🧠 INTERNATIONAL-BREAK-BRAIN TYPE OF POST
Do you have subjects you’re interested in because you know you’d be totally inept at them in the real world? Where the thrill is gaining just enough baseline knowledge to hold your own, nay, SPAR, with an expert if they ever dared walk near you at an unsophisticated party past midnight?
Mine is biology. I love it. It blows my damn mind to read how incredible life is at a molecular level. During the pandemic, I went quite deep for someone incredibly dim at academic studies. Natural selection literature really hooked me. I think about it even today. How have we been on this planet for 300,000 years, giving birth to little humans who, unlike animals in the wild, are just like… hey, I do not want to eat those blueberries that cost you 9 dollars, and I would quite like to spend the day eating nothing to make sure I maximally ruin your evening by waking up every hour hungry. If natural selection landed on my baby, you have to question what our ancestors were dealing with at the beginning; it can’t have been good on the plains of Eurasia.
Anyway, biology. The recent shift in thinking is that natural selection and the development of tools like hands, wings, and flippers are constrained to a base genome we share with most creatures. We are like Ikea kits. Genes get turned on and off, the best combos win through, but we are never going to develop genes that allow us to do things that live outside the basic tools all life hasoffered for eternity.
I was thinking about that in relation to Arsenal. Our genetic evolution as a club is starting to hit a wall. We have evolved from the sea, developed legs, and acquired light sensors. We can smell, hunt, and eat, and we are close to the top of the food chain. We cannot really develop mutant superpowers because our finances will not allow us (City did), so we have to evolve with the toolkit nature bestowed upon us. One of the tools we share with all clubs is fitness, and from a natural selection standpoint, the way our brain has been operating the fitness module would have us going extinct. Our instincts, as a creature, have not been good. We are not sharp with how we preserve our energy, so when we hunt, we are sometimes too tired. We also quite clearly lack jungle cunning.
Steller’s Sea Cow was a marine beast that inhabited the Commander Islands, situated in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia. They were extremely friendly and did not fear the humans, until the Europeans arrived, decided they tasted real good, and hunted them to extinction within 20 years.
I sometimes feel like Arsenal look at the international breaks the same way Steller’s Sea Cows would look at European sailors. It all feels a little naive. Big Gabi was reported to be carrying a knock before Sunderland, Arsenal took a chance on him, which meant he was given game time for the Brazil friendly match in North London (no doubt having his Brazil family and friends there was important). He exited with an abductor injury that will almost certainly see him out beyond the Brentford game. Then there is Calafiori, our most injury prone player. He was rumoured to have joined up with the Italian squad with an injury, he trained alone, then came back after sitting out their Moldova game.
There are two layers of Steller’s Sea Cow-like naivety here that I struggle with. We have finished second three seasons in a row, this is our fourth go at winning the league, and as a club, we are just letting damaged players go and live their dreams in unimportant games. Sea cows would see their sea cow pals get smacked up by the sailors, wade in to help, and get two for one’d for not reading the tea leaves. When is Arteta going to have the chat here?
The next issue I have is the players who should know better. Big Gabi has been here a long time, he has entered his peak, and he has not won a big trophy… why would he risk his fitness? Calafiori is a baby by footballing standards and he missed a chunk of last season because he broke on international duty. It feels like these players are just doing drive-by somersaults by the European ships, not taking heed of the gleaming harpoons being pointed at their thighs (flippers).
Hopefully, the Calafiori injury is not really that serious; it is just a shame that for at least three massive games, we have to roll the dice on three very green players. I understand that injuries can happen at any time, but it really does grate me when they happen because players took risks on their own fitness.
Ok, that was a very long-winded way of getting to quite a simple point.
Some good news on the football front. I understand our Irish friends are feeling quite sexy this morning after upsetting Hungary to make the World Cup playoffs. Extraordinary stuff, really hope they make it. Also, Norway are in their first World Cup finals since 1998, Martin Odegaard and Haaland will be in America next year. Great news for Martin who had to miss big games. Italy have to go to the playoffs as a result after getting spanked 4-1 by them.
Here is where we stand on the who has made it list:
Co-hosts: Canada, Mexico, USA
AFC: Australia, IR Iran, Japan, Jordan, Korea Republic, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan
CAF: Algeria, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia
CONMEBOL: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay
OFC: New Zealand
UEFA: England, France, Croatia, Norway, Portugal
Just to take a slight deviation, I saw this awful headline on social yesterday that basically created a new theme in academia, suggesting men nowadays are too emotional because they share their feelings with their female partners, and this is burdensome, it’s destroying dating, and it’s called mankeeping. This term has been gleefully published in the sorts of places you’d imagine and the study is from a university that has come under a lot of scrutiny of late in America.
Mankeeping describes the emotional labour women end up doing in heterosexual relationships. It goes beyond remembering birthdays or coordinating social plans. It means being your partner’s one man support system. Managing his stress. Interpreting his moods. Holding his hand through feelings he will not share with anyone else. All of it unpaid, unacknowledged, and often unreciprocated.
This narrative is deeply unpleasant and we are hopefully at a place in culture where we can tell people pushing this sort of thing to f**k off. I find it deeply troubling that the types of publications that push this message have shifted from demonising men for harbouring old tropes of masculinity (at the time, suggesting they open up and talk about their feelings) to now saying men opening up is overly burdening, especially as it is unpaid work.
I hate it. It is corrosive, divisive, and dangerous. Men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women. I am not trying to keep score here, because I do not know a single woman in my life who wants men to tone down the openness. Packaging a whole gender as soft, meek, and too emotional is exactly the opposite of where we need to be as a culture. This sort of tabloidising of men’s mental health needs to be roundly squashed.
I have said it time and time again here. One of the biggest mental health crutches I have is Arsenal and football. It is a beautiful thing. An instant opening of conversation, an outlet, a provider of opportunities to create deep relationships, and a space where you can ask for help and find people who are there for you. I love what Arsenal has given me. Deeper ties to my family. The opportunity to meet people all over the world, and to always have someone to hang with for an Arsenal game. This Arsenal community of podcasting, blogging, and vlogging is so valuable to so many men and women. So when I see universities that should know better feeding a bullshit narrative that men opening up is now a problem, you have to say something. My word, if people are not dating because it is emotionally taxing, then fu*k me, we are done as a species.
Ok my friends, that is enough sea cow chat for today. We’re getting into the part of the week where we can resume normal writing services. Check out a really fun AOP Phone In we did with all four of the boys. It is a good one. Sub up if you want it advert-free. x
Podcast## ☎️ THE AOP PHONE-IN | U-TURNS, LEGEND DREAMS, TROPHY HAUL PREDICTIONS (EARLY BIRD)
Pedro
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Nov 16
☎️ THE AOP PHONE-IN | U-TURNS, LEGEND DREAMS, TROPHY HAUL PREDICTIONS (EARLY BIRD)
It’s all the boys on the show, ready to take the awesome member questions that you’ve all been percolating on.
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