Petr Cech has become embroiled in an online spat with Bayer Leverkusen after the Bundesliga club’s Twitter account mocked his performance for Arsenal in Sunday’s defeat by Manchester City.
With the new head coach his team encouraged to play from the back, Cech looked uncomfortable on the ball at times against City. He was preferred to the summer arrival Bernd Leno, who joined from Leverkusen for £19.2m. A video of Cech almost scoring an own goal attempting a pass began circulating on Twitter – with Leverkusen’s English account then getting involved.
“We might know a guy …” they replied to one tweet highlighting Cech’s error, seemingly suggesting their former No 1 would be more adept at implementing the vision of Unai Emery, Arsenal’s new manager.
That was followed by a 29-second video of Leno playing out from the back in a game for the German side, with the caption: “In case you were all wondering how to play out from the back …”
In case you all were wondering how to play out of the back... pic.twitter.com/LZkxznsGPs
— Bayer 04 Leverkusen (@bayer04_en) August 12, 2018
Retweeted more than 1,750 times, plenty of supporters of both clubs found the reply humorous, but Cech took to Twitter to post a reply on Monday evening, criticising the “professionalism” of the post. “[At] Arsenal we share important values which make us a big club not only on the football side. Fair competition, professionalism and sportsmanship are the biggest … bayer04-en,” he wrote. Cech spoke after the City game, insisting he is comfortable with the new approach.
“Yes, you play the best way for the team,” he said. “I think that in a way if you want to dominate the game through possession you need to use every player. You can see at this level that one-v-one is difficult to play so you need to use the goalkeeper as a spare man every time you can - that is the role of the goalkeeper.
“If you play for a team who is happy to play a long-ball and a completely different way then the keeper plays a different way - but for what we want to do I think it is going to be important.”
Leverkusen’s account replied to Cech’s tweet soon after - saying their original “joke” had been taken more personally than it should have been.
It read: “Hi Petr. It seems our joke about wanting to see Leno, our former player, in action has been taken a bit more harshly/personally than intended. It was only a bit of banter. We’re all for the values you’ve stated and wish you and your big club all the best. Nice 1v1 save on Aguero!”