Arsenal's new centre-back Per Mertesacker comes to the aid of his boyhood club in their hour of need
When Per Mertesacker was growing up he and his two brothers would travel to visit his aunt who lived in England.
The three were obsessed with football and their priority was making sure they each came home with a Premier League team’s shirt. Mertesacker came back to his home near Hanover with an Arsenal shirt and he supported them ever since.
Now the German international is returning to England to pull on an Arsenal shirt for real, coming to the aid of his adopted club in their time of need.
Since emerging onto the football scene in Germany in 2004, Mertesacker has spoken affectionately of Arsenal and now, with just a year left on his contract with Werder Bremen, the 26-year-old is about to make good on those childhood ambitions.
Mertesacker grew up in Pattensen, near Hanover, and attended a school in Hemmingen that specialised in sport (it has produced several other Bundesliga players), staying to complete his abitur, the equivalent of A-levels.
While he had come through local teams to secure a professional contract with Hanover 96 - where his father Stefan was one of his coaches - he was not considered a particular promising player and came close to quitting.
There was little to persuade him otherwise when he made his Hanover debut as a 19 year old against Cologne. Ralf Rangnick, the coach who took Schalke to the Champions League semi-finals last season, threw him into the starting XI at right back - not the natural position for a one-paced six-foot-sixer - and then hauled him off at half time.
An inauspicious start, but things started to change very swiftly. In the 2004-05 season Mertesacker established himself as a first-choice central defender and after just 20 games with Hanover was called up by Jurgen Klinsmann for a national team friendly in Tehran.
It was a remarkably swift elevation and he suddenly found himself signing autographs for his school friends. Mertesacker still lived with his parents and had to borrow his dad’s laptop to get his emails from Germany team director Oliver Bierhoff.
When Klinsmann gave him a DVD of footage analysing his performance, Mertesacker meekly offered that he did not own a DVD player.
This all contributes to his reputation in Germany as an anti-star. On leaving school he decided not to do military service, instead doing community service, working in an institution for the mentally ill.
His partner is the German international handball player Ulrike Stange, with whom he has a son, Paul. He has used his celebrity to set up the Mertesacker foundation which raises money for charity through selling football merchandise and annual celebrity matches.
Mertesacker, rake thin with blond hair, cut a distinctive figure at the 2006 World Cup, where he played every minute of every game as Klinsmann’s team reached the semi-finals on home soil. His development had earned him a move to Werder Bremen that summer, for the modest fee of 5million euros.
As a player he is distinguished by tactical intelligence. His height means he is good in the air but really it is his positioning that is his strongest suit, masking as it does a relative lack of pace.
What is perhaps most remarkable about Mertesacker - and something that will come to the relief of Arsene Wenger and his suspension-ravaged squad - is his clean disciplinary record. In 221 Bundesliga games he has received only nine yellow cards and two reds. He has said in interviews that he was never even booked as a youth team player.
He is not perhaps the vocal on-pitch leader Arsenal fans have been craving and his form has declined in the last two years as Werder Bremen have struggled (they finished 13th last season).
This is a crucial move for him as much as Arsenal. But you do not win 75 caps for Germany at only 26 if you are not a seriously talented defender.
Originally Posted by cheesy bites
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