After Arsenal’s Community Shield win over Manchester City, a brief moment on the pitch caught fans off guard.
As a mashup of Shakira’s “Waka Waka” and the dance classic “Freed from Desire” played during the post-match celebrations, Kai Havertz was seen casually breaking into the floss dance for a few seconds while chatting with the likes of Ben White nearby.
— 🍍 (@dayumember) August 17, 2026
Part of what made the moment stand out is that it’s not really Havertz’s style. He’s never fit the mould of a modern footballer chasing the spotlight.
While plenty of his peers build public personas around fast cars, nightlife, or carefully managed brand deals, Havertz has built a reputation for being almost the opposite: calm, quiet, and largely detached from celebrity culture.
His interests away from the pitch lean toward rescue donkeys he sponsors back home, piano practice he picked up as a way to switch off from football, and a low-key family life with his partner and dog in London.
Seeing him casually pull out a dance move like the floss, even briefly, felt out of character in a way that made it stand out even more.
For anyone who grew up online in the late 2010s, the dance itself needs no introduction, but its story is worth revisiting.
The floss was created by Russell Horning, better known as the “Backpack Kid,” who first posted himself doing the fast, arm-swinging move on Instagram back in 2016.
It stayed a relatively niche internet clip until May 2017, when Horning performed it live on Saturday Night Live alongside Katy Perry, introducing the dance to a mainstream television audience for the first time.
From there, its popularity exploded. In late 2017, Fortnite added the floss as a purchasable in-game emote, and with the game’s massive player base, millions of people began copying the dance in real life.
It quickly became one of the most recognizable dance crazes of its era. Kids performed it at school talent shows, athletes broke it out after scoring goals or winning championships on live television, and it even showed up at weddings. For a couple of years, it felt almost impossible to avoid.
That same overexposure eventually killed it. As schools, media, and every corner of pop culture repeated the dance endlessly, it lost its original novelty and slowly turned into a punchline.
The dance’s legal side got messy too. Backpack Kid sued Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, in 2018 over using the move without his permission or payment, though the case was later dropped.
By 2019, internet culture had already moved on to a new wave of TikTok dances, and the floss was left behind as a relic of a very specific, very online moment in time.
Which is what made Havertz’s brief moment with it feel like such a throwback.
A dance that once defined an entire era of viral culture, and then just as quickly became something people were embarrassed to be caught doing, showed up again for a few seconds on a football pitch in 2026, performed by one of the last players anyone would expect to bring it back.
On the pitch, Arsenal made light work of their opponents that day. Arsenal took the lead almost right away, with Riccardo Calafiori scoring just 24 seconds in, after a pass from Myles Lewis-Skelly.
They made it 2-0 in the 28th minute, when Kai Havertz headed in a cross from Christos Tzolis. Martin Ødegaard added a third goal just after half-time, finishing off another pass from Tzolis. Ødegaard was named player of the match.
The result gave Arsenal their third Community Shield in four seasons under Mikel Arteta, and set an early tone as they head into their defense of the Premier League title.
