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Petr Cech has always stood high up in the Fiver’s estimation. During the Last Days of Wenger it would be the amiable shot-stopper who invariably fronted up to the media after spineless defeats and demoralising capitulations, trailing acquiescently behind a relieved press officer before he could even retreat to the showers and crack open the Wash & Go. Speaking of shampoo, Joe Hart used to be railroaded into similar confessionals after England humiliations; maybe disarming honesty is just a goalkeeper-ly thing. In which case you take Cech at face value when he says he is not at all happy with the wags behind Bayer Leverkusen’s Social Media Disgrace output.
To recap, Cech had just endured a rather challenging start to Arsenal’s New Era, at times finding the ball – with which he had been instructed to weave pretty patterns from the back – something of a hot potato. The most GIF-able moment came when he almost skewed one such pass into the back of his own net and that was enough for the Bundesliga club’s online gurus to come up with something very hilarious indeed.
“We might know a guy,” they chirped, following that tweet with a video of Bernd Leno – who moved from Leverkusen to the Emirates in June – starting a silky back-to-front move, ending in a goal, while of course wearing Leverkusen colours. Leno, a decade Cech’s junior, contented himself with watching Cech toil from the bench on Sunday but it is reasonable to assume he is Arsenal’s No 1-in-waiting. All jolly good fun, then, until the tide of Twitter revelry came to the attention of Cech himself.
“[At Arsenal] we share important values which make us a big club not only on the football side,” he began, setting himself up nicely to punch downwards. “Fair competition, professionalism and sportsmanship are the biggest ones you teach young footballers and it’s sad to see when other clubs don’t share the same values.”
Lesson learned, not least by the cowering Leverkusen keyboard warrior. An “It-was-just-banter” rearguard effort was quickly launched by the German club but by now Cech’s back was well and truly up. He could be seen two hours later advising a spluttering respondent to “Google what professionalism really means”; a particularly arch response to that might be “not engaging with light internet trolling”.
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