Allow me to push back, just for a moment, on soccer’s prevailing merch mania. Kitting up to watch one’s preferred team in a stadium or tavern remains expected and accepted practice. I further realize that every club entity and national federation around the futbol world is feverishly marketing product to supporters and hangers-on, 24/7. But honestly: What’s with this exhibitionary jersey-wearing while out and about in public?
Even in-stadium, the naked tribalism of fans dressing similarly, at best, strikes one as the stuff of overeager joiners. [At worst, it strikes one as vaguely fascist, in the way Gramsci described, where a dominant cultural entity exerts power by creating a cocoon of consent from which the dominated does not feel the need to exit). But out on the street? In the everyday walk of life? C’mon folks. Yes, I support Tottenham Hotspur and have since 1978. I don’t own a shirt, but I have a tatty scarf and high-quality knit cap. I’m fond of them. Yet I don’t feel compelled to share any of these personal notions, performatively, with colleagues on Zoom calls — or in line at the supermarket — even on a crucial match day.
There’s a reason 10-year-old boys wear team jerseys to school, to friends’ houses, on errands with their parents: Pride in club affiliation, in belonging, is stronger than self-consciousness. When you’re 10! At 35, and flying home with your wife and two kids, maybe solidarity with the pack should be given a rest.
I had been traveling home from the West Coast last Sunday, March 31, the morning Arsenal drew inconclusively with Man City. Minding my own business.
On my flight from PHX to Philly, I sat across from a mom and dad with two small kids. From the git-go, the dude was surly and disengaged from his parenting responsibilities. Twice his wife said to him, “Why are you yelling at me.” He held one of the girls only when his wife had her hands full with the other. Even then, he was on his phone. He was, naturally, an American Arsenal fan, kitted out in a blue-and-teal, JVC-sponsored away jersey and Gunner-insignia railroad hat.
Arselings are, by their very nature, sort of annoying. [Kudos to one of my favorite historical novelists, Bernard Cornwell, for introducing me to that contrived 10th-century noun.] U.S.-born Arsenal fans are frontrunners by definition. As badge-kissing civilians, they’ve chosen to be part of the problem. What’s more, their supporter behavior tends to be strategically ostentatious: a simulacrum of what they belief proper in-stadium supports should look and sound like. If this assessment would appear to drip with North London bias, know this: My English Arse-supporting friends are the ones who pointed all this out to me. English fans generally know the type and they have a name for this particular genus of fan — full-kit wanker.
In any case, a couple hours into our journey, the two-year-old girl and I started forming our own relationship. We locked eyes; I got her to laugh a couple times with funny faces. When I held up my little bag of jellybeans (it was Easter Sunday, after all), the dad nodded and I gave her one. When it was clear she enjoyed it, I gave her another, adding, “Can you say Son Heung-min?”
So, the father came back with a good line: “No, please. She throws up enough.” And we both laughed.
Ice broken, right? We’re now some 5 hours removed from the morning’s City-Arsenal encounter, that disappointing draw. So I said to the guy, “Well, the match this morning was anything but conclusive, eh?”
At which point, he recoils in a combination of horror and disbelief: “Are you telling me the result?! I’m recording it!!”
Dude was really mad. When I indicated his performative fandom, i.e. the shirt and hat, invited my perfectly reasonable question, he got madder. But WTF! We had already exchanged North London Derby-centric banter. He’s wearing an Gooner jersey and hat, on a plane. Was it not on him to say, pre-emptively — the moment we shared Tottenham jokes — “Hey, no spoilers: I’ve taped the game for later”?
Not surprisingly, he never looked in my direction again. But here’s the douchiest part: He proceeded to throw himself into childcare over the final 90 minutes of our flight. As if it was worth lightening the load borne by his long-suffering wife, now that someone was watching him. Which, of course, I was.
Back at the gate in Phoenix, hours before any of this drama had played out, I found myself standing next to yet another American Arseling, wearing yet another team jersey. He too was traveling with children; he had that world-weary look of a dad with many rivers still to cross — a man whose team had the chance to seize a title race by the throat, but had not. He and I chatted amiably on the result, as the match had only just concluded. At which point some middle-aged dude in Chelsea gear shuffled past.
We each rolled our eyes at the other, as if to say, “That guy: What a dick.”
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