Tifo-gate
It’s six o’clock on Tuesday the 29th of April. Unseasonably balmy weather and a Champions League semi final brings hordes of topless Parisiennes to North London. They cluster outside Arsenal station, singing or lightly booing as home fans move past.
On the concourse weheys follow the construction of a particularly impressive beer snake, the result of half-price pints the club has laid on for the occasion. The pitch is streaked with evening sunlight. “We’ve got super Mik Arteta” trades places with “Allez Allez Allez” and “our wall at the back is Gabriel” ad infinitum. The fans are ready for their first champions league semi final in sixteen years. In the meantime, the club has undergone a sea change. Our opposition in 2009 were the holders, a dynastic United team that went on to lose to Barca in the final. We were embarking on our slow descent into late Wenger era mediocrity.
In the present day, we’re second in the league for the third season running. Whatever the dissenters say, this must be a mark of progress. It’s not a fluke that we’re in the mix for major titles. Mikel Arteta has painstakingly built a squad that just rolled Madrid over on our patch, then took them to task at the Bernabeu. Fans believe victory is a realistic expectation. We beat PSG earlier this season in the league phase, why shouldn’t we beat them again?
Perhaps not everyone came to the ground aware of the tifo controversy that preceded the game. But once the floor to ceiling image unfurled in the North Bank, they must’ve thought, hang on a minute. The noise around Arsenal’s terrible tifo has been unavoidable ever since.