It turns out that Wojciech Szczesny talking about his former Arsenal teammates is every bit as entertaining as you might expect.
In an interview with Polish football journalists Łukasz Wiśniowski and Kuba Polkowski on their YouTube channel ‘Foot Truck’, the Juve keeper shared a few tasty morsels about his time as a Gunner covering everything from Rob van Persie’s arrogance to Santi Cazorla’s tendency to pile on the pounds.
Reddit user ‘hochmvn’ has translated the most interesting snippets and shared them on the Gunners Reddit channel. Thanks to him!
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Tomas Rosicky
You watch ‘Little Mozart’ play with great pleasure. His movement on the pitch was impressive, full of class and grace. I still believe he must be the richest footballer I know. He never spent any money. The whole time I was at Arsenal he had the same car, a 2005/6 Mercedes, and he only wore clothes from his sponsor. The only thing he didn’t spare on was his guitar.
Aaron Ramsey
He never considered football as a tactical game. He is the guy who runs for the whole 90 minutes. He runs more than any player I’ve played with, 13 kilometres per game with no problem. In my opinion, he’ll be a great addition to Juventus.
Samir Nasri
He always thought he was some kind of gangster. Everyone has this guy at school, who had strong and big friends and it made him think he’s cool.
Alexandr Hleb
He could have achieved more in football. He still made a great career but he liked to drink.
Thierry Henry
The best player in Arsenal’s history. The best player in Premier League history. He was very demanding, especially on the youngsters. The guys always said they were afraid of him in training. When you failed a pass, he got pissed and let you know he’s not happy with you very vocally. Great guy.
Jack Wilshere
My best friend, alongside [Grzegorz] Krychowiak. At my wedding he got so drunk, we were looking for him everywhere for two hours and found him sleeping in bushes. He had one injury that he never really fixed and it’s caused the next and the next. He’s one of the greatest talents, I ever met. Because of injuries he now plays in West Ham rather than a big European club.
Robin van Persie
You have to admit, he left for Manchester United and the following year won a title, however, after that he got benched, moved to Turkey and his big career ended. He could have made other decisions and achieved lots more at Arsenal. He’s extremely arrogant – sometimes.
Nicklas Bendtner
One of the most intelligent guys I played with. You see Nick, well-organised, neat, in-form and it seems everything is going great for him. The next day you open a newspaper and read – “Drunk Bendtner driving wrong way” and you are like, what the fuck? I don’t know, he’s a guy with two personalities. The most confident guy I played with.
Gervinho
Who thought he would be in the top 40 I played with?! Add one more 0.
Olivier Giroud
The most handsome player I played with, and he knows it. He loves himself, even more than [Grzegorz] Krychowiak. You know, little beard comb, oils for chest. Great guy and a very underrated player.
Bacary Sagna
In my opinion, Bac, at his peak was the best right-back in the Premier League. When the game wasn’t going well for us, I’d just pass long balls to him on the halfway line. We used to train for this and 98 times out of 100 he’d win the ball.
Hector Bellerin
Heccy still has lots to improve in defence. Now that he’s a wingback, he’s giving more offensively. His style is a little weird, but whose isn’t. He got that from his mum.
Mesut Ozil
Seven times he’s brilliant, two times he’s horrible. He’s not lazy as people say. Great guy. He can’t stabilise his form in the Premier League and I really can’t tell why. He has unbelievable vision on the pitch. You watch a match on TV and you’re like, “how has he seen that? I haven’t and I’ve got the whole screen on TV.”
Lukas Podolski
I remember, and I’m not lying to you now, that in training, when Poldi got the ball inside the box, 10/11 metres out, I didn’t want to save it. I just covered my head. I swear, I just protected the head. He’s a really funny guy and yet for all that a really normal person.
Andrey Arshavin
Hilarious guy, he has the funniest laugh ever. The season he joined us, we played lots of small games in training and we were like, “wow, we are going to win the league”. We didn’t.
Santi Cazorla
We were at a training camp in Cologne, Germany when Santi joined us. In the first training session, we played small games. After training, the guys gave Arsene a round of applause for signing Cazorla. Slow, small, but one of the best I’ve played with. He has an unbelievable mind and technique. I can’t tell what was his best asset, but you played with him and were like, “Oh my God, he’s so good.” Lovable, friendly, always smiling. I’m not wanting to insult him but he did have a tendency to gain weight.
For those of you who can speak Polish, the full video is below…
Brilliant.
His assessment of Arshavin is my favourite. ?
Who would have thought Ramsey was and is tactically inept ??
Arshavin! 4 goals against Liverpool have to be his best highlight!
