Piero Hincapie joined Arsenal from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer transfer window and hit the ground running.
The 24-year-old Ecuadorian has become a regular starter and fits just as well at centre-back as he does at left-back.
He is one of those defenders who just makes everyone around him look calmer and more organised. Mikel Arteta clearly knew what he was doing when he brought him in.
Last Sunday, Hincapie played the full ninety minutes as Arsenal put four past Tottenham in the north London derby.
That result put Arsenal five points clear at the top of the Premier League table. It was a proper statement performance and exactly what the title challenge needed at this stage of the season.
A few hours after the final whistle, Hincapie went live on TikTok at his handle @_pierohincapie and just started playing Call of Duty with around 7,400 viewers watching live at one point.
His TikTok Live ranking is Division 2, top 10%, which is actually a really strong position in TikTok’s own Live Creator League system. That system works like a game itself, where streamers earn diamonds and climb through divisions like D5, D4, D3, D2, and so on based on engagement during their lives. Getting to D2 and sitting in the top 10% means he is genuinely doing well as a streamer, not just messing around.
None of this is surprising once you look at where Hincapie has been before.
He was part of the Bayer Leverkusen squad that went unbeaten for an entire 2023-24 Bundesliga season and won the club’s first ever German title.
He has already been through a title race under pressure and came out with a winners medal. There is nothing about Arsenal’s situation that should rattle him, and clearly it is not rattling him.
The gaming thing also makes sense because of his former Leverkusen teammate Victor Boniface, now on loan at Werder Bremen.
Boniface is a well-known gamer himself and had one of the most chaotic transfer announcement moments ever.
He was live on Twitch playing Call of Duty Warzone on September 1, 2025, when he suddenly got a phone call. He muted himself, looked genuinely stressed, then told his viewers he had to leave for a wedding and ended the stream. A few hours later, his loan to Werder Bremen was officially announced. So the footballer-gamer pipeline definitely started in Leverkusen.
Arsenal now have a full seven days off after beating Spurs, which is their first proper rest break of 2026.
That kind of recovery time does a lot for a squad chasing a title over a long season. Chelsea are next up on March 1, and they had better come prepared as the Ecuadorian is rested, locked in, and evidently very comfortable in north London.
