I read Jhamoy’s latest article regarding of the word “Hate” and “Spurs”. There are many points I agree, a few I disagree.
First of all, the word “Hate” is only a word. When someone says I hate Man U or Chelsea or Spurs, it doesn’t mean they want to kill them. As far as I’m concerned, it’s only a way to expression one’s emotion, and out of convience. Afterall, it sounds silly if we say I dislike Spurs/Chelsea/Man U stuffs like that right?!
I think it’s natural for the international supporters to have less sense of rivalry towards Spurs. Afterall, in all kind of rivalry in football, the RIVALRY itself is generated by FANS. Not the players, not the board. Teddy Sheringham once said he hated Arsenal with a passion. But that doesn’t mean he has anything against the club itself, nor anyone of his former England teammates who happened to play for Arsenal.
If Sheringham really hates Arsenal as he said, he’s probably talking about the Arsenal fans. ‘Cos we love to give him sticks!
Football is a game of opinion. Unfortunately everyone has a different opinion of his own, even the supporters from the same club, not to mention the fans from rival clubs.
And because of the fact Arsenal and Spurs are located in a same region. Naturally the two set of fans would bump into each other more often than fans from Manchester or Liverpool. There it comes the term “LOCAL RIVALRY”. Every derby game has the local pride at stake, to decide who is the king of North London.
In my opinion, RIVALRY is largely generated by the daily encounter with opposition fans. Say, a North London derby, before and after the match in a pub, the next day go to work, inevitably the both set of fans would bump into each other. And inevitably the hot argument, debate, and stick-throwing would happen between them.
For international fans, we do not experience that as often as the North London base Gooners. Afterall, Spurs are always cr*p. How many Spurs fans you bumped into outside of England?
For the majority of international fans, I bet most of us would hate Man U or Chelsea even more. As they got a much bigger fans base around the globe.
Anyway, personally I don’t mind the rivalry between fans. It spices up the games. Afterall, if every Man U fans have been so nice to us Gooners, and in particular when they had beaten us at the past, would you have enjoyed it so much when we beat them at Old Trafford this season?!
Of course, in an ideal world, we would want everybody to live in peace, harmony and love. Nevertheless, in my opinion it’s against the human nature.
Mankind, in a way, loves COMPETITION. Afterall, that’s why the game of football being invented at the first place (as with many other sports).
And with COMPETITION, inevitably it would be followed with RIVALRY. And without rivalry, the game itself would lose a big part of its magic. Imagine, after the matches, when every Man U/Chelsea/Spurs fan we met would step forward and telling us well done, your team is brilliant (after we beat the c*ap out of them)… would you have enjoyed it? Would you still be eagerly looking forward to the next game and hoping our team to beat the c*ap out of them?!
15 Responses to “Healthy Rivalry”
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October 31st, 2006 at 10:46 am
A large proportion of football fans are bloody idiots, why would I want to compare myself to them? In fact I don’t.
Sometimes watching football makes me cringe. To hear 5,000 people singing something as childish as, for example, “same old Arsenal, always cheating”. This is nothing to do with Arsenal, but rather that so many adults should use such embarrassingly immature terminology, straight from the kindergarten.
Many Man Utd, Spurs, Chelsea fans I meet are nice, decent blokes, so to say you hate these clubs means you hate THEM! Do you hate them? No, of course not. So stop generalising. Hate has no place in football, or life.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:25 am
Danny, when u said:
“A large proportion of football fans are bloody idiots”
“so many adults should use such embarrassingly immature terminology, straight from the kindergarten.”
It does sound to me you have been living in “hate” yourself.
As much as I hate clubs like Chelsea, Man U, I just want us to beat them on the pitch. What’s the problem with that? As i said, it’s not like I want to kill them or something.
Personally, I accept the fact they hate us as well. As far as I’m concerned, being opposite set of fans, you love to give sticks to each other, and you TAKE as you GIVE. It’s just a part of the game which makes it more fun watching the game. At the end of the day, at least i never think of anyone as a bloody idoit.
