It’s absurd to say Arsenal can only celebrate if they win a trophy. Fans live for moments. Let’s not make a ration book for joy
IT was a bitterly cold night in Birmingham last Tuesday when Newcastle United went to Villa Park. Eddie Howe’s team had not won a league match since the middle of December. Most people expected Aston Villa to outclass them and push them down into the bottom half of the table.
Newcastle had brought a big contingent of travelling fans, as they always do. It is a long journey from the North East at the end of a working day. It would have cost plenty of money and effort to make the trip in deep midwinter and support a team who have drifted into the doldrums.
They made a lot of noise, those supporters. They got right behind their side and Newcastle surprised most neutrals by outplaying Villa. They won 3-1 and deserved it and, at the end of the game, the players and the staff went over to their fans in the Doug Ellis Stand and celebrated with them.
Anthony Gordon, their best player that evening, stood on the turf and sang along to ‘Who’s That Team We Call United’ and the fans, some shirtless in the cold, danced and roared.
They hadn’t won a trophy. They hadn’t sealed a spot in the top four or made it into a cup final. They had won a mid-season game that moved them up to seventh place.
My inner curmudgeon thinks the celebratory dressing-room team pictures after every victory, which Newcastle have pioneered, are excessive. There’s an even bigger part of me, though, that thinks I need to get over it.
Good luck to the Newcastle players for celebrating with their fans at Villa Park. I’d rather they did that than ignore them and march straight down the tunnel. I hate it when players remain aloof from supporters. I hate it when I see images of players getting off a team bus and walking straight past their fans with their headphones on.
We want our players to be relatable, don’t we? We want to see that a win means as much to them as it does us. We want to believe it’s more than just a job, more than just 90 minutes at the office. And we want fans to feel valued for their loyalty, not taken for granted.
So, actually, I looked at the Newcastle players celebrating with their fans and it sent a thrill of joy through me. Football is supposed to be about joy, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be about a shared love of the game that produces moments and emotions like the ones the Newcastle fans experienced at Villa Park.
I felt exactly the same about Arsenal’s celebrations following their victory over Liverpool at the Emirates on Sunday. I enjoyed seeing Martin Odegaard living the moment with the supporters. I loved seeing him clowning around, wielding a camera and taking pictures of the Arsenal club photographer. Michael Essien did something similar after the 2009 FA Cup final and picked up a camera belonging to a photographer from The Times. The paper published his pictures. They, too, were images of sheer joy.
It was a significant win for Arsenal on Sunday. Lose to Liverpool and they were as good as out of the title race. Everyone would have been queuing up to call them bottlers again. Everyone would have been saying they were hollow men, that they had no spirit, that they did not have the character to be winners.
But Arsenal’s players stood up. In front of their own fans, they saved their best performance of the season so far for their biggest game. They were brilliant from start to finish. And in the aftermath, relief, vindication and rekindled hope coursed through them and they celebrated. Why wouldn’t they? Mikel Arteta’s touchline antics sometimes do him few favours, but it takes a hard heart to look at him running up and down the touchline in the wake of Arsenal’s decisive third goal and think that he should rein it in. The game was a huge test of his management and Arteta (left) came through it. He deserved whatever celebration he wanted. Come on, what do we want? Managers and players wearing hair shirts? Should we frown on celebrations when a player scores a goal? We complain about the spectre of VAR sucking the joy out of celebrations and then we condemn players and managers for losing themselves in the joy of the moment. This is a different age. Fans live for moments, not just outcomes. More and more supporters are there for one game, one visit, one treat, not for the entire season.
This is the Instagram generation. Football supporters want instant gratification. They don’t want to be told players can’t celebrate anything with them until May and I don’t blame them.
Celebrations are part of the iconography of football and many of the best ones, the ones that we cherish, are not always connected with winning trophies. Remember Jose Mourinho’s sprint and knee slide on the touchline at Old Trafford in 2004 when he was manager of Porto? That was during a round-of-16 tie.
Jurgen Klopp celebrates in front of the Kop after many home games and it is an uplifting symbol of togetherness.
Perhaps the most famous celebration of all is the touchline falling down dance of Brian Kidd and Alex Ferguson when Manchester United came from behind to take the lead against Sheffield Wednesday in April 1993.
The win against Wednesday took United two points clear of Aston Villa with five games to play. It didn’t decide anything, but it was felt to be significant at the time, just as Arsenal felt that Sunday’s victory was significant.
If English fans have lost a bit of their traditional reserve, if they celebrate a little more readily, it’s a good thing. They don’t have to keep it all in any more. They don’t need to treat triumph and disaster the same. They don’t have to disguise their emotions. They’re not Victorians.
It’s absurd to suggest you can only celebrate when you win a trophy. It’s absurd to suggest you can only commune with supporters when a campaign is complete. Joy is a precious thing in sport. Let’s not make a ration book for it.