I live within shouting distance of Highbury, the historic home of Arsenal FC, until they moved to a new stadium at Ashburton Grove two years ago. 
With the wind in the right direction I used to hear the roars from the old arena wafting through my window. I have also heard Bob Dylan amongst others, as Finsbury Park is a summer concert venue.
But the new Arsenal arena is half a mile further away and out of earshot. It is also out of mind, with the old Highbury street traders vanished, a corporate sponsor name which might not be here in a few years (so I refuse to give it publicity), a silly-looking club crest af
ter they ditched the historic badge and a members-only entry to a 60,000-seat stadium. The public or visitors do not get a look in, even for pre-season friendlies.
Today Arsenal played Juventus at home (0-1) and tomorrow tackle Real Madrid but the tickets disappeared into members' hands long ago, leaving locals like me clutching at straws. 'Let's all go and watch Arsenal one night', a French friend of mine enthusiastically suggested recently. 'We can't, they don't sell tickets to the public', I sadly replied.
Adding insult to injury, Arsenal bullied the local council into approving their planning application by threatening to leave the locality. In the end, the Gunners finagled a deal which absolved them of any contribution to improving the transportation to their new home.
Local train and tube stations are closed when Arsenal play for fear of overcrowding, inconveniencing non-fans immensely. Stuff Arsenal, they don't care about their neighbourhood anymore and their corporate fans are mostly from elsewhere, too.
So instead, today I crossed town to watch Charlton tackle Athletic Bilbao. In the patchwork of world soccer in 2008, with free movement throughout the European Union and globalisation in full effect across the world, this club still recruits players from the seven provinces of the Basque country and from nowhere else.
Coming from the world's most globalized city my reflex is to call this racist, but culturalism is far too complex to revert to lazy dismissals like that. The Basques are
the oldest inhabitants of Europe and speak a non-European language, but remain stateless, despite the activities of the continent's most active paramilitaries, ETA.
According to a poll in the 1990s, 76% of their fans approved of Athletic's hiring policy. We had a similar thing in English cricket until a few years ago, with a county (Yorkshire) reknowned for its regional pride insisting only men born within its boundaries could play for it.
Bilbao won the game 1-0 but won no new fans, harassing the referee until he lost his patience and sent one of them off, while pushing, shoving and fouling their hosts in a completely inappropriate approach to a friendly. It almost seemed like petulance is inbred in a Basque-only eleven.
More interesting to me was learning they are the only club apart from Barcelona and Real Madrid to have never been relegated from La Liga, play in Spain's oldest stadium and allegedly borrowed their red and white stripes from commercial links with the docks of Sunderland and Southampton.
That's not as good as the tale of Boca Juniors choosing their colours from whatever ship would sail next into Buenos Aires harbour - a Swedish one as it happened, hence the blue and yellow uniform.
As chance would have it, both Arsenal and Juventus play in copied colours, too, and both with a Robin Hood connection.
Juve borrowed their colours from England's oldest club, Notts County, while Arsenal wear red because two of their players asked their former team Nottingham Forest to send them some shirts in 1886.
Taking the connection further, said shirts were crimson red like Forest's (remember Arsenal's one season in burgundy recently?), because Forest, formed in 1865, had chosen 'Garibaldi Red' in homage to the followers of the great Italian revolutionary.
- Sean O'Conor
With the wind in the right direction I used to hear the roars from the old arena wafting through my window. I have also heard Bob Dylan amongst others, as Finsbury Park is a summer concert venue.
But the new Arsenal arena is half a mile further away and out of earshot. It is also out of mind, with the old Highbury street traders vanished, a corporate sponsor name which might not be here in a few years (so I refuse to give it publicity), a silly-looking club crest af
ter they ditched the historic badge and a members-only entry to a 60,000-seat stadium. The public or visitors do not get a look in, even for pre-season friendlies.Today Arsenal played Juventus at home (0-1) and tomorrow tackle Real Madrid but the tickets disappeared into members' hands long ago, leaving locals like me clutching at straws. 'Let's all go and watch Arsenal one night', a French friend of mine enthusiastically suggested recently. 'We can't, they don't sell tickets to the public', I sadly replied.
Adding insult to injury, Arsenal bullied the local council into approving their planning application by threatening to leave the locality. In the end, the Gunners finagled a deal which absolved them of any contribution to improving the transportation to their new home.
Local train and tube stations are closed when Arsenal play for fear of overcrowding, inconveniencing non-fans immensely. Stuff Arsenal, they don't care about their neighbourhood anymore and their corporate fans are mostly from elsewhere, too.
So instead, today I crossed town to watch Charlton tackle Athletic Bilbao. In the patchwork of world soccer in 2008, with free movement throughout the European Union and globalisation in full effect across the world, this club still recruits players from the seven provinces of the Basque country and from nowhere else.
Coming from the world's most globalized city my reflex is to call this racist, but culturalism is far too complex to revert to lazy dismissals like that. The Basques are
the oldest inhabitants of Europe and speak a non-European language, but remain stateless, despite the activities of the continent's most active paramilitaries, ETA.According to a poll in the 1990s, 76% of their fans approved of Athletic's hiring policy. We had a similar thing in English cricket until a few years ago, with a county (Yorkshire) reknowned for its regional pride insisting only men born within its boundaries could play for it.
Bilbao won the game 1-0 but won no new fans, harassing the referee until he lost his patience and sent one of them off, while pushing, shoving and fouling their hosts in a completely inappropriate approach to a friendly. It almost seemed like petulance is inbred in a Basque-only eleven.
More interesting to me was learning they are the only club apart from Barcelona and Real Madrid to have never been relegated from La Liga, play in Spain's oldest stadium and allegedly borrowed their red and white stripes from commercial links with the docks of Sunderland and Southampton.
That's not as good as the tale of Boca Juniors choosing their colours from whatever ship would sail next into Buenos Aires harbour - a Swedish one as it happened, hence the blue and yellow uniform.
As chance would have it, both Arsenal and Juventus play in copied colours, too, and both with a Robin Hood connection.
Juve borrowed their colours from England's oldest club, Notts County, while Arsenal wear red because two of their players asked their former team Nottingham Forest to send them some shirts in 1886.
Taking the connection further, said shirts were crimson red like Forest's (remember Arsenal's one season in burgundy recently?), because Forest, formed in 1865, had chosen 'Garibaldi Red' in homage to the followers of the great Italian revolutionary.
- Sean O'Conor
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