Tag: North London Forever

(En)chant(ed)

Amy OLeave a comment

So I take back what I said before the Tottenham match. Maybe only the Club People have lost their belief. Maybe they never had it, or needed it. Maybe they all just desperately needed cash that day. Or a good night’s sleep. But what I experienced at the match showed fan hope and fervent love for Arsenal. Yes, some momentary despair was in the air at times. And for sure a thing that was in the air was a lot of disdain for our rivals, Tottenham Hotspur.

I’ve been the the North London Derby only once before and, like that experience, this one did not disappoint.

The route to the stadium was unbelievably straightforward. Trains not too crowded, gates running smoothly. We stopped at the Armoury again because we had so much time on our hands after we got to the stadium even though we got a late start. It was almost empty.

All of these things made me double down on my worries about what the atmosphere might be like in the stadium in the so-called-by-me post-belief Arsenal world. The only sign that this was a match a lot of people might care about was the massive police presence outside of the stadium near where the Tottenham fans would come in. We saw what looked like a well-protected group of Tottenham fans being held over one of the bridges into the stadium to guarantee safety as we arrived at our gate on the East side of the stadium.

And then. And then. We got into the stadium. So many people standing in the concourse singing with great passion and energy. It was raucous, so loud. The stadium was full. Even the Club part where all those tickets had been up for sale filled in nicely.

The singing is one of the things that brings me the feeling I understand as collective effervescence that brings me back to the stadium again and again. You just feel like you are being swept up in this crowd of people and becoming one with them. I know it’s over a sport, maybe nothing that will change the world, but when I’m in it I feel goosebumps right into even my brain. Listening to a crowd of 60,000 people singing “North London Forever” gets me. Tears sometimes. But this time, oh my goodness, it was so LOUD I think you could hear it on the moon.

I think both of my visits to the stadium this week reminded me that even though I’ve been a devoted Arsenal supporter for more than 15 years I can never fully understand the history that is in the bodies of these fans. At an FA Cup match there were FA-specific songs, many of them I had never heard before. But huge numbers of fans in the stadium can pick them up and sing them easily just because someone got the inspiration and let the song in their heart OUT of their heart. Each song was just waiting for someone to start it.

And with the Tottenham match, that history came out in a different way. Now, singing is used to inspire the team. “We love you Arsenal, we do,” is an example. It’s also used to reward the team. After a player does something particularly impressive, the fans often reflect that back with a chant. It might be that player’s special song bestowed on them by the fans, like Gabriel Magalhaes song or might be a tune everyone knows that inserts the player’s name. When Ethan Nwaneri, a homegrown 18-year old, does something well, the fans sing, “He’s one of our own, he’s one of our own, Ethan Nwaneri, he’s one of our own,” just inserting his name into a familiar construct everyone knows.

Big Gabi is sung a lot because, lately, he scores a lot. On a corner kick, which Arsenal is recently quite good at, his is the head that usually produces the goal. But it’s more than that. He just delivers a complete performance, like he deeply cares about doing his best. Fans appreciate and notice that.

But chanting is also used to put an opponent in its place. And although I would say the chanting at the Emirates is typically 80% for our team and 20% against the other team, when Arsenal plays Tottenham that balance is substantially changed. Probably 50% of the chants were for Arsenal and 50% were against Tottenham. And let’s face it, don’t we all get more creative when our brains are doing the devil’s work? Some of the anti-Tottenham songs were as choice as could be. And largely unknown by me. It’s not yet in my DNA the way it is for my fellow supporters. I am just a new visitor to the history of this great rivalry.

We were close again to the Tottenham supporters and the job of an Arsenal fan close to the enemy is to make sure they are drowned out. It was a tough challenge. Although Tottenham was abject, they still managed to score first and that really energized their fans and demoralized ours. But even when we could not muster a real song to drown them out, we perfected our booing to cover them up as best as we could.

But Arsenal came good, scoring 2 goals. One from a corner and by Gabriel (although they later gave it as an own goal against a Tottenham player) and a bit later by a shot taken at distance by Leo Trossard. He had kind of a terrible match but he took a shot and the keeper did not stop it.

