EXCLUSIVE: Cesc Fabregas - Arsenal's genius reveals why he will not sign for Barcelona, the fight to overcome his demons - and the slur that haunts him



Paula is the same age as Cesc Fabregas when he joined Arsenal. But Paula was not blessed with the young Spaniard’s ability to play football and she was not blessed with his engine either.



Paula was born with cystic fibrosis and back in March the 16-year-old went into Great Ormond Street Hospital for what thankfully proved a successful double lung transplant. ‘I am fitter and healthier than ever,’ she declares.



Meeting her was an experience Fabregas sums up in a single word. ‘Humbling,’ he says. ‘I have never seen anything like it before. You meet these kids, with the kind of problems they have, and they are so mentally strong. For all their problems they still manage to be so happy, so positive. It is just incredible.’



Fabregas is a humble guy. He might have confronted Mark Hughes and condemned him for the way he encouraged his then Blackburn team to play football. But these things happen in the heat of battle, and it is only when you get the opportunity to sit down and listen to the Arsenal captain that you realise there is another side to this all-action midfielder. That beneath the ultra confident facade is a footballer so remarkably modest he almost seems racked with self-doubt.



He does not just see Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshere as ‘the future of Arsenal’ but as players technically superior to himself and a serious threat to his place. And when he reflects on his time alongside Xavi and Andres Iniesta in that wonderful Spain team, he regards himself as the student under the guidance of two midfield masters. ‘I have learned so much from them,’ he says.



Being Arsenal captain? It is for others to decide if he is well-suited to the job. That recent performance against Tottenham? After every game he focuses only on the mistakes.

Double act: Fabregas celebrateshis mesmeric strike against Spurs with team-mate Robin van Persie

And what of the future? What of all the talk about moving to Barcelona? Never will it happen, he insists, because that would mean he had failed Arsenal and, more importantly, failed Arsene Wenger.



‘I am so happy here,’ he says. ‘And I want to continue to be part of what is happening here. Definitely. If not I would have left when I had the opportunity, three years ago, two years ago or last year. I believe in this team and I feel we can achieve things. The boss believes in us more than anyone, and I feel I am part of it. He makes me see that as well. And I don’t want to fail here.’



He likens his situation to Steven Gerrard and the decision Liverpool’s captain made when he was offered the opportunity to move to Chelsea.



‘I think you have to be grateful to those who have helped you,’ he says after another arduous training session at London Colney on Friday afternoon. ‘When Steven Gerrard had the opportunity to go somewhere else he chose to stay with the club of his life, and I don’t think he will ever regret that. He made a decision to stay and he has to believe that it was the right one.



‘And he’s still young, young enough to achieve so much more. For me he is one of the best midfielders in the world. He looks like such a nice guy but he has this side to his game that comes through in important moments, when he makes an impact. Frank Lampard is a great player too, but for me I see something very special in Steven Gerrard.’

Something special: Gerrard gets the better of Lampard

He sees something special in Wenger and the Arsenal manager’s philosophy. ‘It is something he has transmitted since I arrived,’ he says.



‘This desire always to go forward. Not to pass the ball back. If you have the ball and you pass back when you could have gone forward, he hates that. He wants to play football a certain way, and if you have to lose you lose like that. Creating chances, playing good stuff.



‘It wasn’t that difficult for me to adapt to the Arsenal way, because of the education I had in the academy at Barcelona. But I love the Arsenal way. I think it is what makes us a big club. I think people feel proud to say they have spent £40 to come and watch us play.’



The passion in the stands is shared by the passion on the pitch. The love for the ball. The desire to play the beautiful game.



Nobody could love the ball more than Fabregas. ‘Since I was little I always want the ball,’ he says. ‘If I lose it I want it back. I have a mentality that is like a kid at school. When it’s break time and it’s 11 v 11 in a small space and you just run and run. Sometimes I feel I still haven’t learned and progressed from that. I watch games back and I’m just running for nothing. I sit there thinking “what are you doing?!” It is something I also see in Wayne Rooney. He is the same, always chasing everything.



‘I want the ball all the time, when I have to learn to be more patient. I get too excited, too nervous. I finish some games absolutely dead and my team-mates tell me to calm down.



‘But then football is my life. My girlfriend says 95 per cent. I care for my family, for my girlfriend. But when I am at home I watch football, and when I play PlayStation I play football. Everything is related to football.’

On the brain: For Fabregas, everything is related to football

Even after playing football, he thinks only about the game and only, rather curiously, about the mistakes he has made. ‘I can’t sleep, because the adrenaline is pumping.



‘My mum has always said I am too hard on myself. But I have always been like that and it has always helped me. After matches I focus only on what I did wrong. Never what I did well. After the Tottenham game I felt like that. Everyone sees the goal I scored and the fact that we won 3-0. But I only remember the mistakes.’



