‘We managed to piss off all the people we were fucking fed up with.’
This is my favourite quote of all time. It comes from John Lydon, lead singer of the Sex Pistols. It is taken from Julien Temple’s 2002 amazing documentary ‘The Filth and the Fury’ about the rise of The Sex Pistols in late 1970s, recession ridden England. The documentary probably marks the last moment of lucidity before Lydon collapsed into self-parody.
Football is my main passion in life but music is a very close second. I am not a sports person, all told. I don’t watch or particularly enjoy any other sport other than football. I have always enjoyed football more as a form of expression than an athletic endeavour. Arsenal goes back in my family for over a century, the club is a huge part of my identity.
There genuinely aren’t many (any?) people outside my immediate family who talk to me about anything else whatsoever- even in my immediate family it is never far from conversation. My wife is an Arsenal fan as are the majority of my family. So the question of Arsenal and identity matters to me a great deal.
In music, I am hugely attracted to bands who ‘upset the established order.’ The Stone Roses are a particular fascination to me because of their proximity to situationism. Their name, Stone Roses, revolves around the idea of something beautiful emerging from something mundane, the fact that art emerges from toil. Their first EP was called ‘Garage Flower’ owing to the same principle.
They wrote a beautifully melodic pop song called ‘Bye Bye Badman’ which sounds like a wistful, summer of love pop song but is ostensibly about throwing stones at policemen. The situationists used to graffiti anti-establishment messages around the streets of Paris in the 1960s. One of their most famous, ‘beneath the paving stones- the beach’, centred on the idea that a better world was only possible through acts of revolutionary violence.
In their (in)famous 1976 lament ‘God Save The Queen’, The Sex Pistols penned the lyric ‘we’re the flowers in the dustbin.’ I used that lyric for a headline to a piece I wrote earlier this season. It has the same situationist philosophy at its core. This sort of imagery has always appealed to me in music.
So what the ever loving fuck does this have to do with Arsenal? Well on Wednesday night, I was nestled in the upper tier of the Wanda Metropolitano. Just as engrossing as the match on the pitch was the action in the two dugouts. Diego ‘Cholo’ Simeone, dressed as he pretty much always is in all black and Mikel Arteta dressed as he always is, in black fleece and grey slacks.
I watched Simeone stalk the touchline, looking somewhere between someone who had been possessed by some sort of latent demon, a little like Jimi Hendrix on his knees setting fire to his guitar and a little like Johnny Cash. I cannot pretend that I am a scholar of Spanish football but I have always held a huge amount of respect for Simeone and Atleti.
Playing in a league that really ought to be and is talked about as a duopoly, Simeone’s Atleti have consistently refused to stand aside. I view them as the flowers in the dustbin of Spanish football. I get the (probably inaccurate) impression of them as an irritant that lots of people would prefer to go away, but they won’t, like an unloved stepchild or an ulcer in the corner of your mouth.
I recognise that most of this is a little preposterous. They are a corporation run by suits, just like any other elite football team. They have elements of their support linked heavily to fascism and neo-nazism (probably not unlike punk rock). Their stadium, like Arsenal’s, is sponsored by an airline. I am under no illusion that they are actually a bulwark against establishmentarianism.
But in terms of their on-pitch identity, I like and identify with them. I see them as a club that looks to upset the established order of Spanish football. I was envious that, even in their new, ultra modern stadium sponsored by an airline, their fans could intimidate a supine referee out of a penalty decision. I likewise do not kid myself that, despite Lydon’s own Arsenal leanings, Arsenal actually represent anything close to punk rock or situationism.
However, I do feel a sort of affinity with Atleti’s situation. Arsenal’s main competitors in the last 20 years have been Chelsea and Manchester City. I think those two clubs have taken success from Arsenal and, to say the very least, I do not respect how they have done it. I don’t respect their success. (I am sure they are both devastated to learn this).
On Wednesday night, as I watched Arteta and Simeone, draped in dark colours, stalk their respective technical areas (as well as a few yards outside), I saw something a little kindred, as least as kindred as it is possible to be in this era of football. I am absolutely certain those more schooled in Spanish football than I could ‘well, actually’ this article to death and with good cause.
But Simeone’s Atleti is a really good expression of who and what I want Arteta’s Arsenal to be- who I think they are. I have to hold that contradiction of wanting my team and my manager to be a little unloved while simultaneously getting angry when people are critical of one or both. Ben White being chided for walking on the Atleti crest in the tunnel felt a little like Sid Vicious spitting on the front row.
But most of all- at my core- I want Arsenal to piss off all the people I am fucking fed up with.
