On making the Champions League final, a cascade of media bitterness, and holding on tightly to jubilation.
I opened my phone on Thursday morning as I made my first latte of the day. Although if we’re being honest, it was actually homemade cookie butter-flavored cold foam over two shots of espresso (highly recommend, by the way), because I’ve understandably been in something of a celebratory mood this week. In any event, I checked my phone as I prepared my caffeinated beverage and this notification from ESPN awaited me on my home screen:
And I just… laughed.
From the minute the referee blew for full time at the Emirates to send Arsenal to their first Champions League final since 2006, ESPN’s coverage in particular seemed to take the achievement as a personal slight. Dan Thomas, host of ESPN FC, shed the thin veneer of decorum barely hiding a smarminess befitting a purposefully unlikable antagonist from a romantic comedy to immediately skip over any analysis of the result and instead bemoan how much he wanted to punch Mikel Arteta in the face. He initially invited Jurgen Klinnsman to opine on the thought of physically striking another manager but the German stayed silent, clearly stunned by the lack of professionalism he was witnessing. So Stewart Robson jumped in, and the former Arsenal man once more betrayed the club he once represented by calling Arteta’s touchline behavior (but not Diego Simeone’s) “pathetic”.
It’s not the first time ESPN FC have seen fit to encourage the use of a little extra force against a key member of Arsenal’s first team. In 2022, Bukayo Saka stated after a match against Aston Villa that he needed more protection from referees. Alex Moreno responded by blessing us with this charming soliloquy:
“I’m going to take the side of a defender now, who reads his comments and says, ‘Oh, you’re a skillful player, you’re about pace? Don’t you worry about it, here I come, and I’m going to make sure that when I have my chance, you’re not going to be able to use your pace or skill, and I am going to break you. I’m gonna get after you.
“And while I’m doing it, when you’re sitting, laying around the ground, I’m saying, ‘Where’s your skill now, buddy? Where’s your speed now?’
“All I’m telling you is if you’re a defender and you see a guy who’s come out and told you that he doesn’t like the physical aspect of the game, that he wants to be protected, so, well, yeah, as Steve [Nicol] just said, where’s Daddy and Mommy now? Are they going to protect you? Is the referee going to protect you? No they’re not here to protect you, bud. But you better get on and play the game. Physicality is part of it. And when you tell people that you don’t like to get kicked, that ‘Oh my goodness, I need somebody to protect me,’ guess what’s gonna happen? People are going to get after you.”
To be fair to Moreno, I understand the point he was probably trying to make: asking for help from the referees as an attacker might put a target on your back. However, the way he made that point — with mocking little voices, condescending turns of phrase, painting a picture of Saka writhing on the ground in pain as a defender stands over him and taunts the winger, all with an unsettling smile on his face — ensured he came off as less of a respectable expert and more like a common bully.
But even Moreno wanted nothing to do with Thomas’ outburst on Tuesday. Such was the potency of his colleague’s unprofessional bitterness.
To add insult to requested injury, ESPN have released multiple articles in the aftermath of PSG booking the other place in the final. One cherry-picks Thierry Henry comments to craft a headline that reads, “Arsenal ‘not at the level’ of PSG, must be ‘humble’”. Another penned by Mark Ogden, a fairly consistent detractor of the Gunners, essentially spends several hundred words proclaiming that PSG will almost certainly win a consecutive Champions League title and that Arsenal should be extremely worried.
Of course, it’s not just ESPN. The game is the game, and everyone wants to play. Kenny Cunningham on Premier Sports in Ireland belligerently ranted that the Gunners weren’t as good as people thought they were, prompting Damien Duff and Shay Given to disagree. Callum Robinson, a player who will probably only ever play Champions League football on his PlayStation, also tried to scold Arsenal for celebrating an appearance in the final. And then of course were the usual bouts of trolling online.