Would you guys rather have Szczesny or Leno in net right now? I think I’d just lean towards Leno because he is so good with the ball on his feet.
LMFAO
Love the comment about Bac, I always wondered if they practised that
I agree with him that, at his peak, Sagna was the best right back in the league.
He was an outstanding defender.
Absolutely. To me, no one was even close.
Wasn’t he voted on the PFA team of the year a couple of times?
It’s funny – I can see that outball in my head time and time again now he mentions it. He had a funny old leap Baccy, but he won a lot of them as Shez says.
Funny guy…
That was funny as h###l . I still love Scsz happy things are going well for him. Proper Arsenal man and a stand up comedian.
Hotel?
Trivago
Giroud loved a beard comb and chest oils
Wouldn’t want it any other way
Such an underrated player when at Arsenal.
Same people giving the likes of Granit and Iwobi stick.
Lucky oils.
Never should have left.
Blame Wenger for that. I definitely remember thinking why the hell AW let him go and kept Ospina.
My opinion he was stagnating at arsenal because of bad gk coaching, and not only him. Fabiansky as well, and look at them now. Wondering what height can chez achieve if there were good gk coaching set up.
Wenger sold him to juve, also in my opinion, was because he saw how chez was stagnating and getting more and more rebellious. But l guess arsene took the wrong decision by selling him instead of revamping the coaching setups, especially gk coaching.
Because he couldn’t resist a puff of B&H in the shower. Great goalkeeper, Wojciech
Though his replacements weren’t any better, personally never got why everyone thinks he was that amazing. Maybe I just have never forgiven him for his Bayern red card and several other mad moments… but I’m much happier with Leno.
Great character though.
*braces for downvotes*
i dont know why but i somehow have a weird feeling that Szcz might be back someday.. it wouldnt shock me
Part of the blame goes to us fans. Seen him labelled as not good or “we need an experienced keeper” narrative. Same with the so called flapphandski.. They were good and probably our impatience and vitriolic attitude prevented them from getting better with us.. barring Torreira, we still see green grass on other sides..
Let’s face, it few top keepers at ‘top’ clubs had to face as much pressure as those two. We had some good defenders at the club but all of them so aggressive and the team as a whole so offensively minded that it was like herding cats for our keepers at the time.
Agree though- Leno in the second half of this season is as good as we’ve had since Lehmann bar Cech’s first 6 months.
“like herding cats” is the best simile I’ve heard in a very long time. Please tell me you came up with it… If so, you are a genius.
Its been around for years, but not so often heard.
Brilliant
Legend! Glad he’s doing well. I feel we have someone special in Leno so all worked out!
Arshavin did love Christmas pudding, Marzipan, pasties, pies and fast-food drive-through.
Always felt he lost pace after 27yrs and we needed to play him from the middle.
Gotta love szczesny!
And look at you now! Being in a top team playing with the best. Happy that worked out for you.
Did Hleb really like to drink a little too much?? That’s crazy that Szez revealed that, if true.
He did always seem to run out of steam around the 65min mark so wouldn’t surprise me
If I were Helen I wouldn’t like hearing that, makes you wonder who you can trust. But it’s one of those things that has been shared about many footballers in the past.
Bloody Helen
The face that launched a thousand, shotless dribbles.
Sounds like Rosicky is a very smart man
Or he was being heavily extorted by Nasri and his mob
Ohhhhhh santi cazorla!!!
The Van Persie assessment was brilliant… Even my dogs knew he was arrogant…wasted career
Ahahahahah ? ? ? ? now that is funny ahahahah ? ? ?
His assessment of Gervinho. Szczesny, but why? ???
Very hilarious assessment lol. Still laughing..
Bradford City away League cup
Gervinho scored two against him lately. Italian league banter, Gervinho’s outstanding abiity to dribble is evident.
Yes, he’s so outstanding he often dribbled himself while playing for us
I remember Gervinho playing brilliantly for Ivory Coast after he left Arsenal and thinking “oh, that’s what they saw in him.”
My favorite one. Best line I ever read about Gervinho was “…, a player whose idea of a good first touch is to keep the ball in the stadium.”
This makes me wish we’d kept him even more.
Ah poldi… ***sighs***
(This whole interview is so so good btw)
The person probably best to hang out with.
We never really found out how to best deploy him and he was under utilised considering we had an allergy to shooting and we had in him one of the best in the business. The irony. Go figure.
From these analyses, take a Santi, an Oz, an Arsh and a Ros and we’re building the Harlem Globetrotters squad! Lol. Great guy, Szczes!
The one about Lord Bendtner and Ozil got me laughing ???
Finally a litte bit of peek hole in understanding ozil’s performance at arsenal. Though not saying much, but you have wee bit of inside perception,.instead of mere conjuctures.
