Arsenal defenders William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes have formed an impenetrable defensive partnership. The two centre-backs have helped the Gunners maintain the best defensive record in the Premier League, conceding only 27 goals from 29 games.
Not only that, but the two are heavily responsible for ensuring David Raya leads the Golden Glove with 10 clean sheets. The contrasting styles of Saliba and Gabriel appear to suit each other. While the Brazilian centre-back is more aggressive and loves venturing into crushing challengers, Saliba is more composed who covers for his teammate and commits to challenges whenever needed the most.
The two have formed a telepathic connection on the field over the course of the last few years. They’re now playing pivotal roles in helping Mikel Arteta’s side strongly compete in the Premier League and UEFA Champions League titles. The two are also coming off after getting a clean sheet against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium, shutting out Erling Haaland & co.
That is not surprising knowing the family-like atmosphere Mikel Arteta has strived to build at Arsenal. Saliba and Magalhaes seemingly love to spend time with each other, be it working on their defensive work as a duo or just hanging out as friends. That is why the two were called to take part in Sky Sports’ Football Friends episode, where things didn’t go ‘according to plan’ at all.
The basic idea of Football Friends brings two teammates from a Premier League side together. They are both given boards to write their answers to the football-related questions. One of the two players is asked a question about their friend’s choices in football, be it their favourite player, teammate etc.
Of course, every team’s player strives to get the ‘perfect scores’ by answering all the questions rightly. Only, the Arsenal duo decided to take an unconventional road to perfection. Saliba and Gabriel decided to use some cheeky methods of cheating which even ended up fooling the host Adam Smith.
Initially, both of them tried to peak at the other player’s board in an attempt to guess the right answer. When Smith realized this and tried stopping it, they took their ‘cheating’ to a hilariously new level. Indeed, they silently started communicating in French – knowing all well that the host has no clue how to speak it.
Saliba is, of course, a Frenchman and Gabriel is fluent in French because he played for Ligue 1 club Lille before moving to Arsenal. This can also perhaps indicate why they’re so impressive with their communication on the pitch during matches too.
They tried to be as discreet as possible with the cheating. Saliba was mostly doing it, as he started stuttering shirt numbers in French. They actually failed at the first attempt, when the host questioned about who has the best fashion sense in the Arsenal squad.
William whispered ‘24’ (which is Reiss Nelson) but Gabriel hadn’t caught the drift and wrote Ben White instead. However, the Brazilian soon ‘understood the assignment’ and started writing the names of players whose shirt numbers his centre-back partnered blabbered to each question.
Even when the host tried to stop the Brazilian defender from peeking into Saliba’s board, the Frenchman started giving his answers by mimicking names. He mouthed the word ‘Mbappe’ to the question of who Saliba felt was the best footballer in the world. This continued on until the end, but to keep things ‘fair’ and suspicion from rising, the duo got seven out of 10 answers correct.
What was the funniest thing is how surprised both acted upon learning each other’s answers despite clearly cheating for so many questions. However, on a replay, Sky Sports clearly understood that they were cheating and decided to release the footage anyway with subtitles around their communication in French.
They also stated that the Arsenal centre-backs have ‘been disqualified’ from the Football Friends leaderboard for cheating. This meant they couldn’t compete with the other Premier League teammates who competed in this too. To their credit, Gabriel and Saliba have won over the fans with their hilarious cheating and highly entertaining personalities shown in this video.
The two clearly love to joke around with each other outside the pitch, even though they might not know everything about each other yet. Arsenal fans will hope that the chemistry and bonding between Gabriel Magalhaes and William Saliba only keeps on building and that the two can help them win multiple major trophies together in the near future.
