The weekends are great again for a variety of reasons, but one significant reason is the return of the English premier league season. The last month and a half has, in particular, been sweeter for me, mostly due to the dominance of the Arsenal football team in the English Premier League. They have notched up some impressive victories (including a 3-0 victory over UEFA Cup champions, Sevilla, in the champions league) and are undefeated so far in the domestic flight.
I was talking football to a friend of mine on the weekend and we discussed the ways in which people fall into supporting teams that are not necessarily related to them by location. Because I live in Brisbane, Australia, I support the Brisbane Broncos and the Brisbane Lions. But I’ve never lived in North London, or even particularly liked London, based on the few times I’ve been there. So why then do I support Arsenal?
Well, I started playing club football when I was twelve, after returning from an extended overseas trip with my mother, brother and sister to Ireland, after the death of my grandfather. While I was overseas, I was living in county Donegal for three months and all the local kids were football mad. From memory, Manchester United and Liverpool were the popular choice, but since I hadn’t really supported football before so I was therefore left team-less.
In the childish way, I sought out a team to support that would be different to those supported by the majority of local kids. My father once told me that my uncle, who had played for Ireland under twenty-ones world cup squad, had been scouted by Arsenal and even offered a place in their youth system, but for various reason had turned it down (to get married so I am told). And in the end, that’s what settled it for me, since my family had a fairly tenuous link to Arsenal; they would be the team I would support. I also recall being partial to their strip. I do note that my father was a Manchester United supported and consider it a bit strange that I did not follow his lead and support United, a team I’m eternally grateful for not supporting, despite all their success. In this sense, I suppose supporting Arsenal was another way of rebelling against my families sporting ideology.
So by the time I turned up for training at my first club (Taringa Rovers Under 12 Division 2), I had procured my first Arsenal jersey, and I could name two players – Ian Wright and Tony Adams – and that set me on my long journey of being an Arsenal fancier which I carry on with such fanatical zeal even to this day (though it wasn’t until the premier league began to be shown on Australian television that I really really got into it. There was hardly any on television during the mid 90s and thus it was very hard to keep track of the team). I guess the peak of my arsenal fandom history was getting to see the team play Portsmouth in December 2006 at Emirates. Great contest which ended up a two-all draw with goals to Gilberto Silva and Adebayor.
I suppose the purpose of this bull session is to highlight how individuals become fixated on certain objects for seemingly asinine reasons. While I don’t consider my reasoning to be silly by any account, I just think its funny how one innocent choice I made back when I was twelve years old could lead my down the path of total obsession with one football team. But hey, it’s better than doing heroin!
Football is a funny old game, and it is interesting to find out how people come to support one team or another. A friend of a friend of mine, Spanish Fry, who runs an excellent blog regarding Arsenal, the Arsenal FC Blog, “found” Arsenal in a different way to myself.
“I started supporting Arsenal after watching Dennis Bergkamp in the 1998 World Cup and finding out who he played for. Since then I’ve watched them win the double (twice), make the Champions League Final and go through an entire English Premier League season undefeated. But more than this, I’ve watched them thrill the world with their brilliant style of play and determination to remain true to the beautiful aspects of the game.” Source: Arsenal FC Blog
And, as that little aside a show, that’s why supporting Arsenal is such an enjoyable past-time – they play the most beautiful football in the world and it has never been a better time to be an Arsenal supporter. Let see them take out the league again this season.