TURIN, ITALY—Serie A leaders Juventus have completed the signing of Arthur, the cartoon aardvark from the popular animated tv series Arthur for a fee believed to be in the region of £60 million plus add ons.
The American is likely seen as one for the future having previously only played for Elwood City FC’s under-10’s boy’s side, where his sister D.W. is said to be a similarly prestigious talent for the girls team.
“Hey! What a wonderful kind of day,” the 8-year-old declared at his official unveiling, displaying little to no Italian as of yet. “Why did I want to come to Juve?”
“Well as a local Jamaican man used to sing to me every morning…. ‘You’ve got to listen to your heart, listen to the beat, listen to the rhythm, rhythm of the street’. You know?”
“It’s a simple message it comes from the heart believe in yourself that’s the place to start,” he said continuing to speak in rhyme.
How Italy’s notoriously racist fans will take Arthur remains to be seen. “Well he’s a brown aardvark so obviously it’s a concern,” Arthur’s agent Buster Baxter told La Gazzetta dello Sport, “but Juventus have assured us that what has happened to every other person of colour in this league will never happen to Arthur, until the fans come back. Besides as Arthur always says…’ Hey! We can learn to love and play and get along with each other.’ “
As part of the move Miralem Pjanić will become the new lead character of the retitled and rebooted cartoon series “Miralem” which will see the Read family adopt the 30-year-old Bosnian midfielder who will join DW, Francine and Buster at Elwood City Elementary.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article had mistakenly claimed that Juventus FC signed Arthur Read, the cartoon aardvark, when it was in fact Arthur Melo, the Brazilian midfielder and professional footballer. BSF would like to apologise for making this error once more and reiterate our desire to not make this mistake again in future.
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