Declan Rice has revealed he has been given the nickname "horse" by his Arsenal team-mates due to his running style.
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Rice given bizarre nicknameArsenal team-mate came up with itGunners ace says it was "so funny"Follow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱WHAT HAPPENED?
The Gunners midfielder stated that Oleksandr Zinchenko called him a "horse man" because of his galloping-like running style. The 26-year-old said the whole thing is "so funny" and now that horse nickname has stuck at the club.
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He said on the England Generations podcast: "I’ve never had a nickname until I went to Arsenal. Everyone at Arsenal calls me horse. In the morning, even the nutritionist says ‘morning horse’. Zinchenko started it all. He just started it off. He says ‘you are a horse man’. He was like ‘you run like a horse back and forth’. I was like ‘okay, fair enough’. Then Jorginho started it. It was so funny, I had a notification on Instagram the other day where Zinchenko sent me a video and I was like ‘what is that?’. He sent me this video of a horse running on a beach and was like ‘this is you’. Mate, it’s so random.”
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Rice swapped West Ham for Arsenal in the summer of 2023 for a fee worth up to £105 million ($136m). While that is a huge figure, the England international has arguably justified that amount off the back of his stellar performances. It appears he has the affection of many at Arsenal as well, going by this nickname.
GettyWHAT NEXT?
Rice will return to Arsenal next week but before then he could feature for England in their World Cup qualifiers against Albania and Latvia on Friday and Monday respectively.
