‘Always moving forward’ was the slogan Arsenal used to celebrate their record 14th FA Cup win in August and it’s a sentiment that Francis Cagigao shares when he reflects on spending almost half of his life at the club he describes as a "fantastic institution".

For Cagigao, the dust has settled on his tenure which spanned over two decades, countless player recommendations and even more air miles clocked up around South America. The Spaniard still refers to the Gunners as ‘we’ and admits he stayed with the Gunners for so long because he felt "respected and valued" - principles that have long been associated with Arsenal, more evidently during the years where Arsene Wenger was at the helm.

“I was at the club for 24 years and there were a number of opportunities to go elsewhere,” Cagigao told football.london.

“Clubs in Spain, England and other countries - but the truth is that it was more about being respected and valued. It wasn’t simply about money.

“I had a good relationship at the club with the manager [Arsene Wenger] and [former] chief scout Steve Rowley, who was absolutely brilliant for the club for many years. At the time I didn’t see myself anywhere else.”

A former Barcelona and Arsenal youth player whose career was cut short due to injury, Cagigao is highly respected across the game and widely credited for identifying the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Santi Cazorla and Alexis Sanchez before they moved to north London. The list of players Cagigao has identified over the years is endless, and he revealed in a recent interview that Lionel Messi and Gerard Pique were among the players on his radar during their early years in the game.

He speaks candidly about his time at Arsenal and insists former head coach Unai Emery was "unlucky" to lose his job after taking the club to a European final and narrowly missing out on qualification for the Champions League.

“The club after Arsene went through a transitional period and I think all transitional periods are difficult.

You can look at other clubs to see that those transitional periods are never easy. We went from a traditional manager to a head coach. I do feel in that transition that Unai was unlucky.

“I think Unai is a very good coach. We got to the Europa League final and finished one point off Champions League qualification in the league. It’s a very fine margin which sometimes separates perceived success from success.

“I think the club’s gone through that transitional period and hopefully the club has seen the back of that.”

Arsenal dismantled their entire global scouting network over the summer while also announcing 55 redundancies within the club. Spearheaded by technical director Edu, the new strategy is expected to focus on a more agent-led approach with the Brazilian admitting he “wants to work with less people and StatDNA a lot more”.

StatDNA is the data and analytics company which Arsenal bought in 2014, and while Cagigao admits that the evolution of player identification tools have been useful, he believes that scouting players in the flesh is still a necessity.

“Tools like Wyscout and others like it are hugely important. You need to evolve with the times and not stand still, both with modern day technology and obviously data which we are now accustomed to. Data is in an integral part of modern society – it's not just football and not just scouting.

“Data analytics aid in the process of making a final decision as humanly objective as possible. The perfect combination is of live and video scouting via the experienced trained eye with a track record and people with knowledge of the game and player identification and development, plus data analysis and modern day technology.

“Once we do resume getting back to that normality we need to kick back into the situations we faced before. In my case I’m a very firm believer that within the recruitment procedure of an elite football club live scouting is an absolute necessity.

“Certainly I can’t think of one player who was signed in my time at the club who we didn’t scout via live scouting but that’s not to say that all the other processes and tools aren’t necessary because nowadays they are.”

Psychology is an integral part of player ID. The mental aspect of the game can become the difference between winning and losing, with club psychologists now the norm. When asked if there’s one player on Cagigao's recommendation list that he felt has been treated unfairly over the years, he doesn’t hesitate with his answer.

“Scouting, player identification and recruitment departments are there to strongly recommend or not recommend players.

“A player we strongly recommended and ended up signing who I possibly think was treated a little unfairly was probably Granit Xhaka.

“I certainly wasn’t in agreement with a lot of the press’s evaluations of his performances in a lot of games. I think he was a little bit unfairly treated.

“Yes, he made that mistake [angry reaction to the fans] but who doesn’t make mistakes? I think he came back from that fantastically well and his work ethic and commitment to the club can never be doubted.

Granit Xhaka during Arsenal. (Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Granit Xhaka during Arsenal. (Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

“Those [mental qualities] were attributes that we already saw in him when he was at Monchengladbach. We spent a lot of time analysing his performances there and it was very obvious that mental strength was very evident with him. He was already the captain of that side at 22 so you’re talking about a player with mental strength who has had to overcome some negativity to come back to his best level.”

Another player who was on the radar of Cagigao several years ago was Thomas Partey. The £45million deadline day signing from Atletico Madrid was spotted by Gunners scouts when he was playing for Almeria in 2014 and Cagigao believes his arrival at Arsenal will allow the Ghanaian midfielder to express himself in a way that he couldn’t under Diego Simeone.

“It’s in the public domain that he [Partey] is a player we’ve looked at for a very long time and a player we recommended very strongly in the past and recent past.

“He’ll bring qualities to the side that are possibly lacking in that position, he’ll certainly bring more cover and protection in areas where the team possibly needs it.

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“I would also say that he’s a player who has possibly a lot more to offer than what we’ve already seen of him.

“He had a little bit of a restricted role at his previous club and sometimes played with the handbrake on – to use one of Arsene’s expressions – and I think that he’s going to be a very, very good addition to what is already an immensely strong squad.”

What does the future hold for Cagigao? The 50-year-old has already received a number of offers from clubs around the world and is also qualified to become a technical director. He admits that he’ll think hard about his next move but there’s no doubt that his vast experience in player identification makes him one of the most in-demand footballing figures around right now.