Gabriel’s Arsenal blocks: Face, torso, toe - watching back all the ways he puts his body on the line

Whether it is with his face, torso, thigh or toe, Arsenal’s Gabriel will use whatever body part he can to protect their goal.

These blocks are often followed by him performing lion-like celebratory roars, but nobody would have remained standing after his most recent one, in the 1-1 Champions League away draw with Bayer Leverkusen on Wednesday. After being struck around the chin/throat area as he dipped his head down to meet Jarell Quansah’s clean left-footed strike, the Brazil international centre-back needed a moment to find his bearings.

But that was far from the first time Gabriel had put his head (or other parts of his 6ft 2in/190cm tall body) in where it might hurt to defend Arsenal’s goal.

He ranks fourth in the Premier League for blocks (158) since his Arsenal debut in September 2020. In the Champions League, he sits joint-fifth with 23 since the north London’s return to the competition in September 2023 after seven years away. This season, he has 38 blocked shots of their total of 133 across the squad in all competitions (29 per cent). Those 38 have come from 418 shots faced, so Gabriel has got in the way of nine per cent of all goal attempts against Arsenal in 2025-26.

We looked through some of his best blocks to pick out how he does it and why his technique is so effective.

“It’s a real art,” Matthew Upson, the former Arsenal, West Ham and England defender, tells The Athletic. “There’s a knack to it. It’s not just about standing in the way. He (Gabriel) gets his body shape and feet in good situations.”

Upson was at the BayArena last night for Arsenal’s draw with Leverkusen in the first leg of a Champions League last-16 tie. Highlighting that block from Quansah, he says: “He (Gabriel) puts his arms behind his back, which he likes to do, but I really liked it because he stayed square onto the ball. Players might turn side-on and make themselves smaller, but he’s all about size and making himself big. It’s great to see a defender lay himself on the line. You saw (Chelsea and England centre-back) John Terry do it a lot and it reminded me of that.”

As well as staying square onto the ball, Gabriel’s anticipation deserves credit.

As seen below, when Quansah starts to line up the shot, Gabriel immediately gets in line with it by moving Leverkusen striker Christian Kofane out of his way. Then the arms go behind his back, to mitigate the handball risk, before he quickly drops to his right.

That type of movement is rare to see, but the more moments like this occur, the less blocks he makes with numerous body parts seem like a coincidence.

Gabriel’s radar-like tracking of the ball has been particularly important to Arsenal’s defence in recent seasons, and has been on display consistently. A similar, albeit less eye-catching example came in a 1-1 away draw with Brentford in the Premier League last month.

In the GIF below, the centre-back readjusts his body as the ball is played to Michael Kayode, and continues to do so throughout the rest of the move. As the Brentford right-back moves infield, Gabriel gets set for a potential shot, then shuffles across the edge of the box while keeping eyes on the ball, resets with hands behind his back and then throws his head at Kayode’s eventual pop at goal, sending it behind for a corner.

A more comical example came just after Christmas, in the 4-1 home win against Aston Villa.

Gabriel locks in on Morgan Rogers as he shoots, moves with the ball to head it clear, only to stumble into a fist-pump celebration with the chalk from the ball now plastered on his forehead.

Blocks with his different parts of his dome are not the only ones in Gabriel’s repertoire, though.

When a shot is being taken from a slightly wider angle, he sometimes drops into a stance similar to a wicket-keeper in cricket — low, with knees bent and close together so the approaching ball has no chance of going through his legs.

Here’s an example of that from a 3-0 win away at Brighton & Hove Albion in 2024.

“He reminds me of a basketball player, when their arms are everywhere and they’re in the face of their opponent,” Upson says of this approach. “When I watch him warm up, doing his one-v-one stuff, he gets incredibly low in a squat position and then he gets side-on.

“He’s not the quickest over the first couple of yards, so his body shape and footwork have to be really good for him to survive.”

William Saliba may be the faster of Arsenal’s two first-choice centre-backs, but Gabriel covers his fair share of ground, too. He needed to be on his toes in Germany last night, sweeping behind partner Saliba when the Frenchman was drawn into wide areas.

Opposition wingers may spot a free patch of grass for a second or two, but are often met with the onrushing steam train that is Gabriel sliding across to make a block. And there is still a discernible technique to these seemingly wilder challenges.

In both sequences below against Brighton and Manchester City, he is aware of the incoming danger to his right, sprints across when the opposing player is between touches of the ball, then goes all-in for the block with arms behind his back.

Gabriel’s size is one thing, but his application in these moments is another.

One can only imagine what it is like having such an imposing figure hunting you down at full pelt. Opposition forwards may panic, but if he is on your team, you would be reassured.

From his early days at Arsenal, it has always been clear that Gabriel loves defending as much as he does scoring from set pieces — which he did on his Premier League debut in a 3-0 win at Fulham. The fact this feeling is a constant, no matter the scoreline, has been particularly endearing over the five and a half years the Brazilian has been at the Emirates Stadium.

When it comes to shutting down opposition forwards in any way possible, no matter the score, Gabriel’s magnum opus may have come in a 6-0 Champions League win against Lens in November 2023.

With Arsenal four goals up and the game still in the first half, the clearance below comes back to a key point Upson makes about body shape and footwork.

“It does something else, because he gets his body and legs in the way to block little cutbacks,” he says. “Your comfort position as a centre-back is when you get level with the line of the ball. You don’t want to be caught in space because space can’t score.”

Later in that game, Gabriel ventured deep into the Lens half to make a block on the touchline before kicking the ball into the stands in delight. In stoppage time, he then made another in his own box and punctuated it with one of those typical celebratory roars. It was 6-0 at the time, but he needed everyone to know that he wanted that clean sheet.

Gabriel’s appetite for defending is infectious.

That will contribute to the frustration around Leverkusen scoring the game’s opening goal yesterday, as Arsenal were disorganised defensively at that corner, but over the season, their back line does more help than harm and the big Brazilian is a major reason for that.

Signed when the club were in the middle of successive eighth-place finishes in the Premier League, Gabriel’s growth as a player in the past six seasons cannot be understated. He was always a physical phenomenon, but the craft that now accompanies his size sets him apart from most defenders in England and across continental Europe.

There will no doubt be more blocks and celebrations from him before the season’s end.

You may need a bingo card to work out which body part gets in the way of the ball most, though, as Arsenal continue to fight on all four fronts.

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