Footballers love their tattoos.
We recently expressed our enjoyment of Neymar's recent leg-sleeve that tells his story, and James McClean had to take to twitter to defend his latest choice of artwork, but it seems that these days it's less common to see a footballer without some ink than it is to see one without any.
However, we are willing to bet that there are not many players out there who have popular video game 'Call Of Duty' as the inspiration for their tattoo, but that is the case for promising Arsenal right-back Hector Bellerin, who recently told 'Amuse' that he used to play in a Call Of Duty clan with his fellow Spaniards in the Arsenal academy, and they were so invested that all of them got a tattoo to signify their brotherhood.
And even better, they got them on a lads holiday:
And this one I got on my first lads holiday, with Jon Toral, Emi Martinez and Ignasi Miquel [all Catalan players from Arsenal’s youth teams]. We were in Greece and we used to play a lot of Call of Duty, and our clan tag was ‘tato’, which means brother in Spanish, so I got that in the Greek alphabet, as a reminder of our friendship. We still all keep in contact, even though we’re now in different countries.
That's a hardcore clan right there.
Speaking to Copa90 at the launch of Call Of Duty: Black Ops III back in November, Bellerin revealed that the bleak English winter is what lead to him pumping hours into the game initially:
When I first came to England, I used to have a nap and when I woke up it was dark already, so I didn't have much to do.
I used to spend hours and hours playing Call Of Duty.
As someone who also pumped hours and hours into COD back before they added jetpacks and exo-suits and all that nonsense, I can see where he is coming from, but a tattoo for your clan is one hell of a commitment.
If you know of any other footballers with video game tattoos, be sure to let us know. Why nobody has a PES-glory-days Adriano tattoo or a Tony Cascarino FIFA 98 tattoo yet we can't quite understand.
