Super League proposals, globalisation, games potentially being played abroad, the hunger for European football… it’s felt for a while that this might be the future of the game.
Ask your typical English football supporter which fixture they first look for in June and chances are they’ll say their team’s local derby.
Ritualistic piss-taking, one-upmanship on your neighbour and an in-built, almost unexplainable hatred of your local rival — these facets are still at the cornerstone of football fandom.
The Athletic set out to study the anatomy of an English derby. They visited the East Midlands, London and Manchester derbies, and took in all the sights, sounds and smells for three days. This is the end result of seventeen goals and endless mockery.
Given he’s wearing suit trousers, you’d be forgiven for thinking the man in his 60s hopping off the tube at Arsenalstation is going to work. It’s not right now.
He strides up the steep slope towards Gillespie Road with a thicket grey hair peeking through his Arsenal baseball cap. The man holds onto a treasured item in each of his hands as he goes. Right hand tube pass. Left hand, red-and-white scarf. That’s almost all he needs.
An intense flash of sunshine temporarily blinds the eye at the top of the stairs. The senses then drift towards an intoxicating mixture of two distinct scents that pollutes the autumnal air. The combination of fried onions, cigarette smoke, immediately reduces the area to near a stadium. In this case, The Emirates. And in this particular case, on derby day.
So far, everything seems normal. Except a cursory glance at the faces congregating nearby for a pint or a burger reveal a shocking, sinister truth… everyone’s smiling.
