Interesting article about our celebrations by Sam Dean in the Telegraph:
Mind games helping to fire Arteta’s team spirit
SAM DEAN
Letting it go: Mikel Arteta and technical coach Nicolas Jover show their emotion after Arsenal score their opener during the victory over Liverpool on Sunday
Letting it go: Mikel Arteta and technical coach Nicolas Jover show their emotion after Arsenal score their opener during the victory over Liverpool on Sunday
During Pep Guardiola’s first season as Barcelona manager, at a time when he was still trying to establish himself as a coach, he always kept a close eye on his substitutes. Standing on the touchline, he would watch the action on the pitch, while remaining aware of how those behind him, the players sitting on the bench, were acting.
The story goes that, in a crucial match that season, Barcelona missed a huge chance to score. As revealed in Another Way of Winning, a biography of the Manchester City manager, Guardiola spun on his heels to see how his substitutes had reacted.
Some of them, he saw, had jumped to their feet in expectation of a goal. They were ready to celebrate. A few others, though, had not moved or reacted at all. Guardiola took a mental note and, the next summer, made a decisive move. Barcelona sold all of those who had stayed in their seats.
That might sound extreme, but the message is clear: in the mind of coaches such as Guardiola, you cannot put a price on togetherness, unity and emotional investment. You are either all in, or you get out. There can be no in-between.
Only Guardiola and Mikel Arteta can say whether they discussed this episode during their three years together at City, but Arteta is obsessive about these ideas of chemistry and togetherness. So much so, he has had the word “unity” emblazoned on a banner which is often taken to Arsenal’s away games and fixed to the dressing-room wall.
All of this matters because of the debate around celebrations, and Arsenal’s in particular. Not for the first time in recent seasons, Arteta and his players were accused of over-celebrating after their victory over Liverpool on Sunday.
But the point is not what the outside world thinks of Arsenal’s celebrations; it is what those celebrations do to the players, the coaches and the fans associated with the club. It is about the message they send and the impact they have, both on the team’s performance and on the atmospheric power of the Emirates Stadium.
Arteta knows the emotions of the players filters into the stands, and vice versa, and he seeks to weaponise it
In short, celebrations matter. Arteta is an avid reader, often studying sport and psychology, and it would come as a major surprise if he were not aware of the increasingly compelling evidence that shows the significant performance benefits of hearty celebrations.
Guardiola was following his instincts when he examined his substitutes all those years ago, but in this case those instincts were supported by science. In 2008, the year Guardiola took over at Barcelona, a study by Bornstein and Goldschmidt showed that teams who celebrated their goals collectively, with “team-oriented” celebrations, finished higher in league tables than those who did not.
Similarly, in penalty shoot-outs, research shows that celebrating a goal enthusiastically has a positive effect on team-mates and makes your side more likely to win. That study, by Moll, Jordet and Pepping, also showed that these celebrations had a negative effect on opponents.
Recent events in the Premier League would suggest that, equally, the wrong sort of celebration can backfire. If celebrations are becoming the latest battleground, then Brentford’s Neal Maupay made a significant tactical misstep last month. His darts celebration, mocking James Maddison, only fired up Tottenham.
The impact of celebrations comes down to “emotional contagion” – the transference of emotions from individuals onto team-mates, opponents and seemingly, in the example of Arsenal on Sunday, the crowd. Long after the final whistle, supporters were dancing in the stands to Abba’s Voulez-Vous, which has been repackaged as a song for Bukayo Saka. It was a party to which everyone in red was invited.
Arteta knows that the emotions of the players filter into the stands, and vice versa, and he seeks to weaponise it. Before the meeting with Liverpool, he played an integral role in the production of a stirring pre-match video.
Leading up to the match, Arsenal had trained at the Emirates. It was during that session that many of the clips for the video were filmed. The aim was to hype up the crowd, to build that connection and togetherness. If Arsenal were to score, or even go close to scoring, Arteta – like Guardiola all those years ago – wanted everyone on their feet.
The Arsenal manager is far from alone in thinking along these lines. Just look at Jurgen Klopp’s fist-pumps to the Kop after meaningful victories. Emotion, the science shows, is contagious.
Football is a tactical and physical game. It is also an emotional one. If celebrating like Arsenal did on Sunday can make even a small difference – and the science suggests it can – then Arteta, and any other football manager, will consider it worth doing. Whether the outside world likes it or not.