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Football

21st Apr 2015

Arsenal sign four-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson

Going for Gold

Ben Kiely

Arsenal have stated their intention of bringing up a new golden generation at the Emirates with his latest acquisition.

Four-time Olympic gold medal winning sprinter Michael Johnson has been recruited by Arsenal to help develop their youth players.

Johnson has been brought in as strength and that’s right, you’ve guessed it, speed coach for the Arsenal academy. The aim of the move is to ensure Arsenal’s young guns are better prepared for first-team action.

The 400m world record holder racked up four Olympic medals between the 200m, 400m and the 4x400m relay events. Johnson also has eight World Championship gold medals under his belt and is hopeful that he can really make an impact at the Emirates.

“It’s about developing athletes. How do you bring an athlete from seven or eight years old all the way through to their full development as a 17 or 18 year-old.”

“We don’t work with the first-team players. We specialise in youth athletics development and are seen as the experts in that.”

“Once you get into athletic development, you start to look at speed, strength, power, agility, suppleness – all of those different things – and pick the ones that they really are interested in.”

It makes sense that the sprinter will only work with the Arsenal youth team. We fear he might have had a full mental breakdown if he was employed to try to boost the speed of one Per Mertesacker. It’s far too late for the BFG to start running now.

Hat-tip to the Mirror

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