In Pep Guardiola’s first season as manager at Barcelona, at a time when he was still trying to prove himself as a coach, he always kept a close eye on the substitutes. He stood on the touchline watching the action on the pitch and was also aware of how those behind him, the players on the bench, were behaving.
The story goes that in a crucial match during that campaign, Barcelona missed a big chance to score a goal. As revealed in ‘Another Way to Win’, a biography of the Manchester City manager, Guardiola turned around to see how the substitutes reacted.
He saw some people jump to their feet in anticipation of scoring. They were ready to celebrate. But a few people didn’t move or react at all. Guardiola made a mental note of this and made a decisive move the following summer. Barcelona sold all their players who remained inactive on their seats.
This may sound a bit extreme, but the message is clear: in the minds of coaches like Guardiola, you can’t put a price on togetherness, unity and emotional investment. You either go all in or you go all out. There can’t be any in between.
Only Guardiola and Mikel Arteta can say whether they discussed this particular episode during their three years together at City, but it’s safe to assume they did. Arteta is obsessed with these ideas of chemistry and togetherness. So much so that he had the word “unity” written on a banner that was frequently used in Arsenal’s away matches and hung on the walls of the dressing room.
All of this is important because of the ongoing debate around the celebrations, and Arsenal’s celebrations in particular. Arteta and his players were accused of excessive celebration following their victory over Liverpool on Sunday for the first time in recent seasons. Telegraph Sport columnist Jamie Carragher said on Sky Sports that Arteta’s players should “go down the tunnel”. Gary Neville said there was “immaturity” in the show.
But what matters here is not what the outside world thinks of Arsenal’s celebrations. That’s what these celebrations do to the players, coaches and fans associated with the club. It’s about the message they send and the impact they have on both the team’s performance and the atmospheric power of the Emirates Stadium.
In short, celebrations are important and we can be almost certain that Arteta knows it. The Arsenal manager is an avid reader, frequently studying sport and psychology, and it would be a huge surprise if he wasn’t aware of the increasingly compelling evidence showing the significant performance benefits of heartfelt celebrations.
Years ago, Guardiola simply followed his instincts when examining his substitutes, but this time those instincts were backed by science. In 2008, the year Guardiola took over at Barcelona, a study by Bornstein and Goldschmidt showed that teams who celebrated goals with collective “team-oriented” celebrations were ranked higher in the league table than those who did not.
Similarly, in penalty shoot-outs, research shows that celebrating a goal enthusiastically (such as extending both arms, expanding the chest, and clenching the fists) has a positive effect on your teammates and increases the likelihood of your side winning. The study by Moll, Jordet and Pepping also showed that these celebrations had a negative impact on competitors.
Recent events in the Premier League show that equally wrong celebrations can backfire. If celebrations are becoming the Premier League’s latest battleground, then Brentford’s Neal Maupay made a significant tactical misstep last month. A darts celebration mocking James Maddison only served to spur Tottenham into action.
Maybe something similar happened between Manchester United and West Ham this weekend: when Alejandro Garnacho scored United’s second goal in Sunday’s win, he sat on the advertising hoardings, imitating Mohammed Kudus’ celebration in the reverse match earlier this season.
The impact of celebrations comes down to “emotional contagion”, the transfer of emotions from individuals to teammates, opponents and, in the case of Arsenal on Sunday, the crowd.
Uninvested observers may not have appreciated Arteta’s players having fun at the Emirates ground, but the home fans clearly did. Long after the final whistle, Arsenal fans were still dancing in the stands to ABBA’s ‘Voulez-Vous’, which was repackaged as the Bukayo Saka song. It was a party to which everyone in red was invited.
Arteta knows that the emotions of the players on the field are reflected back to the stands, and the emotions in the stands are reflected back onto the field. It flows both ways and Arteta is trying to weaponize it. Before the meeting with Liverpool, the Arsenal manager played a key role in the production of an exciting pre-match video which was shared across the club’s social media accounts and his own social media page.
In the days before the match, Arsenal had trained at the Emirates. Many clips of the video, including close-ups of Arteta’s face, were shot during this session. All of this was intentional, and all of it had a purpose: to excite the crowd, to create that bond and unity. If Arsenal were going to score, or even come close to scoring, Arteta – like Guardiola all those years ago – wanted everyone to be on their feet.
The Arsenal manager is not the only one thinking along these lines. Just look at Jurgen Klopp’s famous punch to the Kop after meaningful victories. What is this celebration if not an effort to strengthen connections and build unity? As science shows, emotions are contagious.
Touching each other also helps. A 2010 study in the NBA showed that teams with players who touched each other more frequently during games (high-fiving, punching, head-slapping, etc.) had significantly superior team performance compared to teams with less feisty players. The more hugs and pats on the back, the better. The closer they all are, the better they play.
Football is a tactical and physical game. It is also an emotional state. If celebrating like Arsenal did on Sunday can make even a small difference (and the science shows it does), then Arteta and other football managers will find it worth doing. Whether the outside world likes it or not.