Then Arsenal managed to keep Tottenham at bay until the full 90 minutes + 5 added were up. I was a wreck for the last 30 minutes along with my compatriots. And so, apparently, was our captain Martin Odegaard, who collapsed on the field when the final whistle blew. So much soccer in so few days. And probably so much relief to ultimately hold on to the win.

And then “North London Forever” once more. Twice as loud as the loudest I’d ever heard it, at the beginning of the match, which was already twice as loud as the loudest I’d ever heard it before Wednesday.

We were happy, relieved, joyful. But we celebrated en masse on our way back to the train with the not-lofty but so familiar call and response:

“What do you think of Tottenham?” (Every Arsenal fan knows the correct answer is “Shit.”)

“What do you think of shit?” (Every Arsenal fan knows the correct answer is “Tottenham.”)

So much optimism, it’s confusing

Amy O2 Comments

We left the hotel, me in my 2019 Arsenal jersey and my husband in an Arsenal jacket. The Tube station is more or less under our hotel and we saw one other fan enter the train in his Arsenal shirt, a small boy. We changed trains at Kings Cross St. Pancras to the Piccadilly line and were joined by considerably more Arsenal jerseys, including a lot of the black Away jersey and many of this year’s pink Away jersey. By the time we stopped a few times to pick up more people, the majority of people on the train were Arsenal fans. The train let us out at Arsenal station, only the few neutrals continuing onward on the train. We were playing Fulham, also in London, and there were a few Fulham fans mixed in with our crowd.

In all the time I’ve been coming to matches, I’ve never seen the fans quite so jacked up. They were singing for all they were worth along the Ken Friar bridge and into the stadium. I went to the seats to watch the warmup and my husband went to find a beer.

We were both in our seats at the singing of North London Forever (really called The Angel), the song written by a local musician/fan that commenced being used at the stadium at the end of last season. That was pretty special and I felt the lump in my throat. Once the match started, the stadium was electric.

Normally, I am very tuned into the details of the match but I couldn’t find my focus. There was so much chanting and cheering, none of it very coordinated. A third of the stadium was singing one song, a third singing something else, and a final third singing something else entirely. I started to realize that I had only one purpose—to sing and support my team and will it, with thousands of others, to a win.

It registered with me that we weren’t having our best match. Odegaard was playing well, but things were a bit sloppy from everyone else. Other than that, there were only five moments that stood out in my mind.

  1. Jesus getting drawn in on some Fulham bad behavior and getting a yellow card before the end of the first half. Great animosity toward the referee. Seeing the guy in front of us in a wheelchair doing the international hand sign of—let’s call it—self love, and hearing the toddler next to us pipe up in his tiny voice, while holding his stuffed bear—“you DON’T know WHAT you’re doing! You DON’T know WHAT you’re doing!”
  2. Mitrovic getting behind the last two Arsenal defenders where they had no chance of catching up to get the ball. One of them was going to have to bring him down, risking a red card and maybe a penalty if it didn’t happen soon enough. And neither of them did. Instead, Mitrovic swung his mighty leg back to take a mighty shot that would produce a mighty goal….and then fell down as if God herself had laid a banana peel in his path.
  3. Our Gabriel having the ball at his feet a moment too long and Mitrovic picking his pocket. God, fresh out of banana peels, shrugging while he scored a big goal. The Fulham fans going berserk with joy. And we Arsenal fans doubling down on singing and cheering to get through this moment. 0-1.
  4. Odegaard scoring a deflected shot to bring the score to 1-1. I never took my eyes off the match, but where the ball came from, I have no memory.
  5. Willing the last goal from a corner kick near the end of the 90 minutes, from the foot of Gabriel. It wasn’t pretty but it was in the net. Waiting interminably for a ruling on a possible handball. Then celebrating like mad, as you do when you looked to be losing or tying, and ended up winning.

We hung around after the final whistle soaking up the joy, then walked back over to Arsenal station. The entire train was filled with Arsenal jerseys and fans, until stop by stop, the proportion of fans to regular people changed completely. Finally, my husband and I were the only fans left in the train car.