Arsenal Players As You’ve Never Seen Them Before – A New Training Method?

You may have caught this on Soccer AM last week but for those who missed it, Arsenal first team players Alex Song, Wojciech Szczesny, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Bacary Sagna have taken part in Citroën’s latest campaign to promote the new DS5.

The Gunners quartet had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with four dancers from the English National Ballet, as football, ballet and motoring combined for this unique campaign. As you can see from the video above, the lads look like they enjoyed themselves!

The players were called in as part of an agreement between Arsenal and Citroën – the French car manufacturer being the clubs official vehicle supplier since 2008 – with the idea behind the campaign being “The Refined, Redefined”, and the Arsenal players learned the art of ballet to embody this concept.

I’m sure the lads got a fair bit of stick from the rest of the squad for doing this, but there could be worse ways to spend your day than with some gorgeous ballet dancers!

Szczesny looked like he knew what he was doing in the video, and that’s probably because he used to be a ballroom dancer when he was young. I bet he didn’t want the boys in the dressing room knowing about that! Golden banter material if ever there was some. Nice cameo from Arsenal legend Martin Keown as well, for those who missed him he was the guy in the suit playing the piano.

Bacary Sagna said after filming that he won’t be in a hurry to put on his ballet shoes again, and he’ll stick to throwing some shapes in the dressing room:

‘Thanks to Citroën for letting me tick that box of being a ballet dancer, it’s probably not something I’ll be repeating, I’m better at throwing some shapes in the dressing room!’ Sagna said in the official Citroën Press Release.

As well as performing their duties to promote the new DS5 car, hopefully the players learned a few things from the dancers about stretching, warming up and quick footwork. These girls are as hard working as they come, and they could certainly teach the boys a thing or two.

Perhaps we’ll see a more nimble-footed Alex Song on the pitch in the next few games?! Oxlade-Chamberlain already has all the moves, but Song could do with being a lighter on his feet at times. We’ve heard of clubs introducing yoga and pilates to help players, maybe Arsene should introduce ballet dancing in to the training sessions!

This is just the first in a series of videos involving the Arsenal players, so we’ll keep you updated when more are released.