Arsenal fans, how well do you know your players, Part I

Everybody knows that Lukas Podolski has taken a tour around London in order to try and bond with the city and has been taking snapshots of his travels around the British capital; Marouane Chamakh loves dancing and is often spied in bars doing just that (but not hitting the bottle) and Andrei Arshavin enjoys taking his family to McDonalds.

Did you know: Wenger loved missing mass, for football of course.

But here’s a few things you probably didn’t know about the Gunners:

Goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski is an avid fan of Michael Jackson and used to follow him quite diligently when he was young. He loved the PlayStation as a boy, but didn’t have a lot of time for it as he used to go straight from school to footy training. What he misses most about his childhood, however is the he freedom he had to do whatever he wanted to when he was little.

“You could do basically whatever you want to do. There weren’t that many responsibilities. [Now] I have different responsibilities. I can’t do a lot of things which I could do when I was a kid.”

- Lukasz Fabianski, Goalkeeper, Arsenal and Poland

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain loved watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a child. Like Fabianski, his favourite toy was a piece of video gaming equipment, which in this case was the Game Boy Color on which he loved playing Pokemon.

One of his favourite past times as a kid was to go down to the park and set up goalposts and play seven-a-side football, kicking off in the afternoon until the sun finally set.

He loves his mum’s spaghetti Bolognese but would love to go out and eat just for a change, and misses the excitement Christmas brought to him as a youngster.

French defender Sebastien Squillaci loved listening to Daft Punk when he was younger because he was a fan of ‘ouse musique’ (house music) which he loved dancing to. Growing up, his favourite TV show was the Fresh Prince of Bel Air (I agree!).

At school, the number 18 was very fond of mathematics. But the thing he misses most about being young is:

“You don’t have worry, you just have fun and that’s why sometimes I miss being young”

- Sebastien Squillaci, defender, Arsenal and France

Wojciech Szczesny fell in love with the music of Carlos Santana when he went to one of his concerts as a child and has loved listening to his songs ever since.

His mum was very fond of him as a child, cleaning up after him wherever he went, as a result of which his room was quite messy at times. Looking back at his childhood, he also recalls his fondness for candy. Growing up in Poland, Szczesny recalls an old superstition wherein killing a spider would result in rain the next day.

Squillaci loved math, Szczesny hated it.

The Pegasus game console – a precursor to the PlayStation – was his favourite toy, and he used to spend many hours on it playing games with his brother. According to him, it was something everybody at school had.

One common thread between all these Arsenal players is the lack of responsibility they loved when they were younger. Szczesny echoes the same sentiment.

While Chamberlain loved watching the Ninja Turtles, his Swiss team mate Johan Djourou found Family Matters hilarious. He is a self-confessed Fugees fans and has been following them since he was a child. It was the tape – as he puts it – that was going on and on and on in the car.

Like his team mates, the Switzerland international misses the carefree life he had as a youngster.

And Arsene Wenger, he grew up in a small town just outside Strasbourg in France where religion was held in high regard. Because he and his friends played football for a youth club, however, they were allowed to miss evening vespers, crossing themselves as they crossed the church on their bicycles en route to training.

(Information courtesy Arsenal.com and Save the Children Foundation).