Like I said, it’s only a word, you can call it “dislike” if you like.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:38 pm
For me, Arsenal is not just a football club I support, it's something near and dear to my heart, something I'm incredibly passionate about, bordering o?n obsessive sometimes.?? And yes, this passion sometimes engenders other feelings in me that may not be entirely healthy or positive.??
But I?m ok with that.? More importantly, so is the missus (in fact as time goes o?n, I?m not the o?nly o?ne yelling at the telly). ?Do I love Arsenal more than life itself? Probably not.? More than my family?? Depends o?n which family member we are talking about (I kid, I kid).? Do I sometimes lose all perspective about the importance of football in the big scheme of things?? Absolutely.??
Must be a very nice thing to have perspective, but methinks some folks claim it, but the evidence does not always support these claims.? In my personal, albeit limited experience, the Arsenal supporters I?ve met have not been ?childish, demented, pathetic? people who “need to get a life?, nor have I found them to be “bloody idiots”.? They?ve mostly been caring, intelligent, well spoken people who maintain a fervent love of their team.??
Do I hate Spurs? Chavs? Mancs?? Well, let?s just say the o?nly people I feel less kindly about are probably murderers, pedophiles and the current administration.?
October 31st, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Andez, I don’t really think you understand the word hate at all, or maybe you just trivialise it. Don’t you think it’s childish for 5,000 grown men to sing “the referees a wanker” and all that other rubbish?
I’m being serious, if they’re not bloody idiots then what are they? Where does hate come into it from my side? I pity them more than anything else.
I happen to think it’s quite serious to see a grown man standing next to his boy at a football match chanting such drivel, what hope is there when fathers cannot even get the most basic, simplest things in life right - like not swearing and being aggressive in front of their own kids, never mind some other kid who is sitting with their parents and unfortunate to be within earshot?
Besides, you’re a fine one to talk after admitting in another post that you “cheered”, when Roy Keane “stamped on their keeper’s back”??! WTF??
October 31st, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Jesus, what world do you live in? Some of your statements are horrific. I can understand someone losing perspective about the importance of football if they haven’t the brains to realise it, but you actually realise you’re doing it and still do nothing to change.
Don’t you feel that you have any moral responsibility towards society whatsoever? I’m sure there are plenty of murderers and paedophiles that support Arsenal, so when you find one I guess you’ll have to start supporting another team.
Try and use your brain. EVERYBODY is the same. You support Arsenal, they support Tottenham, they live with the same things you do every day, love, jealousy, hate, fear, and all the rest of it. You are completely indivisable. If you hate them, you might as well hate everyone around you - in fact you do.
Try and put things in perspective and think and behave like an adult should, it’s not healthy to carry around all this hate - it’s simply an expression of your insecurity and unhappiness in life. People who are happy and positive simply don’t behave like you do.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:35 pm
There was one image I remember it well - it’s after the final whistle of a FA Cup semi-final win over Spurs back in the early 90s, our captain Tony Adams (scored the match winner of the game) dropped to his knee and weep, along with his teammates.
You rarely see such emotion coming from the modern professional players, let alone the tough-as-nail Tony Adams. But it’s an image all fans love to see from their players, at least it shows they do care a little bit of the team.
The reason of Adams’ emotional outbrust? It had to trail back to 2 years previously, when we lost to Spurs in another FA Cup semi-final. Their fans since had been mocking the Arsenal fans and players for two entire seasons followed. They took every opportunity they could to remind us of that semi final defeat.
That, i believe, helped to inspire our players. Just imagine the significance of the occassion. Had Arsenal lost on the 2nd semi-final again to Spurs, guess how long the team and fans would have to continue enduring the sticks from the Spurs fans? In every sense, to beat Spurs in that semi-final probably was even more important to win the cup itself.
That’s the rivalry I’m talking about. It helps to fire our players up, and it helps to united the fans and the players as a whole, for at least 90 minutes. At that particular match, everyone who associated to Arsenal were fighting for a same clause.
