“Why do you keep staring at your cell phone?” my friend Tommy asked as class was about to start.
“I’m waiting for a text message,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Well, there’s a soccer game in the Ukraine that I’m following, and a guy in Scotland is supposed to send me an email when someone scores, and Hotmail will send me a text message.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
I think soccer (Football! – Editor) is popular in Texas, compared to the average American state. The cities of Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio have fairly large youth soccer programs, and on the campus of my university I’ve seen people wearing the jerseys of Milan, Juventus, Lazio, Barcelona, Manchester United, and, yes, Arsenal.
Of course, these football fanatics are still few and far between. If I wear my Arsenal t-shirt to class, I normally end up explaining to someone who they are. Among the conversations I’ve had involving the beautiful game are a lengthy conversation with a baseball fanatic at a New Year’s party debating the point of the offside rule and my brother’s best friend asking “if they all wear gloves like the goalie, can they all use their hands?” I’d like to say he was joking, but I believe I’d be lying.
That said, my closest friends are great in that they will at least pretend to care. Now all I have to do is get them to watch Fever Pitch and they’ll be hooked I think, except for the couple who have already been lost to Manchester United, and one, inexplicably, to Manchester City.
My personal love for the Gunners dates back to the 1980s when, as an impressionable girl of about 4 years of age, I watched my older brother begin his career in soccer, playing for a team named after a great English club called Arsenal. Years later, when satellite television brought the English game to my house, my team was already chosen. The first Arsenal game I ever saw was an FA Cup replay against Port Vale, and I watched as the team avoided a rather large amount of embarrassment by winning on penalties. A few weeks later, I saw them lose to Chelsea in the second leg of the League Cup semis.
My brother, incidentally, took a round about trip into turning into a Man United fan. A mid-90s obsession with Ajax turned into a more recent inclination towards the guys from Old Trafford, although to call him a bandwagon fan is a disservice to all the MUTV-watching fanatics the world over. At least they know who the players are. When sitting down with my brother to watch the now infamous “Battle of Old Trafford” this season, he was slightly surprised when the announcer said the name Ronaldo, and I had to explain to him that his team had not bought the Brazilian striker. I hope this helps illustrate the barren wasteland of knowledge this place is. After all, my brother is extremely knowledgeable about the game for somebody around here.
It is in this environment that I struggle to follow Arsenal. I get up early on Saturday mornings to follow games when every other college student I know is sleeping. If Arsenal are being shown on pay per view and it’s a good game, I’ll pay. If it’s an early kickoff, I have the pleasure of waking up at 6 in the morning on a Saturday and seeing the game for free. Otherwise, I listen to an internet audio feed while watching the Bundesliga on television. I’ve skipped work and class to watch matches. On the night Arsenal won the league in Manchester, I took the afternoon off work and raced back and forth between watching the television and decorating for an end of school party. After Wiltord’s goal, I abandoned decorating altogether.
A few weeks after sitting in class waiting for text messages to tell me Arsenal’s fate in Kiev, I sat in a university computer lab watching Soccernet’s extremely slow text updates of the return leg. When the update came telling me Ashley Cole’s diving header put the Gunners ahead, I raised my arms in triumph.
“We scored!” I said.
“You follow Manchester United right?” my friend Ben asked.
“Arsenal,” I replied, annoyed. This was at least the fourth time he’s made this mistake.
“Oh that’s right. Sorry.”
Ah, my ignorant Texan friends. If only they knew the joy of following arguably, the greatest team the world has ever seen …