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Shortly after the win against Atlético Madrid, Ian Wright posted a video in which he says, “Enjoy this. The celebration police will be out in force. Do not get nicked.”
Well, I almost got nicked. I almost let the haters derail my good time and shift my focus away from the important thing. Fortunately, I stumbled upon something that reminded me of what I need to be doing right now.
That thing was a talkSPORT radio segment featuring Gabriel Agbonlahor. The former Villa man chided Arsenal for celebrating a victory in the most important match at the Emirates in decades before taking a call from a fan. That supporter proceeded to call him “Agbonla-no-clue” and state that he never saw fireworks launched during his career because he was a “mediocre player in a midtable team”. Agbonlahor weakly uttered responses like “that’s not nice” and “that’s a low blow” before his co-host chimed in and rattled off the word “bottled” as many times as she could. But the damage was done; Agbonlahor was left sitting slouched with a clearly bruised ego, hilariously pouting because he had been reminded that the fanbase he wanted to put down could give as good as it got.
And that made me realize once more that all these pundits, all these forgettable ex-players, all these rivals fans online, are losers. They are losers green with bitter envy. They are former players who can only wish they’d hit such heights in their careers. Or they’re failed coaches who are jealous of how Arteta has established himself as a world class talent in his first managerial job. Or they’re sad fans who are furious at seeing their own teams surpassed by what used to be a banter club.
When you realize who these people are choosing to be, suddenly it becomes so much more unacceptable to allow them to achieve their goal, to let them take your joy. It’s like figuring out that the guy trying to mug you doesn’t actually have a gun hidden in their sweatshirt, but is desperately attempting to make it look that way with their fingers, while being about forty pounds lighter and a few inches shorter than you are. With that knowledge in hand, not barreling past them and moving on with your day seems like a wholly unnecessary misstep. It’s giving power to those who emphatically lack the means to wield it against you.
The fact is, any football fan would do what Arsenal fans are doing right now. Any supporter of any club would celebrate reaching a Champions League final, let alone a club’s first in two decades. PSG players stayed on the pitch for twenty minutes on Wednesday night when they clinched a berth in another championship match in Europe’s premier football tournament, just as they did last year when they beat Arsenal at the Parc des Princes — and they launched fireworks at full time then, funnily enough.
We have reached at a point when the bad faith criticism has become so transparent, so wretchedly frantic, that it’s literally laughable. Which is why I had such a good chuckle in my kitchen on Thursday morning when I got that notification from the ESPN app. The need for dealers in cynicism to spin a forced narrative now pales in comparison to the current deserved jubilance of Arsenal fans.
Our club is on the cusp of closing out perhaps the greatest season in its history. Players we love like Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice, and players who have been more acquired tastes like Viktor Gyökeres and Martín Zubimendi, could well achieve immortality in Arsenal folklore. Who has time to be upset in this moment? There will be plenty of time for that hopefully many years from now, when this group’s time in the sun has concluded.
But right now, this is it. We are in the good times. Perhaps it’s the beginning of them, perhaps this season is all we get. Either way, I don’t want to look back on this instant and regret not celebrating enough. I want to squeeze every ounce of joy I can out of a season that has more often than not been a golden nugget of delight in a world that contains vanishingly little of it. I refuse to let dweebs, twerps, and fucking Dan Thomas snatch such a precious thing from me.
So I’m going to keep celebrating. I’m going to keep wearing all of my Arsenal gear out and about with pride. I’m going to keep dancing, shouting, singing, and hugging the people around me. I’m going to keep cheering this team on. I’m going to keep holding onto my joy with all I’ve got.
And if Arsenal win their four remaining games, best of luck to the haters. We’ll be swimming in an ocean of ecstasy that bitter talking heads couldn’t possibly hope to steal away from us. Even if the Gunners don’t achieve that ultimate glory in the end, Tuesday and other wonderful results this season gave us enough blissful memories handcuffed to our wrists to keep us going for quite some time.
Come and take it if you dare.
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