On holiday and another hot day.
We find ourselves in a restaurant that serves draught lager and has English football live on a big screen.
First (sort of) competitive football of the season is the Arsenal vs Manchester City game.
Community Shield on the weekend before the Premier League kicks off.
Two young lads in Arsenal shirts arrive with their dad.
I ask them where they are from.
“Hertfordshire” is the reply from the Dad.
He then says that he used to be a Manchester United fan but now supports Arsenal.
I kid you not.
Very Roger Nouveau I thought to myself.
Football wasn’t always this way.
As a student in the Eighties I met my first real life Arsenal fan. Ended up housemates with him and with a shared common language of football. Cockney Rob used to pay in to stand at Highbury just like me at St James’ Park. Being away from our respective home teams we would watch lower league games together for that shared football experience.
Some ten years later living in London one of my colleagues was a hardcore Arsenal fan. A Finsbury Park local and lifelong season ticket holder. Great guy, very knowledgeable when it came to football and still in touch with him now after many years.
My next experience of real Arsenal fans is closer to home, the in-laws to be precise. The Mother-in-law is a lifelong Arsenal fan, as are my kids’ uncles. People who have been Arsenal for decades and who all would have liked Mikel Arteta sacked in the past. Just like the Cockney wide boys I met on the train coming up to Newcastle last season.
It was 22 years since Arsenal last won the league under Arsene Wenger, so what makes the current younger generation of Arsenal supporters so arrogant?
What is it that gives this new generation of so-called football fans their deluded self-entitlement?
Across 34 seasons of the Premier League so far, only twice have clubs won the title that aren’t part of the so-called ‘Big Six’ (five of the ‘Big Six’ having shared the other 32 Premier League title wins). Blackburn bought it with Jack Walker’s money and Leicester simply fluked it.
In my opinion, the birth of the Premier League has a lot to answer for.
The Premier League justified itself by claiming the goal was to produce English players who would win trophies for England. Simply by playing with the best players in the world in the best domestic league in the world would raise the standard.
However, on February 14, 2005, Arsenal became the first team in Premier League history to name an entirely non-English matchday squad. So much for the Premier leagues altruism.
When Arsenal announced they were building the Emirates Stadium, Alex Ferguson questioned whether they would be able to fill it. Mind games probably. Highbury was a great iconic Art Deco stadium but only held 38,000 which was pretty much standard for the early years of the Premier League.
What intrigues me more is how Arsenal have become the colossus they are, having not won the Premier League for more than two decades?
Arsenal as a place does not exist. It might be on the tube map but that’s another story. Why have so many found affiliation with a club that revelled in the chant “one nil to the Arsenal”…?
Where I work almost every black kid supports Arsenal even though they have never seen their team live. My work colleagues, all bar the ones who know football, swear allegiance to Arsenal. However, like the kids have never seen the team live.
How had Arsenal created this scenario where they can asset strip other clubs of their best players having not won the Premier League for more than twenty years until it happened last season?
They maximised profits through using the media attention to create a football story and inflate their standing. The Premier League is where the buck stops, now it is closed shop capitalism where rules are created to benefit only a few at the expense of the others.
My son was gutted when Arsenal stuffed Man City three nil last weekend. He knows that when he goes back to school that all his Arsenal supporting schoolmates, who have never seen Arsenal in the flesh, will be lording it over him and then there is Bruno Guimaraes.
Our club captain and inspiration who has decided to bet that Arsenal will give him medals. Nothing will give me greater pleasure than seeing Bruno fail and Arsenal fall flat. The chances of that happening are almost nil. Brace yourself for a smug Bruno in a red shirt at the end of the season grinning and holding his winners medal and kissing the Arsenal badge. Roger Nouveau will love being part of it, shame none of the inner city kids from deprived London will be part of it.
Not wanting to end on a depressing note, I read this on The Athletic last week:
“If you just want to cheer for the club that’s going to guarantee we will win the league this year, we’re not for you. But if you like a fight, if you’re up for that fight, and if you want to back a team who gives everything even when the odds are not in your favour, then that’s who we are.” Newcastle United CEO David Hopkinson.
Bring on the new season.