STOP THE PRESSES! We’ve got some pulp for you: Unami Emery has banned Arsenal players from drinking fruit juice at London Colney. That’s right, gone are the days of sucking down Simply Lemonade (I like the raspberry best) and cracking open a Snapple (I like the kiwi strawberry best) to read “Real Fact” #646 inside the bottle cap.
We don’t know who the main culprit is, but it’s probably Barcelona native Hector Bellerin and his insidious travel tips for La Boqueria.
How will this play out for the Gunners? Well, Emery is hoping he’s seeding a fruitful law here, but it could be the pits for some players who’ll now find themselves in a tight squeeze. That’s all I got.
Let’s take a look at some other marvelous bans from the world of football.
Rwanda bans witchcraft from soccer.
A particular favorite of mine is the Rwandan Premier League calling time on witchcraft after the successful casting of a spell on a totem that had been placed near the opponent’s goal.
Witchcraft has been banned from Rwandan football after a bizarre incident. Moussa Camara cast a spell on the goalmouth, scoring 3 mins later pic.twitter.com/ujG8YvAJ3d
— Ball Street (@BallStreet) December 29, 2016
Anyone now found guilty of practicing witchcraft faces a three-match ban and a $120 fine.
Effectiveness of ban: “I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.”
Germany and Panama ban sex at the 2018 World Cup.
One favorite pastime of news outlets that only cover soccer once every four years is to figure out which national teams have banned sex during the World Cup. This past summer, the fact that both Germany and Panama had confirmed that bumping uglies was forbidden was widely latched onto.
“We have restrictions placed on us, as do all national teams — and a ban on having sex is one ours,” ho-hummed a Panama player. “But going beyond the limits imposed by the coach, the players realize that they have to make sacrifices in order to win matches. And giving up sex is one of those.”
Unfortunately for los Canaleros, not only did nobody get laid in Russia, the team failed to win a match, losing all three group games while conceding 11 goals.
Serial sniffer Joachim Low also issued a cessation of the copulation in Russia, and Die Mannschaft also struggled without being able to properly use their man shaft. Sorry.
Effectiveness of ban: very temporary blue balls
David Moyes bans chips (french fries) at Manchester United.
David Moyes built his reputation as a “football genius” at Old Trafford after 10 turbulent months in charge. Infamously, as revealed by defender Rio Ferdinand, he peeved United’s old guard by banning a prematch tradition of eating chips the night before games.
“It’s not something to go to the barricades over (the chips),” said Ferdinand in his autobiography. “But all the lads were pissed off. And guess what happened after Moyes left and Ryan Giggs took over? Moyes has been gone about 20 minutes, we’re on the bikes warming up for the first training session and one of the lads says: ‘You know what? We’ve got to get on to Giggsy. We’ve got to get him to get us our fucking chips back.”
Moyes confirmed the ban during an interview with FourFourTwo after taking over at Real Sociedad. “Yes, I did ban chips,” he said. “There are things to be learned from Sapin, too, such as the way players look after themselves and their diet. There’s much more salad and fresh fish here, which can only be good.”
Effectiveness of ban: Football genius revealed
Arsene Wenger bans Mars bars.
Back before Arsene Wenger took control at in October of 1996, the club’s nutritional outlook was probably best embodied in the form of center back Tony Adams, who liked to spend a week or two or three lost in the sauce.
But Wenger arrived looking like your demanding high school social studies teacher and immediately banned chocolate. The players weren’t happy: “We were traveling to Blackburn and the players were at the back of the bus chanting ‘we want our Mars bars! we want our Mars bars!’” but Wenger refused to relent.
And what followed over the next eight seasons was three Premier League titles and four FA Cups.
Effectiveness of ban: Don’t ever eat chocolate
Pep Guardiola bans Lionel Messi from drinking Coca-Cola.
While Guardiola achieved unprecedented success at Barcelona while claiming three LaLiga titles and two Champions League crowns, rumors persist that the manager’s decision to walk from his role at Barca following the 2011-12 season (one in which he only captured the Copa del Rey) had everything to do with a fallout between himself and the club’s senior players, most notably Lionel Messi.
The Argentine was reportedly still enjoying the imbibing of a Coca-Cola from time to time when Guardiola took over (Messi was still just a 21-year-old rapscallion at that point), and things immediately came to a head when Messi asked for a Coke before a match.
Guardiola reportedly forbade the request, saying that his players could not have any of the fizzy bubbly before a match. But Messi stood up, walked over to the Coke collection, cracked one open and guzzled it in front of the entire Barca squad.
Effectiveness of ban: One bad ass story.
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