Arsenal Forwards Alex Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have been enjoying their burgeoning bromance both on and off the pitch.
You can tell this because they’ve been spotted smiling together, joking together, frolicking in fields of wheat together and scoring goals together. They do lots of things together. They like each other’s company. And this is a good thing.
Of course, when you’re an elite athlete, it’s assumed that a competitive attitude underpins everything you do. From the outside, the fun gets reframed. Who has the more alluring smile, the funnier jokes, the more playful wheat frolicking technique…the most goals?
Lacazette insists that were he to be second best to Aubameyang in any of the above, he’d be fine with that, so long as Arsenal reap the benefits.
“Really, for me no,” said Lacazette when asked by Sky Sports about if there is competition between him and Auba. “If Auba score 40 goals and we go to the Champions League and as well we win something, I will be happy because this season we just want to win something.
“There is no competition like who scores more goals on the weekend. Maybe in training, because it is better to improve, but not on the weekend.”
On their on-field connection, Lacazette added: “It is natural, we just have fun, we laugh, but we work as well.
“OK, people can see that we smile together, we are a good partnership. But when we have to work, we work. We know when we can work and when we can laugh and we just enjoy laugh[ing] and football together.
“It is more natural. We work together and I know him since France, he knows me as well, so I know how he plays and it is more natural.”
Ahead of Monday’s clash with Leicester, Unai Emery urged Lacazette, who has been in impressive form this season, to take his game to the next level. The Frenchman says his improvement, like the team’s, is the result of hard work on the training ground and he’s determined to keep pushing on that front.
“Since the coach took the team we work a lot tactically, offensively, defensively.” he said. “We work on everything because we know we have to improve every part of our game. So we just work every day and this is the fruit of the work.
“We feel the fans are now happier, so we just want to make them happy. We play our football, we have the result and have scored many goals.
“I think everyone has pleasure in the team, so we need all the team and it is like the goal of Aaron. He came from the bench and he gave something else, something more in the team. So everyone wants to help the team to go as high as possible.”
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