Salvation Holdout Central

13 December 2006

Wigan Athletic 0 - 1 Arsenal
Adebayor 88'

I laughed when I saw how we won this game. A wink and a nod kind of way to win, with a goal in the 88th minute. I would normally treat Wigan like any other lesser team of the EPL (like, say, Sheffield United) but my friend Jay decided to follow them, after he had heard enough of my Gunners talk. I've been surprised how diligent he has been to check scores and keep abreast of their news. Sure he isn't going out of his way to find copies of their games to watch, but not everyone is as obsessive as I am. It is just nice to watch him make the effort. Of course, he picked the team Wigan because it reminds him of Jermaine Wiggins, but I won't (can't?) be picky. This project has arrived at a dead-end, in terms of my extemporaneous discussions (Arsenal dead-ended back in February); I shall henceforth be returning to the topic of sports and the world. I originally wanted to help Americans gain an appreciation for a sport none of them seem too inclined to care about, and initially the prism was other sports. A smart, obvious tactic: look, soccer has things that remind me of baseball. Eventually however, the prism became me. Actually that's wrong. The prism became soccer, and I was the object in need of understanding. That is not what we are here for, and I apologize for the digression. Since my fascination with soccer has increased considerably in the last year, I've picked up a couple of books regarding the culture surrounding it. I don't live in Britain, so I have to try and understand it this way, through personal accounts, and so on. The first book I read was the book that inspired this project, as I've mentioned before, Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. His book is a stunning look into the history of Arsenal, and it certainly increased my love of the team a thousand-fold. The most fascinating parts of it were how he would always find something in his life comparable to how Arsenal was doing. When they won the double in 1971, it’s as if he was on top of the world. He was 14 or so at the time, perhaps at the peak of childhood, before the truth of adolescence really sets in. I’ve moved on to some newer books, that my dad gave me for Christmas; one about the depths of hooliganism, the other much more focused on the culture of the hooligan, or casual, as they are often called. The casual is a football hooligan who is wearing a form of camouflage: nice clothes. They wear casual clothing, that is often designer, and is always expensive. They started to do this in order to avoid being singled out by the police. The culture of the casual began in the late 1970s, although its roots of course stretch into the history of football. Eventually the police caught on that kids who dressed like punks were often punks themselves, and would preemptively kick them out of soccer games. So, the punks adapted. They started to wear nice clothes; the police would have no idea. They’d get kicked out eventually for fighting, but they would get the chance to fight in the stadium. The book is fascinating though, because the trends in clothing change absurdly quickly, much like the trends in high fashion. Whereas punk-chic was around for probably two years, no one designer would stay in for more than 8 months. I started looking up the designers the author mentioned, and found some clothes I wanted to buy. Note to self: … get on that. The hooligan is on my mind, however, for another reason. AS Roma played Manchester United yesterday, and there were some clashes between fans, with police as the third wheel. Both of those clubs have pretty ardent supporters, who will punch and kick you if you talk any shit. There have been calls of unnecessary brutality on both sides, which makes me think, well maybe it was necessary. The problem with all this is, I can understand where the hooligans are coming from. When a team really gets in your blood, you get fired up to defend them. This is a poor example, and I may have mentioned this earlier, but last fall, one of my friends (jokingly, even!) talked some shit about Arsenal, and then went on about Chelsea, and well I just fucking tackled him. Given I was pretty drunk sure, but I’ve never even been to an Arsenal match and I just went at him. In my mind, the soccer hooligan is the modern day pirate. The analogy isn’t perfect I know, but I think the image works well enough. They are romanticized in that they are always pictured fighting police and other fans in ‘honor’ of their team. Then of course, the sensible people say, oh that’s not romantic, they’re beating other people up and getting beat up themselves. That’s stupid. People said the same about pirates back in the day: oh you’re robbing other people, and shooting good people, this is bad. What have we done with them now? Johnny Depp drunkenly swaggers his way through one-liners and bullets. I’m telling you, there could easily, so very easily, be a movie saga made exactly like that about some British ruffians trekking down to Germany and raiding hotels. It’d be fucking hilarious, it’d be like European Vacation meets Pirates of the Caribbean, and everyone would see it. It would rake in the dough. I should shut up and start working on this movie. I do, in a sense, wish I was a football hooligan. I wish I lived in England, rather I wish I had grown up there, so I could have paraded around with other 13 year olds in clothing we can’t afford (we got it, of course, by thieving). But is it all love of the romantic imagery? Do I want to be a football hooligan simply because it’s foreign and exotic? It’s not like being a bored American kid, who would roll tires down hills, hang out in parking lots, and get drunk while watching Beauty and the Geek. It just… it seems cool, right? Grass is greener, I get it, &c. I think part of it comes from my desire to express my love for Arsenal, and to be understood. I don’t mean that I want to be surrounded by Gunners fans, but if I walk around wearing a jersey for Cesc Fabregas or something in England, people will know who he is. People might engage with me: “Oh, he signed that big contract, right, eh? Eight years, wot.” It’s my desire to be understood, yes, but it’s also as if I am participating in a dialogue that does not exist over here, or is very muted. It is special to find someone who even follows the EPL or the Champion’s League (though thank God they’ve started showing that on ESPN, that’s pretty fucking cool), let alone someone who follows Arsenal. But my steps to engage in this dialogue are hopeless because it does not occur here, it occurs there, over the vast ocean. It is like listening to old, 1970s punk rock: most people here just don’t. But I feel like they should. Am I hoping for something that just won’t, just can’t happen? Is this entire project, to get Americans to like soccer, is it hopeless? Should I just move to England? I should begin an experiment: I should start talking about soccer with more people. So far I’ve stuck to the three or four people I know who enjoy it. My friends don’t count: they don’t really care about sports, at all, except baseball a little bit, and that only because we finally got the Nationals. I’ll work on this; we’ll see what happens.