We speak to our Brazilian defender about his season so far and his hopes for the next two months and beyond.
From a personal point of view Big Gabi is also pleased with his output, especially after picking up a thigh injury that ruled him out of nine games through November and December.
“I’m very happy,” he says. “It’s been my best season at this club, and I was out for more than a month. As soon as I came back, I tried to do my best for the team on the pitch, so if I look back at that, then yes, I’m very happy.
“I give everything when I’m on the pitch, and I try to push everyone. I try to bring energy and help my teammates. I want to give everything for this badge. My job is to defend and bring energy for my teammates and for the fans.”
His job may well be to defend, but that hasn’t stopped him from racking up 24 goals in his Gunners career so far. He recently played his 250th match for us, making him second only to Gabriel Martinelli on the club’s all-time list of most appearances for Brazilian players (he overtook Gilberto Silva in March). So that’s an enviable strike rate of about one in every 10 games.
“I’m very proud – it’s a big number, a lot of games,” he says about reaching the milestone. "But I want more, as I said before, I just need to keep going. I’m very happy to put this shirt on every day to help this team, this club.”
Big Gabi has netted 20 times for us in the Premier League, and among defenders only Laurent Koscielny with 22 has more in the competition, from 70 fewer appearances. Is that something he pays much attention to?
“I think it’s quite good,” he says, smiling. “I’m happy to score when I can, I know it’s close to the record at Arsenal now. I want to be in the history of this club, so I would love to get that as well. When I was young I played up front so I scored a lot of goals. It’s obviously a lot harder to do that as a defender, but I’ve worked at it and I’ve learned a lot.
“I work a lot on it in training, like we all do. People might talk about Gabi scoring at corners, but it’s group work. We work all together on a team on set-pieces and they all help me like I try to help them.”
Our dead-ball prowess is well documented, and over the past two seasons Gabi has often been the focal point at corners or free-kicks around the box. We’ve scored 16 times from corners in the league so far this season, but Gabi has scored just two of them (away to Newcastle and at home to Aston Villa).
Invariably, though, the big Brazilian is involved somewhere, either heading the ball back into the danger zone, making a decoy run or generally disrupting the opposition. It may look like chaos at times, but it’s organised chaos, and Gabriel can often be seen passing on the instructions to his teammates before the dead ball is delivered.
“If you don’t have communication, nothing is going to happen,” he says. “I think the coaches gave me this responsibility to call my teammates to tell them what we’re going to do. And I think I have done really well so far.
“But it’s not only me. You see Timber as well, he’s scored a lot of goals this season from corners, the other defenders too, on set pieces – absolutely everyone is involved in that. We work very hard on it.”
As Gabi’s reputation has grown at home and in Europe, does he find that he is attracting more attention from opposition defenders in these situations, and being marked ever-more closely?
“Yes, of course, it’s getting more and more difficult because when I arrive in the box often there will be two players coming to mark me. That’s really good for us though, because as I say, it’s not only me who’s going to score. It opens up spaces for the others and they can all score too.
“Whenever I go forward for a free-kick or a corner, I know it’s a big chance for us. I put that thought in my head: ’I can score this one.’ It’s my mentality at every single corner.”
"I want to be in the history of this club"
The bread and butter of Gabi’s work though, as he is keen to stress, is defending. For the third season in a row we have the best defensive record in the league, and Gabi played his part in a record-breaking run of eight consecutive clean sheets earlier in the season.
The key to this as well, Gabi states, is the teamwork and partnerships he has built over time. “We work a lot on that,” he says. “We all know each other much more now, and what we can do on the pitch, but every day we work hard because we still know what we need to improve and what we can do better.”
One of the most effective partnerships in worldwide football is the one between Gabriel and William Saliba, who have played alongside each other regularly since the start of the 2022/23 campaign.
“He’s my brother,” Gabi says with a smile. “Since he arrived here and we started to play together, we have grown up a lot. I think we understand each other and we have been doing really well and every season we try to improve. So of course I’m very happy to play with him.
“I know what he likes to do and he knows what I like to do on the pitch. So it’s a good combination. We try to do it as well as we can, with the other defenders too, and the goalkeeper behind us. We all understand each other, so it doesn’t matter who plays at the back. It makes it easier because we have trained together so much.”
In the summer Gabi will be at the heart of a different defence though, if – as expected – he joins up with the Brazil national team for the 2026 World Cup. Having only made his senior debut for his country in 2023, this will be the first time he’ll have the opportunity to represent Brazil on the biggest stage, and it’s an ambition he’s desperate to fulfil.
“Of course it’s a dream for me to play a World Cup with Brazil. And a dream for my family as well. It would mean a lot. I can’t wait to be there because I think we have a big chance to win the World Cup.
“We have big players but the World Cup is always difficult – it gets more difficult every time with lots of big teams there.
“When the time comes we will go there, prepare our minds properly, and do everything to win. But that is not yet. We have to wait for the summer for that, and now me and all of the international players are just focused on Arsenal.”