his arrival in Emiliaromagna. It was during a five-year spell as one of Mikel Arteta’s assistants at Arsenal that he matured from inquisitive, ferociously diligent tyro into an elite manager in waiting. Nobody involved with the Premier League leaders would play down Cuesta’s influence; the public received a glimpse when he featured in the club’s All or Nothing documentary three years ago. Parting ways brought its own agony.

“It was maybe the most difficult decision of my life,” he says of the moment Parma called. Cuesta had to weigh the sense he was aboard a rocket ship against the privilege of being sought by a club feted for its success in the 1990s. “I was incredibly happy at Arsenal, surrounded by incredible people in an incredible project. Not only with great players and a path that is only growing and growing, but with a person who has been incredibly important for me, which is Mikel.”

Arteta would never have stood in Cuesta’s way. Other clubs had long been hovering. “I needed to consider a lot of things but in the end I had a great feeling with the people at Parma,” Cuesta says. “It’s an amazing, historic club. You can feel there has been success here and, at the same time, there have been many ups and downs.”

To Parma, all the way from Palma. Cuesta was born in Mallorca, the youngest of four siblings, then 12, 11 and nine. He played for Santa Catalina Atlético, a local lower-division side, until 18 but knew his prospects were limited. “I was a footballer that was on the pitch but not making a difference,” he admits. Life nonetheless revolved around the club. His mother ran its coffee shop; he would go there after school, hang out into the evening, immerse himself in the institution’s rhythms. “In this kind of way, I think it got into my blood,” he says.

By 15, he had been invited to coach youngsters at Santa Catalina. The die was cast. Cuesta was confident, academically bright and ambitious. He wanted a career around football and for a short time considered sports journalism. The inner cry to make his name in coaching had become overwhelming by the time he began a sports science degree in Madrid.

“I tried to be proactive in order to make it happen,” he says. Social media proved invaluable. Cuesta followed a number of staff from Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid on Twitter, eventually striking up conversations that brought a role in the latter’s academy. Atlético was “almost like the real university”: their coaches had spotted a talent and he began working with their under-nines, eventually taking charge at under-14 level.

Cuesta was motivated “to try and spend time with people that could add value for me”. During a year out after leaving Atlético he crammed in visits to clubs, managers, seminars and tournaments. Among the yields was a connection with Juventus, where he spent two years with the under-17s and under-23s. He was 22. “If Atlético was the university, Juventus was the master’s,” he says. “An incredible experience.”

Then came the call from Arteta, who was eight months in at Arsenal. The pair had forged a relationship during Arteta’s time at Manchester City when Cuesta “had the opportunity to share some thoughts” with a coach whose outlook he already admired. He became one of Arteta’s most trusted lieutenants and the pair still communicate regularly.

“An incredible person,” he says. “He has always been extremely supportive. I can’t speak well enough about who he is, not just as a leader and a coach but as a human being.”

The clarity, single-mindedness and intensity Cuesta exhibits during an hour-long conversation at Parma’s training centre bring easy comparison to the Arteta who, before his playing days wound down, was sketching out detailed visions of a life in management.

His initial role at Arsenal was individual development coach, which involved one-on-one work with players focusing on aspects of their game. The dressing room of Arteta’s early days was not outwardly the easiest to enter, even before considering Cuesta was 25 and almost unknown. Senior players embraced him swiftly though; the All or Nothing clip in which he animatedly, yet concisely, talks Ben White through his “world-class” attributes is a widely available example of his talents.

“I tried to observe, to listen, to intervene only when I thought I could add some value, and from there to slowly try to get their credibility and trust,” he says. “When the player feels you can do that, and that you’re a good person with honesty and good values, they follow and respect you.”

Any flicker of fame from becoming a minor television star was, he says, blanked out by obsession with the day-to-day. That focus continues at Parma, where he oversees the third-youngest team in Europe’s top five leagues. We meet soon after a win at Pisa that pulls them well clear of the drop; three days later they are dragged back towards it by a home defeat to Lazio. Consistency will take time.

The quest for self-growth continues. Cuesta reads voraciously: he frequently dips into a translation of the Chinese text Tao Te Ching, one of whose central tenets is self-awareness. Sacred Hoops, by the former NBA coach Phil Jackson, is another that “I usually have around”. The days when the wallpaper on his phone was a picture of the Champions League trophy are long gone.

“Not any more, look!” he says, holding up a more nondescript background. “The only thing I have is the present. In this job you need to reframe ‘time’. For me, time right now means today is my everything.” The Maldives still feel a galaxy away.