“My relationship with my club began the same way it does for most football fans: before I was old enough to understand what I was getting myself into. When I was nine, my uncle introduced me to a team with a cannon on its shirt, a grizzled captain named Tony Adams, and players like Nwankwo Kanu who had been born in Africa but now lived somewhere else, just like me. Arsenal felt familiar before I even understood why.
“And then there was the manager, a man who I initially thought had been named after the club and then believed that somehow the club must have been named after him. Arsene Wenger may have struggled with his raincoat, but rarely with his orchestra. The football his teams played sang.
“But what was once the nostalgia of the past has become the beauty of the present.
“We won. We are champions of England. And we are just one game away from being crowned champions of Europe too.”
@ZohranKMamdani, mayor of New York City, writes for The Athletic on what Arsenal means to him.
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In his debut season, Zubi led Arsenal in line-breaking passes, topped Gradient's midfield rankings for duels + aerials, played all 38, had 9 G+A (all comps), and shared the everywhere-pivot role for the champions + best defensive team in the world. Recency bias is a helluva drug.
Every fanbase crying about our celebrations is so sweet, but Liverpool fans specifically can’t talk. They were thinking about us during their title parade the losers.