Former Arsenal midfielder Jorginho has criticised the methods of Gunners boss Mikel Arteta, complaining that his obsession with set-pieces took the joy away from football and made training feel like “homework”.
Arteta has led the Gunners to a six-point lead in the Premier League and the Champions League semi-finals, yet the manager has faced criticism over the style of his team this year.
And it turns out this noise is not simply external. Jorginho was driven to leave the North London side last summer to return to Flamengo in part because of Arteta’s training methods.
‘Arsenal training felt like homework’
“It does feel like homework, that’s the reality,” Jorginho told The Times when asked about training at Arsenal and Arteta’s obsession with set-pieces.
“But when you do your homework and then you have the test, you have a good result. I think people are realising now the importance of set pieces… Why is it a problem to focus and work more on it, when you get the results from that which make everybody happy?
“When you focus so much on results, and you hyper-focus on one thing, which is set pieces now, then maybe the other part, the football, is a bit forgotten, let’s say. But football is always in evolution.”
My fire was going down a bit, Jorginho admits
It seems that this approach killed some of Jorginho’s enjoyment in his final months with Arsenal.
“The passion inside myself was going down a bit,” he admitted. “I thought, I need this fire to keep it alive inside.”
“Arteta helped me in many ways… but I want to feel alive and important for the team. When a player is not on the pitch, it’s hard to keep motivated. I felt I needed to go somewhere I was going to play with joy.”
Arteta’s unusual coaching methods
Arteta’s methods have regularly caught the eye and has recently demanded “pure fire” from his squad ahead of a crunch Premier League match with Manchester City on Sunday.
A fire was subsequently lit at the club’s Colney training ground, though on this occasion it was not the manager behind it.
He has previously taken a lightbulb into the dressing room and instructed his team to be “energetic and shine”, while he also hired professional pickpockets to target his players during a dinner event to teach them to stay alert.
It does not seem to have been these stunts that irked Jorginho, though; it was the constant training ground drills that were too much for him.
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