Without that rivarly between the two North London club, the entire significance of the game would have changed.
October 31st, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Your smug superiority and the belief that your role in the world is to tell everyone else how they should live is exactly the sort of holier-than-thou fascism I hate.? And when I say hate, this time I mean hate.??
October 31st, 2006 at 4:47 pm
I’m a facist because you’re insecure and unhappy, yeah right. The fact is, I embarrassed you and now your passing off your comments as a joke.
October 31st, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Bendtner scored again tonight. He must be some player. The Championship is a tough, physical league, and he’s just walked straight in out of Arsenal reserves and banged in 7 goals. Remarkable.
October 31st, 2006 at 6:07 pm
The problem is that “hate” is an emotive word but at the same time it doesn’t have the same effect as “strongly dislike”. That is language and semantics. Like a lot of situations, you have to contextualize and adapt to the particular situation - a but like contingency theory! I can say in certain situations that I hate Chelsea fans and their smugness and ability to ignore the effect of the millions. Similarly, Spurs have been the rival club since I started following Arsenal. Don’t talk to me about the prawn sandwich Utd. fans. Yet some of my best friends are Spurs, Chelsea and Utd. fans. Do I “hate” them? Not a chance. But if I am in a strange pub watching a game, and there are Chelsea, Utd or Spurs fans there cheering on their team against Arsenal, am I a little put out? Of course.
At the end of the day, football is extremely important to me - I don’t comment on the web about any other subject - but it has its place and real “hate” does not come into it. Well, except for Cantona, Lampard, Terry, Drogba, Keane, Rooney, Van Nistleroy etc. but if they ever signed for Arsenal, everything would be forgotten!!!!!!!
October 31st, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Hardly, I called you a fascist (that's how it's spelled btw) because over the course of this thread, you've tried to tell numerous people (myself included) that what we think or feel (regardless of whether it was said in jest or not) is wrong.? How presumptuous. ?
I'm neither insecure nor unhappy and I'm not in the least bit embarrassed by anything I've posted.? But you wouldn't know any of these things because you're so myopic and smug you assume you can tell everything about Arsenal America members' lives based on a few posts. ?
You don't know me.? I suspect you don't know any of the other people you attacked in this forum. The people that do know me and that includes Arsenal America posters I've met in person know me to be a happy, ardent Arsenal supporter with a great sense of humor. ?
It's one thing to have a difference of opinion, it's another thing completely to have the gall to try and tell people you know almost nothing about, how to live their lives.
I'm sure you'll respond to this.? Your pettiness won't let this go unanswered.? But this is my last post in this thread.? I'm going back to discussing Arsenal not debating some self-righteous prig about things he clearly knows nothing about.
November 1st, 2006 at 4:16 am
And your point is?
November 1st, 2006 at 4:33 am
I think we may keep him. I hope so, all the talk of Lupoli and Quincy from last season, they wont cut the mustard in the EPL.
Talking of Quincy I saw clips of him in the CL, he was awful, too many tricks and no end product. His head dropped too much.
Bendenter has also scored for his country and at 18 he has a big future.
AW has a big call, does he call him back from Birmingham in Jan or June?
He could be a plan B type of player, cross the ball into him and he will score a goal, we may even start to score goals from corners.
Also noted our reserves got well beaten but Reading, they did field half of the team that played us in the EPL, and our squad was much younger than the Carling Cup team.
November 1st, 2006 at 4:47 am
I think you make the perfect point here.
We all know friends who support different teams. We are friends that have different opinions. Yeah we wind each other up, but I dont think any less of them.If Arsenal win, I wind them up and vice versa.
Hate is the wrong word.
As for all the fighting in the 70’s and 80’s the people doing it were being tribal, they were not interested in the football, they just liked fighting, they did not care who they fought, just as long as they had one.
November 1st, 2006 at 12:56 pm
It’s very possible they could call him back. Evidently, Mr. Aliadiere is thinking about moving on in January. He says he likes the club but needs to concentrate on his career. Completely understandable and that will leave a gap on the bench for Bendtner.