Fabregas knows it might not be the way the majority of players reflect on a performance but he has no interest in being normal anyway. ‘I don’t feel like a normal 22-year-old,’ he says. ‘This is my seventh season at the club and my sixth season in the first team. In the case of most 22-year-olds, a bad game would be put down to their age. But if I have a bad game, or Arsenal lose, I know I am the first to blame. But I like that. I like the responsibility and the pressure. I don’t want to be your average 22-year-old.



‘I was only 21 when I was asked to captain this club. I had my doubts about whether I could do it at the time. But now I feel very comfortable being captain. It’s not even something I think about.’



And yet he is a deep thinker. A young man with ideas and opinions and an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Playing with Spain, he says, continues to form part of his education, particularly where Xavi and Iniesta are concerned.



‘The system has changed and that has allowed me to play more regularly with them,’ he says. ‘When we played before, under Luis Aragones, we only had two in midfield but now we play 4-3-3 there is room for me in the team. Training and playing with Xavi and Iniesta is just amazing. I have never seen anything like them before. They are incredible. Their first touch, their awareness. They are top, top class. I have, in the four years I have been involved in the national team, learned so much from them.’

Always learning: Fabregas has heeded much from his international colleagues

The things he learns he then tries to transfer back to Arsenal. The ability not just to win games with flair and finesse but with a competitive, combative edge. ‘The objective at Arsenal is to become a team that is going to win trophies, but we don’t want to think about what is happening two years from now,’ he says. ‘We are looking to achieve things now.



‘We meet Chelsea this weekend and it is going to be very difficult to maintain the level they are at for a whole season. Their players are all 28, 29, 30, at their peak. In two or three years, they might start to get too old but right now they are physically at their best. At the age when they say you are supposed to be in the best form of your career. They have experience and it will be really tough to maintain that level.



‘But I believe that if we don’t have injuries, and we are strong mentally, we can compete with them. We need to learn how to finish games off, and we need to be a little stronger. Compared to other Arsenal teams, like The Invincibles, we maybe lack some physical power. Back then they had Vieira, Gilberto, Ray Parlour. Now we maybe have more technical players but we are developing. Look at Abou Diaby and Alex Song. They are becoming a powerful partnership who can provide us with a lot of protection in the middle.’



Arsenal’s squad does have talent in abundance, in the more junior ranks as well as the senior. ‘Some of the younger boys are very good players,’ says Fabregas.



‘Ramsey, Wilshere, Fran Merida. They are at the level of everyone. Perhaps even better than me. They are top class. In training, phew, they are so good.



‘Aaron has really developed. Physically he is bigger and more powerful, as you could see when we played Liverpool in the Carling Cup. If I go to sleep I will wake up and find him in my place. No, it is true. Wilshere will be a top player, too, and when he gets a bit older they will move him into the middle. They just need a run of games to gain confidence and they will be a big part of Arsenal’s future. A future I hope to be part of.’



The future: Fabregas rates Wilshere and Ramsey highly - so much so, he worries about his first-team place



He has to be part of the future because at Arsenal there is no greater competitor and nobody more like the man in charge. In many ways, Fabregas is an extension of Wenger. A player who possesses both his passion and his fire.



Fabregas does not flinch when some of the more controversial. moments of his career are raised.



That verbal tirade at Hughes, when he dared question how a former player of Barcelona could advocate, in his opinion, such a negative brand of football? ‘Only when I play do you see a more fiery side to me,’ he says. ‘Off the pitch I am nothing like that. I don’t get angry.



‘But with Mark Hughes... it’s difficult to regret things I have said. Maybe I should have kept it to myself but at the time I said what I felt. I said sorry to him for saying it but it was what I was thinking at the moment. I have to admit that, at the time, I didn’t know much about him. I knew Mark Hughes, the name, and I knew he had played for Barcelona and Manchester United. But I didn’t realise just how good a player he had been. I am very young, remember.’



While he just flat denies throwing a pizza at Sir Alex Ferguson, he visibly bristles at the accusation he spat at Hull City manager Brian Horton last season. The Football Association cleared him of any wrongdoing, but he remains deeply offended by what he considers the ‘shameful’ actions of his accusers.



‘I think it was the strangest thing that has happened to me in football,’ he says. ‘To create such a fuss, when I had done nothing, was shameful. It’s one of the things I will always put away from my football career. I just don’t know how people can be like that.



‘I wasn’t worried as far as the FA were concerned because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.



‘I wasn’t playing that night, remember. I went onto the pitch to congratulate the players but I was very relaxed.’



And it would seem there are two very different sides to this surprisingly humble young man.

