Is Football Worth Getting Angry About?
Some people are starting to get annoyed. Annoyed by our failings in Europe; annoyed by our failings to find the money for Ashburton Grove; annoyed by the apparent thinness of our squad. Annoyed that only Henry seems to score for us. Annoyed that Wiltord, Gilberto and Lauren, amongst others, don’t seem to be up to the job. Annoyed that our talented youth players aren’t recreating the spirit of Manchester United, 1993, and proving Alan Hansen’s stupid maxim about winning nothing with kids wrong all over again. On the discussion forums that go alongside the main Arsenal-Mania site, there have been people calling out all kinds of faults on the back of a hard-earned draw with a decent Charlton team, at the end of a gruelling month that ended with a trip to Kiev. People waxing lyrical about the technical failings of both Arsène Wenger and English football in general. And some of them are sounding pretty pissed about the whole thing. They’re not alone. A small number of fans are getting restless.
It makes me laugh, to be honest. Because football’s worth a lot of emotional investment. The times I’ve been outside Highbury celebrating the two Wenger doubles, the afterglow and hangover the day after any great victory, 1989 – those are happy moments. The disappointment of defeat – and the semi-final of the FA cup in 1999, that Giggs goal, that Bergkamp miss, still stands out – hurts. And the pain from that lingers. But never anger. Football never really annoys me. The disgusting off the pitch antics of the last few weeks have made me angry. Sickened. But they’re nothing to do with the game itself, just the terrible off-shoots of the culture of excess and ignorance it fosters in its players when allowed to live the lives their wages enable them to indulge in. When the ball’s on the pitch, even those under criminal investigation not worthy of my mentioning here can put the tawdriness of their own socialising behind them and just play. Just look at Lee Bowyer, never a better player than when involved in a court case. Getting angry about what happens on the pitch just doesn’t seem worth it.
Decry a shaky penalty decision? Of course. Seethe at Wiltord for giving that ball away and let Valencia knock us out of the Champions League last year? Didn’t we all. But, what I guess I mean is that it was never anger that I wanted to put into words.
Gilberto plays badly? Some days I see it, misplaced passes, half-hearted tackles. Not being Vieira. But the process by which he came to be playing for Arsenal, which is, if you like, the current story of the club deflects me from feeling any real anger towards him. He’s a decent player but not a top class one. That’s the limits of my judgement. But he came to Arsenal only because we couldn’t afford Van Bommel. At a quarter of his price, a guy who managed to play every minute of the world cup finals for the eventual winners simply because the captain, Emerson, got injured; a player with little league experience, little of anything really, but with the enhanced rep of being a world cup winner, still seems pretty good business to me. And I guess I don’t get angry at individual players because they’re all just the result of speculative business and tactical decisions – Gilberto most of all – who only rarely achieve all their fans want of them. And like any business decision that counts, once made, you can’t necessarily go back on them. Particularly not in our financial position.
So some people are calling for the heads of Gilberto and Wiltord. Because they’re not good enough. Not committed enough. And they, more than anyone, seem to force our own supporters to get angry with them. Because it’s our midfield and our forward line that’s not entirely functioning as it should, and because they’re the two regulars who have to suffer by comparison with our absolute superstars, Paddy and Thierry, and because they seem to care less somehow, they become an object of a disgust that emerges for very little reason when Arsenal sit proudly on top of the premiership after their best ever start to the season.
Of course it’s exactly players like Gilberto and Wiltord who become the easy targets for fans, targets for a general dissatisfaction that the team you want only to give you pleasure causes more than that. Or more simply, that in despite of all those drunken rants down the pub, your club simply aren’t the greatest in the world. No-one wants football to make them sad, but something so trivial does. Hell, if you’re a Sp**s fan, it does at least once a week! But the anger worries me, because it’s so intransitive. It doesn’t do anything. Pleasure, disappointment, those emotions don’t need to do anything. They’re ends in themselves. Full stop reactions. But anger needs to do something. It needs to do more than rant and rave.
