10 years ago this week (indeed, to this day if you are reading on Friday) the Emirates Stadium hosted a fixture for the first time. I was 22 years old the summer that the club closed the doors on Highbury for the final time. I had been a season ticket holder for 14 years at that point and was also about to embark on my first full time job, having graduated from university. So I hope it doesn’t sound saccharine when I say that the chrysalis from Highbury to Emirates reflected my own ascension into adulthood.
I was old enough and fortunate enough to have been to Highbury on literally hundreds of occasions and to consider it a second skin. But I was young enough to see Emirates as my future. It was and is a privileged vantage point from which to oversee this crossroads in Arsenal’s history. I have yet to miss a home game since the stadium move (12th October, 1999 since you asked), so it is dizzying for me to contemplate that I have now seen close to the same amount of games at the Emirates compared to Highbury.
Dennis Bergkamp’s Testimonial was the perfect occasion to smash the champagne bottle on Arsenal’s new abode. Bergkamp’s retirement was an apposite cause celebre as the club plotted their transition from old to new. The recruitment of Bergkamp some eleven years earlier had done so much to create the demand for an extra 22,000 seats at Arsenal matches. As a player and as an icon, the Dutchman more than justified this grandiose expression of gratitude, after all, he was also one of the key enablers of the stadium’s creation. Bergkamp was Arsenal’s bridge to modernity.
My personal experience of that fixture was complicated by rail issues. I travelled to the match from my mum’s flat in Brighton and lightning had struck a signal box at Gatwick Airport early that morning. What should have been a 50 minute journey into London took 3 hours in total. The train chugged into London Victoria at a snail’s pace with some 30 minutes left until kickoff. No football coach or PE teacher has ever been able to coax the kind of running I managed when the doors finally opened on that platform. On such an important day in the club’s history, I had intended to arrive a few hours before kickoff, meaning I could absorb some delay. But this was set to be a photo finish.
I made it to Finsbury Park station about ten minutes before kickoff and I ran so hard down St. Thomas’ Road that I almost took flight. I simply could not miss the kickoff, not on this day of all days. As part of the opening ceremony, Arsenal arranged to fly a banner the short distance from Highbury to the new stadium. As I sprinted past the Arsenal tube station, I briefly ran directly beneath the banner, following its stately progress to our new home. Given the levels of exhaustion and anxiety I was experiencing at the time, I only came to appreciate the poetry of that chase in hindsight.
I didn’t intimately know the coordinates of the stadium or how to get to my seat, which slightly stalled my odyssey. A helpful steward pointed me in the right direction. Briefly, I lamented my decision to opt for upper tier seating. Mouth dry and arid and brow sodden with sweat, I made for my block in the East Stand upper, my new home. The staircase leading to my seats hangs tantalisingly above the halfway line, offering an unparalleled view upon entry.
The sound of the crowd noise as I struggled up one final flight of stairs was soon complimented with the most gorgeous panorama of the stadium, completely full and bustling with anticipation. The instant that the pitch came into my view, Dennis Bergkamp’s father conducted the kickoff. I stood and breathed (wheezed) it all in for a second, the sights, the sounds, the sense that everyone was still a little wide eyed, craning their necks to survey a new home. My introduction to the stadium was sweatier and a little more breathless than I would have liked, but in hindsight, it was a beautiful induction.
It takes a while to fully appreciate a new home. It needs to become familiar; memories need to imbue the walls with meaning, with reference points. New generations need to be born into them. A stadium probably requires a generation or so before it is properly considered home. The memories of the old home need to fade, the dominant voices inside the stadium walls will evolve and eventually, fewer and fewer of the crowd will hold such a strong connection with Highbury.
It’s perfectly understandable that people still pine for Highbury, especially as the sport continues to undergo rapid evolution. Highbury becomes one more place that we can preserve in sepia. Nostalgia offers a safe haven where we can filter our memories and experiences without fear of challenge, where a changing world cannot alter them. The fact that the ghost of the old ground lingers so close to the Emirates is at once reassuring and maudlin. Like walking past the grave of a beloved grandparent.
I spent the last 6 seasons at Highbury in the Clock End, manning the barrier next to the away supporters. At the Emirates, I opted for change and took a seat near the halfway line in the East Stand upper tier. I had accepted that the atmosphere had turned quiet, reflective and even a little grumpy. I reasoned that, if the atmosphere was declining in the more boisterous section of the ground, I may as well enjoy greater comfort and a superior view. It is not a choice I have ever regretted, save for that first dash up the staircase ten years ago this week!
I would rather the stadium was not named after an airline and I wish that there was not a concrete ring around the perimeter of the arena, physically separating supporters in the more expensive confines of Club Level. I guess I have reluctantly accepted these things as part of the relentless march of progress. The consequence of their absence would have competitive consequences for the team that I would prefer not to entertain. Arsenal are still adrift of the oil rich clubs financially, but the gap would be a lot more pronounced without a new stadium. Everton, Liverpool and Spurs continue to make expensive stadium adjustment plans, with far greater difficulty, for good reason.
I don’t resent the presence of so-called ‘tourists’ at the Emirates. So long as they do nothing to impinge on my match day experience (which they haven’t to this point), it’s really none of my business if someone wants to take selfies in the ground and splurge in the Armoury thereafter. I don’t believe that the new stadium has diluted the atmosphere; this was a process already well underway at Highbury and every other top flight ground in the country prior to 2006.
‘Tourists’ don’t seem to make the atmosphere any more lugubrious and nobody that wants to sing is prevented from doing so. Arsenal left the Manor Ground in Woolwich for Highbury for commercial reasons, so that they could attract new fans in a more metropolitan area of London. Those of us reared in the Highbury generation are products of those commercial aspirations. We are descended from tourists, just as we are all the sons and daughters of motherfuckers.
Up until the late 1960s, neutral supporters were far more commonplace inside stadiums. Members of my family used to watch Spurs at White Hart Lane when Arsenal were away from home, a practice commonplace between clubs in that era. Arsenal acquiesced to the suggestion of a singing section in the North Bank at the new ground. When it comes to declining atmospheres in English football grounds, the uncomfortable truth is that most of us just can’t really be bothered anymore, no matter how much we deflect and seek to blame other factors.
It probably wasn’t until the 1930s that Highbury became Arsenal’s true fortress, as Chapman oversaw the redevelopment of the East and West Stands and filled the ground with memories. It will take a similar amount of time for the Emirates to acquire this character, as other new stadiums are built and our current abode takes on a little more charm. Supporters too young to have experienced Highbury will transition into adulthood and people of my generation will begin to view 2006 more generously as the ‘good old days.’
We will tell our children about Thierry Henry’s goal against Leeds, Gilles Grimandi’s brilliantly timed tackle on Edgar Davids, about Mesut Özil and that time the returning Nicklas Bendtner scored a perfect hat trick against Spurs in 2019. I won’t easily forget the sight of Wim and Dennis Begrkamp in the centre circle as I stood at the lip of the East Stand upper on that afternoon in July 2006. Had I not been in the grip of a wheezing fit already, I dare say it would have taken my breath away.
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