Not Your Father's Football

"Foreign glory hunter." You get this a lot if you tour the comments sections of many Arsenal blogs or other football fora. I'm long enough in the Gooner tooth to understand that Arsenal are a club many a neutral love to hate. I can understand that. In the thirties Chapman took a team from the 'soft' south of England and transformed them into the best club in the land, dominating in a manner that the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United wouldn't do for decades.

In the late nineties and early naughties a bookish looking, diet-conscious, tee-totaling Frenchman came along and upset the holy equilibrium of lad football culture by taking the same glorious club to still unequaled heights. In less time than it took Alex Ferguson to get his hands on a league title, Arsene Wenger did so three times and along the way produced an unbeatable team, rocking the throne of Ferguson's United with a bunch of hardly known cast-offs from the continent and beyond. When money was proving the way in the newly anointed Premier League, Wenger showed them a cheaper solution without sacrificing all the swashbuckling style. 

I did my time on the BBC 606 forum, so I'm well used to the window lickers, the wind-up merchants, and other keyboard warriors. They all have a fascination with the inner musings of Gooners that I just can't appreciate because I could really give a shit about what other supporters of other clubs talk about amongst themselves. Hell, I don't even like to listen to all Arsenal supporters if I'm honest [here's to you Shazam, you colossal fuckwit]. 

Most recently I ‘enjoyed’ the glory-hunter accusation on a 7amkickoff thread that was a piss-take on Crouch’s goal for Stoke versus Manchester City. Stoke trolls took umbrage at the mockery of that rare bit of technical skill and used the occasion to preach. The suggestion is that if you follow a ‘big’ club from outside the shores of England you are doing so for glory. These same bright sparks will get both feet in about how Arsenal have won fuck all in the last seven years.

In this instance it was accompanied with a series patronizing, sanctimonious lectures about how supporting your local team is the only ‘right’ way to follow football, holding this singular mode up as some kind of pillar of enlightenment, aimed at the unwashed global audience that just so happened to bankroll the spending spree this fellow’s club went on in the last few seasons to secure the services of players such as Crouch, Palacios, etc.

This attitude harkens back to a time before technology and media took massive leaps forward in the television and internet ages, when supporting your local team and living in one town for your entire life was, if not the only option, the most realistic or most likely. But time stands still for no man, even if it does for knuckle dragging primates.

This delightful chap then decreed that this glory-hunting phenomenon is most despicable within England’s very own borders, and detailed a loving story of how his support for Stoke was passed down to him by his father, and his father before that, and his father before bleaarrrghhhhhh. You know what else fathers pass onto their kids? Alcoholism. Child Abuse. Molestation. Racism.

And ignorance. This past weekend we traveled to the Britannia and scrapped for a point. On the balance of things not a bad result. Tony Pulis afterwards pointed out that no 'big' team showed up and took all three points from his side and he's absolutely right there. It's a tough place to play, not least because of the atmosphere at the ground, where 27,000 some odd folks gather weekly to watch professional footballers wipe the ball off with towels at every throw-in for the home side. 

Among that charming crowd's contribution to events, were several rounds of "Arsene Wenger is a wanker, is a wanker." Their justification is that Wenger is a sour loser who takes every opportunity to relive Ramsey's legbreak and insult the rugby stylings of Stoke's football [ignoring the reality that journalists set the table with their questions to get inflammatory headline worthy quotes]. This may have been true in the past, but this time around he was fulsome in his praise both before and after.

The guy who wants to put this behind him the most is probably Ramsey. But he still gets stick because he didn't accept the apology from the man who shattered his legs to pieces then stood by [laid in a bed healing, actually] while everyone up and down the land defended his actions and claimed he wasn't that type of player, even if Francis Jeffers would disagree. For this, young Aaron will be booed every single time he returns to the Britannia, so say the trolls who populate the Arsenal corner of the blogosphere.

Another amusing bit about these so-called 'real' football supporters of Stoke, is that they are so enthusiastic about the physical style their club employs, and are so wistful about the days in the seventies when Shawcross-like tackling was the norm, but they are so unbelievably precious about what gets said about their team, manager, and fellow supporters. On Arsenal blogs.

Feel free to go recklessly into challenges that can and do break players legs, but don't you dare assault me with your words. Then they go for the jugular by calling Johnny Foreigner a 'glory hunter' because he didn't have the god-given privilege to be born in England and have to wipe the ball off with a towel in order to play football. I mean, it's not as though a small club like Wigan could tear through the top teams by putting the ball on the floor or anything.

Best of all, without a shred of irony they jump on internet forums and troll Arsenal blogs and preach to us about what constitutes 'real' support, making fools of themselves with contradiction after contradiction, all the while holding up this notion of keeping it local and supporting the home team, by railing on rival supporters thousands of miles away on a computer. If that 'real' support your father schooled you on is so much better, why can't you get enough banter on match days at the ground, eh? You can't, because you don't live in your father's world, and this is not your father's football.


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