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Arsenal star Declan Rice has sent a message to his club teammate Gabriel Magalhães after he made the PFA Team of the Year. The Englishman took words from the Gunners' chant for the Brazilian defender and posted a comment on his Instagram account.
The PFA awards ceremony took place on Tuesday, August 19, and the Team of the Year was announced. The XI had three Arsenal players, four players who played for Liverpool last season, and one of their new signings, Milos Kerkez, who played for AFC Bournemouth.
The full team: Matz Sels, William Saliba, Gabriel, Virgil van Dijk, Milos Kerkez, Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch, Declan Rice, Mohamed Salah, Alexander Isak, and Chris Wood.
Gabriel celebrated making the team by posting a photo on Instagram, and Rice was among those who commented on the post. He wrote 'King of Brazillll', which is an extract from the famous Arsenal chant for the Brazilian defender:
“You’ll fall in love, I know you will, our number six is the king of Brazil! Our centre half, he’ll give you hell, our wall at the back is Gabriel! Ole ole, ole ola!”
Rice also spoke at the event about Mikel Arteta's side finishing second in the Premier League for the third successive season and said:
"It's been really tough, coming second three years in a row. But I've said it before, in life you've got to go through some small losses in order to win and we're going to keep going, we're going to keep pushing, and hopefully something can come for us."
Mohamed Salah was named the PFA men's player of the year, while Aston Villa star Morgan Rogers was named the PFA young player of the year.
Declan Rice sets big target at Arsenal this season
Declan Rice spoke to The Athletic ahead of the new season and said that he was setting big demands for himself at Arsenal. He wants to push on from the second placed finish last season and said:
“I’m putting really big demands on myself this year. I’m trying to push myself because, the back-end of the season, I finished strong. At the start of the season last year, I was nowhere near the level that I require of myself. I put it down to a few things."
"Coming off the back of the Euros final (with England) was mentally tough. Having 16 days off, going straight back into a Premier League season — it was really hard. It took me a few months to get going again. But now I’m getting a full pre-season, I feel really fit, strong, and I’m going to try and kick off the season strong.”
Arsenal have not won a major trophy under Mikel Arteta in the last five seasons. Their last major trophy remains the FA Cup win in 2019/20 when the Spaniard replaced Unai Emery during the season.
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Sripad is a veteran Sportskeeda football journalist who has been with the company for around 10 years. His tryst with writing happened in class XI when he started penning blogs, and his foray into football was during the early 2000s, watching matches with his cousins.
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