Arsenal America

Ed. Note - You think you got it tough following Arsenal in San Fran or Seattle? Try following tehr Arse in Asia. J Waldman recounts his championship story…

I just got back from China yesterday and I had some interesting football related experiences. First off, I had posted on BigSoccer that they wouldn’t be showing the Leicester match here. As it turned out, Star Sports reshuffled the lineup to include it Saturday night. I was all geared up to watch it, until I got to the hotel in Xiaolan (it’s in southern China…I’m not even sure exactly where). No Star, no internet, no match for me. I ended up watching Liverpool/Newcastle and waiting for updated scores, but I fell asleep at halftime and never saw a final result. It wasn’t until late Sunday night that I finally got my hands on a newspaper…all in Chinese. I took it downstairs and asked a guy we were working with to translate the scores for me. He looked over it and said that Arsenal lost 2-1. Turns out he misread the paper and gave me the Villa/Man U score. Of course I didn’t know it at the time, so immediately my trip was ruined. Just on a hunch though, I had my aunt (who’s Taiwanese) read over it. This time, I got the result I was looking for: Arsenal 2, Leicester 1. The trip got a whole lot better in a hurry. When we got to Shunde (also somewhere in southern China…I have to look at a map), I picked up a copy of “The South China Post” and saw that they had a big graphic with a picture of the Invincibles with the trophy and a detailed account of Arsenal’s history. Needless to say, I now have that at home and it will soon be going up on my wall.

As for people recognizing Arsenal, it seemed like everytime I wore any of my Arsenal gear (and I brought a lot with me), somebody went “Oh, Arsenal. Champions!” And everytime, I would just beam. The best was when I looked out the window of the hotel one night and saw a kid in a TH14 shirt riding on the back of a motorcycle. Arsenal has definitely penetrated the Asian market.

One other interesting thing about China: if you ever want to get a football shirt cheap and don’t care about authentic replicas or anything, this is the place for you. Everywhere in Xiaolan, they had copied shirts of the most popular clubs. Arsenal seemed to be a popular choice among the copycats. I even saw a couple of shirts with really bad replicas of the Champions patches on the sleeves. But the shirts were obvious fakes, as everything from the crest to the “O2″ logo was changed. The crest especially was pretty bad, as I had my Arsenal t-shirt on for comparison. I actually took a couple of pictures of the fakes if anyone wants to see them. In the end, I didn’t buy any Arsenal stuff out of principle. I did buy a couple of Italian league kits to give to friends who love that stuff. The kits also came with shorts for around $6 US apiece. But it’s definitely fake, as two Inter kits I saw are completely different.

Otherwise, it was a good trip. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see the trophy lifted live. But this still is a season I will always remember, from going to my first match to moving here and trying to watch the clincher to nervously trying to find out the score of the finale. It was a season to remember and a season that will go down in history as the Year of the Invincibles!