The most striking thing about reporting on a game behind closed doors is the empty space. While, at Arsenal‘s stadium The Emirates, the rows and rows of seats stretching off into the distance are stark enough, it’s really the emptiness outside the stadium which has felt most disconcerting.
Where, in a time before Covid, the outer walkways would have been packed – friends searching for each other in the crowd, people queuing outside the turnstiles, a sea of red seething and swirling – for the last nine months they have been eerily vacant. It’s hard not to fixate on things which are usually obscured: dimples in the tarmac, streetlights reflected in puddles and all the unfamiliar lines of sight which make the place seem bigger than before.
While there are other things missing – the noise, the sense of motion, the smell of grease and fried onions wafting from the burger vans – there has been a gaping chasm where Arsenal fans should be. Walking down the Holloway Road in the hours before kick off, the long parade of Irish pubs, chip shops and cafes has lain dormant where usually it would be spilling over with supporters. In Germany, they call fixtures held behind closed doors “ghost games” (or “geisterspiele”). When all the old haunts around the ground are deserted, it’s not hard to see why.
Looking at the darkened windows and shuttered shopfronts on matchday, the autumn and winter trudge to the ground has felt that much colder. Having served Arsenal fans through the generations, some of those threadbare drinkers’ pubs may not open their doors again. Piebury Corner, the beloved Arsenal-themed pie shop, has already been forced to close on account of the pandemic. It is hard not to feel like something has been hopelessly lost; like some fundamental part of the matchday ritual has been stripped away.
That is why, even with only 2,000 in attendance, the return of Arsenal fans on Thursday evening meant something. After a Europa League group game against Rapid Vienna which didn’t otherwise hold any great significance, Arsenal can now claim to be the first Premier League club to host supporters at a competitive fixture since football was suspended in March.
From this moment on, whatever has been lost from our collective routine, we can gradually start to remake it. Having spent so long dispersed and isolated, football fans can look forward to experiencing mutual euphoria, triumph, frustration and grief again.
Putting aside the depressing possibility of another national lockdown, there is a long way to go before football returns to something resembling its pre-Covid norms. Even without any more setbacks, it could still be months before stadiums are operating near to capacity. It’s not easy to generate an atmosphere while socially distanced, let alone sing while wearing a face mask. Nothing conveys how Arsenal fans felt about their homecoming better than the fact that, despite being dispersed across the lower tier in such small numbers, they made so much noise that their presence in a 60,000-seater stadium didn’t feel at all out of place.
If this was an important moment of catharsis for those in attendance, it was also a reminder of how important fans are to football. While the game has resumed in some ghostly form over the last few months – mainly motivated by elite clubs’ fear of financial oblivion – it only takes 2,000 supporters singing together to shatter the illusion that it can go on without them. While “football without fans is nothing” is a well worn mantra at this stage, it still holds true. Besides, as attested by the shuttered shopfronts on the Holloway Road, it’s not just football that’s at stake.
Will Magee is a freelance journalist specialising in long-form writing, features, football and politics
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/36E7mmd
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