The anger football can cause has led, at its extreme, to that worst of all social stereotypes, and that most insistently pointless of all acts of loyalty to a game, the football hooligan – that one group most happily absent from the history of Arsenal Football Club. Whatever the bizarrely intricate levels of organisation the Chelsea Headhunters and their like have developed in their dedication to violence, the basis of hooliganism is no different from the fan who gets seriously riled by imperfection on the pitch. Allowing the entertainment of a game to release the malicious tension everyday life causes in all of us. Using football as a means to vent it. Raging against players in words; kicking some opposing fans head in – different orders of juvenile puerility perhaps, but both as useless as each other. Both changing nothing except the scale of the egotism of their perpetrator. Making no difference to the facts of what takes place on the pitch: a game played under the terms of an immense financial mechanism which means Gilberto and Wiltord’s various inadequacies cannot be resolved because there are more important things the club and manager need to worry about.
So I just don’t get it somehow. Find something else to rant about. Iraq. My bank account. The price of cigarettes. Something to which a vengeful rationale can be usefully applied. Because to football it cannot. A game can only usefully produce pleasure, anything else is just unfortunate.
And whatever our failings, watching Arsenal play still makes me happy. On Tuesday I’m going to watch us in the Carling Cup. It’s been too many years since I last got to go to Highbury. And I fully expect us to lose. But if I go ranting into the North London night don’t expect it to last. It’s just not worth it.
Maybe what I mean is that the Gallic shrug we all see Henry, Pires and most of all Wiltord do when things just don’t work out is the right one. It matters to win, it hurts to lose, but to go further than that is to risk stupidity. And if that stupidity has fuelled many great footballers towards their success, for fans it’s the demonstration of a brainlessness that’s like an uncomfortable chair: nothing more than a massive pain in the arse. While there’s still a game left worth understanding and enjoying, settle for those two possibilities. Let it go. Move on.
Some people are starting to get annoyed. Annoyed by our failings in Europe; annoyed by our failings to find the money for Ashburton Grove; annoyed by the apparent thinness of our squad. Annoyed that only Henry seems to score for us. Annoyed that Wiltord, Gilberto and Lauren, amongst others, don’t seem to be up to the job. Annoyed that our talented youth players aren’t recreating the spirit of Manchester United, 1993, and proving Alan Hansen’s stupid maxim about winning nothing with kids wrong all over again. On the discussion forums that go alongside the main Arsenal-Mania site, there have been people calling out all kinds of faults on the back of a hard-earned draw with a decent Charlton team, at the end of a gruelling month that ended with a trip to Kiev. People waxing lyrical about the technical failings of both Arsène Wenger and English football in general. And some of them are sounding pretty pissed about the whole thing. They’re not alone. A small number of fans are getting restless.
It makes me laugh, to be honest. Because football’s worth a lot of emotional investment. The times I’ve been outside Highbury celebrating the two Wenger doubles, the afterglow and hangover the day after any great victory, 1989 – those are happy moments. The disappointment of defeat – and the semi-final of the FA cup in 1999, that Giggs goal, that Bergkamp miss, still stands out – hurts. And the pain from that lingers. But never anger. Football never really annoys me. The disgusting off the pitch antics of the last few weeks have made me angry. Sickened. But they’re nothing to do with the game itself, just the terrible off-shoots of the culture of excess and ignorance it fosters in its players when allowed to live the lives their wages enable them to indulge in. When the ball’s on the pitch, even those under criminal investigation not worthy of my mentioning here can put the tawdriness of their own socialising behind them and just play. Just look at Lee Bowyer, never a better player than when involved in a court case. Getting angry about what happens on the pitch just doesn’t seem worth it.
Decry a shaky penalty decision? Of course. Seethe at Wiltord for giving that ball away and let Valencia knock us out of the Champions League last year? Didn’t we all. But, what I guess I mean is that it was never anger that I wanted to put into words.
