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Mikel Arteta’s Son Gabriel Gets His First Arsenal Photocall But Fans Can’t Look Past His Odd Eyes

Arsenal, Gabriel Arteta, Mikel Arteta

Gabriel Arteta, the eldest son of Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, found himself trending on social media after his official Arsenal Academy profile photo went up ahead of the 2026/27 season.

The picture, posted as part of the club’s official academy photocall on Arsenal’s website, shows Gabriel in his kit for his player profile page, and it didn’t take long for fans to notice something striking about his appearance: he has heterochromia, a rare genetic trait that causes a person to have two different-colored eyes.

The discovery quickly spread across social media, with fans picking apart the profile photo and pointing out the unusual detail almost as soon as it went live.

Heterochromia iridis, the medical term for the condition, happens when there are different levels of melanin, or pigmentation, in each iris.

It’s genuinely rare, affecting somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2% of the global population, and in the vast majority of congenital cases like this, it’s completely harmless, with no effect on a person’s vision or general health. It simply results in one eye appearing a different color from the other.

One fan reaction online took the stat a step further, pointing out that the odds of being a professional footballer with heterochromia sit somewhere between roughly 0.00000155% and 0.00000310%, a number small enough to make Gabriel’s case genuinely rare even within football itself, with the tweet calling him “a rare gem.”

A graphic circulating alongside the story broke the trait down further, comparing close-up shots of each of Gabriel’s eyes against his parents.

One eye appears to closely match his mother Lorena Bernal’s lighter, blue-toned eye color, while the other lines up with Mikel Arteta’s own darker, brown eyes, suggesting Gabriel simply inherited one eye color from each parent rather than there being anything more unusual going on beneath the surface.

Reaction to the photo has been almost entirely warm. Plenty of fans admitted they hadn’t heard the term “heterochromia” before seeing Gabriel’s profile picture, with one post joking that “the gaffer’s first born” fit right into “Facecard FC,” while adding that the eyes looked genuinely cool and wishing him well carrying them with pride. Others kept it simple, with more than one fan online summing up their reaction as just finding the whole thing “so cool.”

Away from the online reaction to his eyes, Gabriel’s actual football progress has been quietly building for a while. The 17-year-old winger and midfielder has been coming through Arsenal’s Hale End academy, and this past summer he officially signed a scholarship agreement with the club ahead of the new season.

He’s already made appearances for Arsenal’s U17 and U18 sides, featured at the Shanghai Future Star Cup, and has recently trained with the club’s U21 squad, a clear sign the club see him progressing at a solid pace. He remains eligible to sign his first professional contract if his development keeps trending in the right direction.

For now, though, it’s the photo itself doing most of the talking. A routine academy profile picture turned into a genuine talking point, with fans as curious about Gabriel’s rare eye color as they are about whether the manager’s son can make it all the way through the pathway his father once walked as a player himself.

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