What can I say?

By: Abby | April 8th, 2008

Yes, I can feel the tears pricking in my eyes. This hurts. It’s painful. Painful enough that I’m here instead of doing my work, because I’m having trouble focusing.

So, we’re out. I can’t even say much about that because I didn’t get to watch the game- I was following it via the Guardian, refreshing every few seconds, hoping and hoping and hoping. I doubt I’ll watch it when I get home because honestly, I don’t want to put myself through it again. Like a lot of Arsenal fans, I’ll probably be hiding from football for the next few days.

Which begs the question: why do I do this to myself in the first place? I’m not a born football fan. I’m an American, I came to this game late and I could easily leave it again, abandoning Arsenal like my attempts to learn guitar. I don’t have to put myself through it. Or I could go in for a team that wins everything. I could have, like so many countrymen, become a Manchester United fan and revel in all the smugness that goes with winning every time, with thinking nothing of spending 20-some million pounds on a player that barely gets used. Americans like winners, after all.

But I’m not. I’m an Arsenal fan. And while geography played a part in that, I’m proud that I’m an Arsenal fan. Even in black moments like these ones, I’m proud. I’m proud because we aren’t Man U or Chelsea or even Liverpool, as much as certain members of our fanbase want us to act like we are. I’m proud that we do things differently. That, for the most part, we act in a way that I can feel good about. That we’ve thrown even a bit of a spanner into the Premiership, even for just a small amount of time- it could have easily become the Bundesliga, where there’s Bayern Munich and everyone else. We have been and still are challengers with some integrity, little though it may be.

And we have an identity. Yes, identities change, and this one is fairly new (younger than I am, even). But it is one. We’re not just another big club- you couldn’t interchange us with any of the major clubs of the world. We are different. Sometimes with the larger clubs I feel like there’s not anything but cosmetics separating them- what is the difference between Man U, Real Madrid, and Bayern Munich but language? The way they act is all the same. We’re different.

We have a manager who, attacks of myopia aside, believes in honesty and believes in his team. I can honestly say that there’s no one in football I admire more than Arsene Wenger. He has his flaws, no doubt. He’s stubborn as hell and a very poor loser. Sometimes that gets the best of him. But he’s got some principles still, some idealism that’s rare. I honestly believe he wants to do things right. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have at the club.

Maybe that’s doomed us. Maybe our unwillingness to accept that the world is a corrupt place and football even more so is what’s condemned us to these past two seasons. Maybe we’ll never win again as long as we keep those principles. Perhaps we should sell out and become just another big team. Maybe we should act like one more often. I don’t know. But I don’t think I want us to be like that. I like my illusions when it comes to Arsenal. I like to dream, a little.

Yes, this is just another screed from some Gooner, refusing to admit that she’s beaten even when she is, still holding up her nose at everyone else when she should just admit that we’re not as good as we think we are. That’s our arrogance- every team has some form of it.

Maybe we should change. But in the end, I like us the way we are, and Arsenal the way it is.

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