Coaching has rekindled my love for football – Jack Wilshere

The 31-year-old is still getting to grips with the admin required in his role but on the training pitch and on matchdays, he has already been bitten by the managerial bug.

Arsenal’s Under-18s face Manchester City in the Youth Cup semi-final at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night – a competition Wilshere won himself in 2009 as he rose through the ranks in north London.

His career never reached the heights it seemed destined for as Arsene Wenger made him, at the time, the youngest Premier League debutant in Arsenal’s history.

Injuries were largely the cause, forcing Wilshere out of the game at the age of 30, a final stint with Danish side AGF marking the end of his playing days.

“I love it, honestly,” he said of his first year in coaching.

“It’s given me back the real deep love for football and I didn’t know I’d lost it to be honest. I came back here last year and I was coaching a bit, training a bit.

“Then I had a decision to make. Do I want to go to Denmark? I loved it, I loved the country, the people, but I didn’t love it as much.

“When I came back here, and it might be because it’s Arsenal, I feel like people here genuinely care about me, which is nice.

“I love it. On the grass, trying to beat teams, trying to work out a way to play against teams, trying to develop an individual.

“Obviously, it was a different world I was entering. The corporate world, all the emails – but now I’m in a place where I’ve worked that out, I’ve structured my day better. The coaching stuff I absolutely love.”

The journey into coaching began when his then-captain – and now manager of the Arsenal Academy – Per Mertesacker convinced Wilshere to join him on a course to do his UEFA B-licence at a time when first-team opportunities were at a minimum.

“I only did it because Per had been offered the academy manager job but he needed his B and then A (licence) to get it,” he said.

“I was in the bomb squad, I called it, I had come back from (a loan to) Bournemouth, broke my leg, been told I could leave and had a year left on my contract.”

It was during the days of training with Arsenal without a club that the prospect of a coaching career finally took hold: “It was when I started doing my A Licence and came back here that inspired me,” he revealed.

“The want has changed. I didn’t want to do it before, now I want to do it and want to get better. Things change day to day, especially at this level.”

The structure in place at Arsenal means Wilshere aims to model his team’s playing style on that of the first-team, which Mikel Arteta had led to an eight-point lead at the top of the Premier League table.

“I love the way that he sees football,” he said of former team-mate Arteta.