How did I not know that Petr Čech was a multi-hyphenate?

Someone I follow posted this and my first thought was “oh god, is this AI?”¹ before reconfirming it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke that I’d missed. Yes, that’s former Chelsea and Arsenal goalkeeper Petr Čech in a Drumeo video playing along to a Journey song he’d never heard before.

Having spent many years watching him play in the Premier League, I was surprised to see him so proficient with a drum kit as it’s not a common hobby amongst ex-pros at his level (to my knowledge; feel free to list others in the comments). So I went to look him up on Wikipedia to see if there was a direct reference to his musical prowess and, sure enough, it was listed in the “Personal life” section:

He is a keen musician and plays the drums, which he picked up after playing Guitar Hero at Carlo Cudicini’s house. He has a YouTube channel under his own name on which he posts video drum covers, including Incubus’ “Anna Molly”, as well as songs by Coldplay and Foo Fighters. He has played with Roger Taylor of Queen. In May 2019, he and Taylor released a charity single called That’s Football. In 2020, he joined folk rock band Wills & The Willing as their drummer, filming their music video “Iceberg”.

Clearly I’ve been living under a rock all this time because I had no idea any of this had happened. But that’s not all Čech has been up to since retiring from football. He’s also a polyglot, speaking Czech (obvs), English (obvs), French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, and he currently plays ice hockey as a goaltender for NIHL 2 side Haringey Huskies, having previously played for 4 other clubs across the UK.

I know this will be common knowledge to thousands of people who probably aren’t reading this and I’m admitting my ignorance to the talents of an athlete on a sports blog but I really wasn’t familiar with Petr’s game and I apologise. I can barely handle my own life and this guy is drumming with rock legends, playing semi-pro ice hockey, and speaking 7 languages. What’s the Czech for “props, dude?”

1. No shade on the person who shared it, that’s just my default response to things I don’t expect to see on the internet these days. It makes me feel very weird and I wish my brain hadn’t been rewired like that. ↩︎