Dear Myles,
Twenty-four hours have passed, and now, as an Arsenal ‘stakeholder\’ (i.e. somebody with an emotional investment in AFC), I feel the need to lash out.
I am no kid. When I was, Nottingham Forest was my team.
That was my formative introduction to the beautiful game. John McGovern, John O\’Hare, Peter Shilton, Larry Lloyd, and the nonpareil John Robertson.
For all I knew, that was how you played football, and that is how you won trophies. As the greatest manager of all time used to say, “We only need to score one goal, ‘cos they won\’tâ€.
As a teenager I found myself in London, and, more specifically, in Islington, which was to become home for over twenty years.
I became quite fond of my village team, who weren\’t that bad. Then a match at the end of the 88-89 season against Liverpool turned my little bit of London upside down. And I suddenly had a new team.
I didn\’t become a full-blooded Arsenal fan, and get in line for my season ticket for several more years, and, to be honest, under duress of my Australian wife, who thought it criminal to live in N5 and not go watch your local team.
So, after a while, me and my buddy Steve had our own spots, about 20 rows back, just left of the goal, in the North Bank. I loved it, you could even smell the grass.
One game, watching Henry tear apart the Charlton defence, I swear you could smell the fear. Around that time I remember being in cab on my way home from work and my driver, a Chelsea supporter, asked me who I thought our best player was.
Henry was too obvious, so I think I went for Pires. “No, Vieiraâ€, he said. “Next game, just follow him, don\’t watch anyone elseâ€.
I did, and continued to. Patrick Vieira is possibly the best footballer I have ever had the joy of watching.
He may be the best player to ever grace Highbury. Maybe England. A couple of seasons later another cab driver, a West Ham fan, asked me the same question. I told him that we should keep Vieira and sell Henry. He thought I was an idiot.
I have a photo of my eldest son, Hugo, who is seven, with the Premier League and FA Cup Trophies. He\’s too young to remember. Unfortunately I have no photo of my younger son, Oliver, who is 5, with any cup. I was looking forward to a photo of both of them with a trophy soon. I guess the season isn\’t over yet.
So where is my rant going?
Losing a final is something every team and fan has to face.
I cried when Forest lost to that own goal against Spurs all those years ago. I was in Paris when Arsenal finally succumbed to a better Barca side, but no tears on that occasion. Any tears that night were being reserved for the unlikely miracle of winning.
What hurts about yesterday was I couldn\’t see the passion. I wanted to see Patrick Vieira grabbing that midfield mess by the scruff of the neck. I wanted to see Pires overlapping with a young Cole and charging down the wing into the box. I wanted to see Henry scare the life out of their defence. Part of me was reaching for the team of my childhood and crying out for a John Robertson left foot fucking miracle.
Instead, we got what we got.
The village team from North London lost to England\’s second biggest city. Or something like that. I guess now we are not the local club that blew everybody away, winning cups, titles, setting records, and scaring the beejezus out of all who come before us.
Wenger changed the program. We are Arsenal. Runners up.
Myles replies :
Bravo, Andy !
You will have become more coherent by the time the Barcelona second leg comes round.
Crying is fine, crying is OK.
Your Aussie Mrs clearly has more common sense than you do.
The experience of every football fan is different, and yet much is shared.
After I interviewed Denis Law and Pat Crerand for the student newspaper, Pat kindly gave us a lift back to Manchester University Student Union in his big car, possibly a Zodiac.
Decades later Patrick Vieira gave me and three French journalists a lift back from Colney to Hampstead. By then I had a wife and two kids. His car was a black Cherokee SUV with blacked windows and I got in the front with Pat.
I knew we would not crash because my favourite Arsenal player made this drive every day and knew the road backwards, but there was a split second where I could have waited to see if Pat did up his seatbelt.
If he didn’t fasten his seatbelt, maybe I shouldn’t bother. Because even if we hit anything, we would be OK, I thought. I have been in three car crashes as a passenger and never been hurt (touch wood).
Despite that, I buckled up without waiting to see if Patrick did.
Pat didn’t use his seatbelt. He didn’t drive fast, we talked, we were soon in north London
Pat Crerard was United’s No.4 and Pat Vieira was Arsenal’s No,4 and I occasionally wonder if anybody else has had a lift from both those No.4s
Summing up, football had given me a helluva lot of excitement and fun and I’ve tried to put something back into the game by writing a book about it and by blogging here for 13 years. For me, football is the only sport that matters.
Having said that, I get my kicks from great players and great games, not from supporting a club, so football has never made me cry. And it never will make me cry.
Sure, when England won the World Cup in 1966 I was very happy and also surprised.
Many grown men wept that day but not Myles Palmer. I just remember being embraced by a complete stranger, a middle-aged man in a belted raincoat. He probably remembered VE Day and this drama was like that for him. When the final whistle went,and England had win 4-2 after extra time, he had to spontaneously hug somebody, so he grabbed the nearest human and that was me.
“We done it !” he shouted.
This bloke had summed up two hours of dramatic football in three words.
I was very emotional but I wasn’t crying. That game is a blur because I was suffering from emotional overload, I suppose, having been at Wembley for all of England’s games before the final.
This is the truth : I can’t remember anything between Helmut Haller scoring for West Germany and that geezer grabbing me and shouting, “We done it !”
I know what happened because I’ve seen films of 1966 about 500 times- but the match itself is a total blur.
When I saw Haller’s shot go in, my heart missed a beat. I was aware of that my heart had missed a beat – I could feel it. Since ’66 I’ve never once been aware of my heart missing a beat.
That was all a very long time ago.
And while the 1966 World Cup Final was unforgettable, it wasn’t one of the highlights of my life.