North London is red. That was confirmed long before Tottenham supporters sheepishly began to sneak out early from one corner of an impossibly cheerful Emirates.
On a record-breaking, history-making afternoon, when the highest Women’s Super League attendance was increased by more than 30 per cent, Arsenal were better than Tottenham by a far larger margin.
They are unlikely to admit as much except in private circles, but Spurs will see Arsenal as their aspirational blueprint. For now, count the ways in which you trail them.
Take two moves in two minutes immediately prior to half-time to understand the chasm. In one, Tottenham attempted to play the ball out from the back and were mugged by the relentless Caitlin Foord, who hung in Spurs’ blind spots like a clingy familiar; Vivianne Miedema did the rest as Vivianne Miedema is wont to do.
Then Arsenal finally tasted pressure but escaped it with a pass in front of their own goal, a pass-and-go one-two between defenders and a ball down the line to spark an attack. Derbies as the leveller of form? There’s no such thing as magic.
Arsenal reject the notion of superstars and the rest, but Beth Mead plays the understated leader by example role perfectly. After a summer that a genie with a lamp and several loopholes would struggle to beat, a post-European Championship lull would be forgivable. Mead is too dedicated, too in love with Arsenal and too damn good for that. She scored the first and assisted the third.
Tottenham were complicit in their own misery. They defended narrowly and were punished by Arsenal forwards taking turns to run the channels into infinite green. They conceded at the start of both halves to decimate any iota of momentum.
The best – perhaps only – way to trouble this Arsenal as an underdog is to break on them quickly. But with barely a fifth of the possession, Spurs needed to try and feel their way into the game and so preferred safe passing that ultimately offered nothing but false economy.
These are crucial months for the WSL. There is no doubt about the quality of the product, nor of the league’s ability to attract talent, but 2022-23 is the golden opportunity to exploit the success of the Euro – and England’s success – to their maximum advantage.
For those who demand that domestic women’s football must stand on its own two feet financially, imagine where the men’s game might be if it had been banned for half a century. That gross moral abdication will leave women’s football playing catchup for decades; it deserves reparation.
Nowhere is that potential greater than at Arsenal. They have England’s captain and the Golden Boot and Ball winner, after all, and the grandest history of any WSL team. Juliet Slot, the club’s chief commercial officer, has grasped the nettle.
They owe it to Arsenal’s players, English and otherwise, to bask in this sunlight for as long as it lasts. People now recognise their faces and talent who never have before. That demands its own recognition in turn. Leah Williamson’s name was cheered louder even than Miedema; that wouldn’t have happened before the summer of love.
That makes Saturday, and other days like it, monumental. Even if it took advantage of an international weekend in the men’s game and Arsenal’s most historic rivalry, the attendance is worthy of great celebration. Forty-seven thousand people came to watch a WSL match, 9,000 more than ever before. It meets the Field of Dreams principle.
The aim of this – at least initially – is not for Arsenal Women to play every home game in front of the same crowd. Progress will always be incremental, pierced by these glamour afternoons as fantastic exceptions. Instead, it’s the trickle effect we’re after.
If, amongst those 47,000, are 1,000 young girls who are introduced to new heroes and inspired to play or watch the game, job done. If 1,000 young boys see a large crowd for women’s football as something that barely merits mention, job done too.
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This did feel different to next week’s men’s derby, most of that is to be celebrated. Not only was the average age of the crowd noticeably different to a men’s matchday, it was also far less skewed towards males.
Outside the Emirates, there were far more people posing for family photographs or marking their first trip to the stadium with a memento. There were fewer replica shirts on display, and less of the dark, spiky edge that can hang thick in the air on derby matchday.
More conspicuous than that is the different noise that soundtracks the game. The pitch is higher, which figures given the shift in age and gender. But there’s also a contrasting tone, too.
When something goes wrong in the men’s game, be it a slightly overhit pass or slightly skewed shot, it will be met with a groan. Here, it’s more of a hard luck sigh, disappointment over anger or resentment.
The familiarity was just as warming: “Stand up if you hate Tottenham”; that ringing, almost pious chant of “Arsenal” repeated on a loop that rings around the Emirates; the worship of Mead continuing on from the summer. She was given a standing ovation when withdrawn, including from sections of the away support.
There will be more historic days to come. There will be a day when 40-odd thousand people watching a domestic women’s game is no longer cause for headlines of grand, trumpeted celebration. There may even be a day when hatred seeps into this edition of this fixture.
Until then, we should cherish those snapshots in time that made it special: the children wowing at seeing the pitch for the first time; the ovation for an England great back in the bosom of her club family; a brilliant Arsenal team with the will and wonder to break Emma Hayes’ Chelsea dynasty.
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