Gilberto plays badly? Some days I see it, misplaced passes, half-hearted tackles. Not being Vieira. But the process by which he came to be playing for Arsenal, which is, if you like, the current story of the club deflects me from feeling any real anger towards him. He’s a decent player but not a top class one. That’s the limits of my judgement. But he came to Arsenal only because we couldn’t afford Van Bommel. At a quarter of his price, a guy who managed to play every minute of the world cup finals for the eventual winners simply because the captain, Emerson, got injured; a player with little league experience, little of anything really, but with the enhanced rep of being a world cup winner, still seems pretty good business to me. And I guess I don’t get angry at individual players because they’re all just the result of speculative business and tactical decisions – Gilberto most of all – who only rarely achieve all their fans want of them. And like any business decision that counts, once made, you can’t necessarily go back on them. Particularly not in our financial position.
So some people are calling for the heads of Gilberto and Wiltord. Because they’re not good enough. Not committed enough. And they, more than anyone, seem to force our own supporters to get angry with them. Because it’s our midfield and our forward line that’s not entirely functioning as it should, and because they’re the two regulars who have to suffer by comparison with our absolute superstars, Paddy and Thierry, and because they seem to care less somehow, they become an object of a disgust that emerges for very little reason when Arsenal sit proudly on top of the premiership after their best ever start to the season.
Of course it’s exactly players like Gilberto and Wiltord who become the easy targets for fans, targets for a general dissatisfaction that the team you want only to give you pleasure causes more than that. Or more simply, that in despite of all those drunken rants down the pub, your club simply aren’t the greatest in the world. No-one wants football to make them sad, but something so trivial does. Hell, if you’re a Sp**s fan, it does at least once a week! But the anger worries me, because it’s so intransitive. It doesn’t do anything. Pleasure, disappointment, those emotions don’t need to do anything. They’re ends in themselves. Full stop reactions. But anger needs to do something. It needs to do more than rant and rave.
The anger football can cause has led, at its extreme, to that worst of all social stereotypes, and that most insistently pointless of all acts of loyalty to a game, the football hooligan – that one group most happily absent from the history of Arsenal Football Club. Whatever the bizarrely intricate levels of organisation the Chelsea Headhunters and their like have developed in their dedication to violence, the basis of hooliganism is no different from the fan who gets seriously riled by imperfection on the pitch. Allowing the entertainment of a game to release the malicious tension everyday life causes in all of us. Using football as a means to vent it. Raging against players in words; kicking some opposing fans head in – different orders of juvenile puerility perhaps, but both as useless as each other. Both changing nothing except the scale of the egotism of their perpetrator. Making no difference to the facts of what takes place on the pitch: a game played under the terms of an immense financial mechanism which means Gilberto and Wiltord’s various inadequacies cannot be resolved because there are more important things the club and manager need to worry about.
So I just don’t get it somehow. Find something else to rant about. Iraq. My bank account. The price of cigarettes. Something to which a vengeful rationale can be usefully applied. Because to football it cannot. A game can only usefully produce pleasure, anything else is just unfortunate.
And whatever our failings, watching Arsenal play still makes me happy. On Tuesday I’m going to watch us in the Carling Cup. It’s been too many years since I last got to go to Highbury. And I fully expect us to lose. But if I go ranting into the North London night don’t expect it to last. It’s just not worth it.
Maybe what I mean is that the Gallic shrug we all see Henry, Pires and most of all Wiltord do when things just don’t work out is the right one. It matters to win, it hurts to lose, but to go further than that is to risk stupidity. And if that stupidity has fuelled many great footballers towards their success, for fans it’s the demonstration of a brainlessness that’s like an uncomfortable chair: nothing more than a massive pain in the arse. While there’s still a game left worth understanding and enjoying, settle for those two possibilities. Let it go. Move on.
