Per Mertesacker and Francis Coquelin visited Arsenal’s newly opened community centre by Emirates Stadium on Friday afternoon. The 1st team stars surprised two groups of local schoolchildren holding classes at the ‘Arsenal Hub’, before helping to kick-off a first official match on the pitch.
THE ARSENAL HUB – HOME OF ARSENAL COMMUNITY OPENS ITS DOORS
The Arsenal Hub – Home of Arsenal in the Community opened its doors to the public for the first time on Friday for a special launch event.
The Arsenal in the Community team’s new base will deliver 50 hours of sports and education sessions to 1,500 local people each week when it is fully up and running later this year. Based around a 50m long 4G astro-turf pitch, the facility also houses classrooms, meeting space and the Arsenal Red Zone adult learning centre.
Arsenal stars Per Mertesacker and Francis Coquelin joined over 100 guests to celebrate the opening of the Hub.
Attendees were welcomed to the centre by Head of Arsenal in the Community Alan Sefton, before watching a first official game on the pitch between participants from a range of Arsenal in the Community programmes. Mertesacker and Coquelin helped to kick-off the game, before taking on the role of managers.
The Gunners duo also took a tour of the Hub, meeting participants from the Arsenal Employability programme and the club’s Gap Year scheme, before dropping in on schoolchildren from four Islington primary schools, who were taking part in the club’s flagship education programme the Arsenal Double Club.
Coq’s Team
Team BFG
Mertesacker said of the day: “As a player you are always concerned with what happens on the pitch, but it is great to see some of the work that the club does away from that. Growing up, I know how much I would have enjoyed a centre like this, right by my club’s stadium. So I am very happy that local people here have it.”
Alan Sefton MBE
Sefton added: “We are really excited to be up and running in our new centre. It’s a fantastic facility which will allow us to run more sessions and work with more individuals in the local area than ever before.”
The Arsenal Hub was inspired by the ‘JVC’ centre at Highbury. Its opening marks the completion of the £390-million Emirates Stadium regeneration project, which has seen a state of the art recycling centre and 3,000 new homes built in Islington since the Gunners’ move from Highbury in 2006.
Among the guests to help celebrate the opening was MP for Islington North Jeremy Corbyn, who said: “The opening of the Arsenal Hub is really exciting for the borough. It will allow lots of people to fulfil their dream of playing and enjoying football and fitness at a centre by Emirates Stadium, and will have a positive impact on the local community as a whole.”
The opening of the Arsenal Hub coincides with the 30th anniversary of Arsenal in the Community, who have been delivering meaningful community projects in Islington since 1985.
Coq leaves his mark at the Hub as he has on this season
Passionate fifty-something Arsenal supporter who has been making the journey to N5 regularly since the early 1980s – although his first game was in 1976. Always passionate when talking about The Arsenal, Dave decided to send a guest blog to Gunnersphere in the summer of 2011 and has not stopped writing about the Gunners since.
He set up his own site – 1 Nil Down 2 One Up – in February 2012, which he moved on in 2016 to concentrate on freelance writing and building Gunners Town, which he launched with Paul in 2014.
The objective of GT was to be new and fresh and to give a platform for likeminded passionate Arsenal fans wishing to write about their team. Dave still of course, writes for the site himself and advises the ever-changing writing crew.
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