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Szczesny is an Arsenal legend, and I’d take him back in a heartbeat.
Has a contract at Juventus until 2021, at which point he’ll be 31, I hope we bring him home.
Comments on Nasri+ Van Persie are class, and it sounds like Szesney took their departures to rivals as personally as us fans.
Comments on Gervinho are brutal
I love the honesty in his comments… Clearly like the rest of us pissed off with RVP for leaving haha.
Hilarious, I love it!
Wish he never left us, but very glad he’s now the nr. 1 in one of the biggest teams there is.
To me, he’s among the top 5 goalkeepers in the world at the moment. Maybe even top 3.
So apt. Especially his remarks on Arshavin.. I remember seeing the way he played in his first few games after we signed him in January. The whole world was going gaga over C Ronaldo and I remember thinking ‘He’s gonna make Ronaldo look like nothing next season’. As Szczesny said, he didn’t. But he was special. Love Wenger but he failed to get the best out of Arshavin.
It pained me to see him playing as target man / false nine back then. I guess it all started to go downhill from there.
Still remember the moment when arshavin went ultimate mode with 4 goal against liverpool.. didnt even win the match sadly..
why did we ever sell him.. 🙁
This is too funny ?
I wonder if technology will ever improve to the point where we can simulate games with all of these former players and be able to watch them in action? Players like Santi, Hleb, Rosicky, Arshavin, even Nasri at their peaks together would be joyful to watch.
Great interview, always loved Szczesny, honesty and humour are the best traits a person can have and too many footballers lack them.
LMFAO. Did he just say Hector got that from his mom? This guy doesn’t give a poop about convention.
haha no mate! i think he didn’t mean it like that. heccy once said in an interview that he learned sewing from his mother, so think he meant fashionNstuff in general.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-6142777/Bellerin-shows-sewing-skills-designs-pair-silk-trousers-help-mum.html
What he meant was he got atracted to fashion because of his mother.
Love how he took a dig at West Ham.
Now release the autobiography
I think the dig at West Ham might have been banter directed at his friend Fabianski–I’m sure Polish fans would have thought of that.
Never thought i could love Tomas even more! Never ever forget his run and face expression after his NLD goal! So much nostalgia in these lines, feels like all these players left like a decade ago….oh wait…
Lazy journalists will have a few of these anecodotes in the tabloids tomorrow morning.
They won’t be headlined in the lighthearted manner Wojciech intended them it to be.
You know the guy is a gooner.
I love Szczesny. He’s an all out Sooner. Waiting for his Instagram video when we end up above SP*rs at the end of the season.
‘He’s an all out Sooner’
Sounds like something my boss would say while gossiping about me: “Lobster? He never gets shit done, it’s always coming “soon”. He’s an all out sooner I tell you.”
Lol Sooner Sooner same thing
sooner GOONER!
It does seem that Nasri was just as much of a shit as people thought.
I really do like Szczesny…I loved it when Juve beat the spuds and he did chin up to the spud fans ?
He’ll always be a gooner
This is f*ing genius.
Cesc not even mentioned.. Him and RVP could’ve been legends
Wow!!!
Wow! Loved reading this. I think if van persie stayed that season, we would have won the league cos of the addition of Santi. When Arshavin was signed, I also thought we were going to win the league. In many seasons under Wenger, we were just one signing away from winning but sad we couldn’t. Very hilarious and relaxing post. Totally enjoyed it.
Really Hilarious… Ramsey 13 Kms that made my day, always wondered if I was the only one who noticed it…running around he should try mini marathon when he retires from soccer…
Wenger blew it in letting this kid go! He did great at Roma when in loan and we should have brought him back after that instead of letting him go to Juve, where he is their #1 and doing great! What a shame.
What a lark.
Didn’t mention Rosiky spending on whores. Maybe he was saving his money for premium company.
Bendtner has double personality.
RVP could have retired a legend (even if he did not win anything). What a shame.
Santi amongst the best signings Wenger made. Two footed, impossible to get the ball off in midfield. An inspired transformation from the wings.
As was Henry.
Szsc a Gooner. Always.
Should still be at the club. Obviously still loves the club and hes ahead of leno.
Lol @ that takedown of Nasri.
Woj and Arshavin were the most bluntly honest players – they just tell you straight up. I remember Arshavin when once asked if we could win the league he simply said “No” lol…at least he was honest
I can’t be the only one thinking Blogs is just messing with us, as he always does. Love this!
I love this man as much as he hates Spuds. Hope he and Rambo win the Champions League together.
….Unless we are in it.
Future pundit!!! He has opinion on everyone and in a hilarious way.