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- The Arsenal manager has previously used bizarre methods to motivate his stars
- Mikel Arteta secretly hired a freestyler to go undercover with his Arsenal squad
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Arsenal star Oleksandr Zinchenko has revealed Mikel Arteta secretly hired a football freestyler to go undercover as a waiter and compete with his players before a match in another bizarre motivation attempt.
The Gunners boss isn’t afraid of practicing outside-the-box thinking when it comes to team-bonding exercises and again showed his unconventional approach by having the fake waiter prank his squad.
Arteta is on a mission to guide Arsenal to the Premier League title – having twice failed in successive years – and is evidently doing everything including the weird and wacky to achieve that goal.
Arsenal’s preparations were mocked earlier in the year when the Spaniard secretly hired a team of professional pickpockets to ransack his players of their wallets and valuables during a team meal.
On that previous occasion, at the end of the meal, Arteta asked players to empty their pockets. Several then realised they were missing valuable items. The exercise was supposedly done to educate his first-team stars on the importance of being alert at all times.
Mikel Arteta secretly hired a football freestyler to pose undercover as a waiter during an Arsenal team meal
The Gunners boss isn’t afraid to think outside the box when it comes to motivating his players
Arteta is on a mission to guide Arsenal to the Premier League title having twice failed in successive years
Now in a renewed motivation attempt, Zinchenko has revealed how he was challenged to take on one of Arteta’s coaching staff to a freestyle competition only to be shown up by a professional trickster posing in disguise.
‘We stayed at the same hotel before a match, and we knew all the waiters. But there was a new guy that day. So before we go to the stadium [Arteta] said: ‘OK guys, let me wake you up, because we need energy,’ Zinchenko told the Guardian.
‘Last time, Alex, we played staff against players and you beat [the set-piece coach] Nicolas [Jover]. Let’s do it the same, but freestyling.
‘Everyone was like: ‘What? For sure, Alex will beat him, blah blah blah’. Nico started to do something with the ball and then suddenly it looks like he got an injury. It was so obvious but weird.
‘Then they called the new waiter. We didn’t know he was a professional freestyler.
‘He destroyed me with his tricks and all of us were in deep shock. But then we were all laughing and we went to the game with good energy.’
The Ukrainian didn’t reveal what specific match it was that the unusual pre-game drill was deployed before, but Arteta’s approach has worked well so far this season with the Gunners third and just four points adrift of Liverpool.
Oleksandr Zinchenko revealed how he was ‘destroyed’ by the football freestyler in a competition
Other unconventional approaches deployed by the 42-year-old have also been well-documented with Arteta once blaring Liverpool’s iconic ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ anthem during a training session before a trip to Anfield.
Arsenal players were also subjected to a rallying team talk where Arteta pulled out a lightbulb and waved it around the dressing room to symbolise how he wanted his team to play with ‘energy’ and ‘electricity’.
The Gunners boss also previously made up a new word – ‘collaboretition’ – which is a quirky combination of the words collaboration and competition.
Arsenal fell to their first Premier League defeat of the season with a shock weekend loss at Bournemouth and could be further cast out of the title race if they lose to league leaders Liverpool on Sunday.
