Arsenal’s Super League nightmare

The European Super League, the JP Morgan-capital-financed, American style, non-FIFA-canon-league, was doomed to fail from the Sunday that its existence leaked. Within days, some clubs, like Arsenal, had apologized for attempting the coup, while others, Real Madrid and Barcelona, seem intent to continue trying to renovate the idea before luring clubs back to it at some unknown date in the future.

For some clubs, this disaster of a move seems to have less consequences for others, superficially speaking. It may well be that this is not true, and that the fans of these two Spanish giants punish their clubs as the English supporters remain in the process of doing regarding the offending Premier League clubs.

Tottenham supporters are attempting to get the entire board to resign, with #DanielLevyOut also trending on Twitter; #GlazersOut and #KroenkeOut also account for Manchester United and of course, our own Arsenal, yet all three of these stories are older sagas, of which this is certainly but a part. As fans of football, we are all united in this and so should aid and support those fellow supporters, albeit of different outfits, to achieve what is best for their club and football as a whole.

Yet as we pivot back to reflecting exclusively on Arsenal once more, the humiliation, the disrespect, and the misunderstandings of the European Super League will linger on.

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Arsenal: A prouder club than to stoop so low

Arsenal is a proud club. It is old, the first London club to join the initial Football League founded up in the north of England, and also full of winning tradition. It is a club beloved in London, sometimes in towns across the UK where it probably shouldn’t be, but also in France, in Africa, in Germany, in Japan, in the United States and in Brazil; it is a club that at its very core, was a club of the people and by the people.

Arsenal has been a pillar of the community for decades – over a century in fact – and can’t be treated purely as an financial instruction. This is the way football must be ultimately, and it seems as though the American oligarchs attempting to join into the world’s most beloved sport do not respect the tenants of either the sport, nor the teams that they acquire.

The internet had a right laugh with clubs like Arsenal and Tottenham, in particular. While Arsenal have a rich history of winning, over the last twenty-five years especially, Tottenham simply do not. Yet with this noted, both teams are currently having awful seasons, and while Tottenham still has a top six chance, as well as silverware for the first time in decades in the Carabao Cup, Arsenal do not have that top six possibility, and will have to win in the Europa League to play in Europe next season.

How can either of these clubs, at this current place in time, be considered ‘super’? It seems ironic, capricious, condescending, uncooperative, undemocratic and thoughtless; it seems still today like a betrayal of Arsenal as a club historically, as well as of football itself.

How pathetic to think that, instead of fighting to get to Europe like everyone else, some clubs might insulate themselves into a permanent European competition in which they might share all of the money exclusively. This is a scar upon these clubs, and a stain upon the current ownership of each and every complicit club.

While there are pieces to come on #KroenkeOut specifically, I felt it important to write this piece to discuss the fallout and damage done to Arsenal, with only passing mention of the issue of ownership. The Gunners have put Mikel Arteta and the entire club in an awful position, apart from the issues of honor and integrity that we just discussed; while he has won two trophies in his short tenure, he must now fend off this intolerable perception of the ownership at Arsenal, while attempting to navigate this growing yet unstable team towards the top of the Premier League table and European competition, along with domestic cup success.

It’s all quite a lot, and it’s all quite unfair for the players, the coaching staff, the supporters and likely many of the executives as well. It is and will continue to be an absolute nightmare for the club moving forward, and might only be entirely reconciled with the inevitable suggestion that the team be sold to some high bidder or bidders; who might that be? I’ve a few ideas to come.