Arsenal Players’ Nicknames

A long-standing tradition in football has always been to come up with colourful nicknames for players. Footballer’s nicknames come from a wide variety of sources, from puns made from their names (often Anglicized pronunciations), to their style of play, to prominent physical attributes or even characters who they resemble. And like every nickname, the more players dislike them, the more they tend to stick. Here are 10 of the Gunners most well-known nicknames

Thomas Vermaelen:
Our captain’s last name is perfect for the classic character nickname – you don’t need the name to rhyme, it just has to sound somewhat similar. So the traditional Belgian surname “Vermaelen” is combined with the popular cyborg assassin made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger to become “the Verminator”.

Mikel Arteta:
Lived up to his nickname “the artist of Goodison” when he played with Everton. For the past 3 years he has been putting his creativity to work for the Gunners however and has become one of our most integral players all whilst retaining perfect hair earning him various hair-based nicknames.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain:
The up and coming star has been nicknamed “Ox”, not only because of his last name but also his physical and determined style of play. It’s a well-known fact that Alex almost chose rugby over football as a youngster and he is definitely one of the more physically intimidating players in the Premiership.

Tomáš Rosický:
One of our pluckiest players and the captain of the Czech National team, he provides a good example who was awarded his nickname for his style of play. Named “Little Mozart” for his ability to orchestrate scoring chances on the field while he was in the Bundesliga.

Olivier Giroud:
His nickname is a combination of his on-field play with his off-field antics. Dubbed the “Charm striker” or le buteur de charme the Frenchman is allegedly a favourite with the ladies of London.

Wojciech Szczęsny:
Sometimes nicknames are simply a necessity. “Wojo” is the shortened version of our favourite Polish ‘keeper who most of us who are not from a Slavic background would have a difficulty pronouncing so we just call him Shezzer.

Laurent Koscielny:
The only thing better than making a pun out of a player’s surname is making a pun which suits his personality and playing style. The aggressive centre back is known as Laurent “Bosscielny” for his unyielding defence or simply “Dave”.

Joel Campbell:
Was simply nicknamed El Pantera, or “the Panther”, in his native Costa Rica. It’s a fact, Central and South American teams love naming their players after big cats. Unfortunately we’ve not had much of a chance to give him a better nickname since he’s been on loan in France, Spain and Greece after originally failing to get a UK work permit.

Per Mertesacker:
Was a fan favourite in the German Bundesliga and has won his way into the hearts of Gunners fans for his reliable defence. In Germany he was called die Abwehrlatte or the “Defence Pole” as well as “Mr. Clean” for his disciplined style of play (he once went 31 games without being booked with only 1 card in 63 league matches) but at Arsenal we’ve renamed him “The BFG” or “Big F***ing German”

Aaron Ramsey:
AKA “the Welsh Rambo” was simply called “Rambo” during his days as a star junior player in Caerphilly. He earned the nickname playing under 12’s due to an unfortunate incident involving fisticuffs on the field. The name stuck and is still used by Gunners fans today.

If you’re finding yourself a bit jaded with England out of the World Cup try testing your international footballer knowledge with this fun Nickname Challenge I found the other day. It’s pretty tricky, but if you manage to complete it there’s a draw for a home entertainment centre provided by Lottoland. If you know all of the Arsenal nicknames see if you can get all of the international ones right, there’s some killers in there!