Highbury high
FRANK KEATING
It is a relief, I suppose, that the most momentous English football fixture so far this year does not feature Manchester United. Next Tuesday at Highbury, Arsenal and Chelsea play the second leg of the European Champions Cup quarter-final. It stands at 1-1 after an operatically intense first tie at Stamford Bridge. Not for 26 years have two London clubs met in the European Cup. Not since 1962 has a London club reached the semi-finals.
The contest has pinned back the ears of the nation, although many football folk in the country at large obviously dare not admit it. Mind you, regional club loyalties have a less potent pull these days — okay, like a tattoo at birth you are irreversibly lumbered with your hometown team and fondly check on their score on a Saturday night. But we all like to jump on bandwagons and, admit it, softest spots in truth are now reserved for one of the biggies of the Premiership. In the case of new Londoners, I have always fancied that allegiance was fixed by the terminus at which you arrived, the area you set up your first bedsit digs — from King's Cross or Euston you gravitated north so at once began a dalliance with Arsenal or Tottenham; same with Liverpool Street and West Ham; Paddington and you were Chelsea or, for eccentric loners, Fulham. Meanwhile, in far-flung nooks and crannies of the provinces, while local teams are doted on all right, there is a hankering celeb tug in every breast, alas, and a little part of everyone submits to an empathy with one of the strutting high and mighty. For yonks this meant Man. United or Liverpool: but suddenly they are passé and the blood runs warm for Arsenal or Chelsea.
Arsenal fancy themselves like mad, their gloating followers even more so. If either were chocolate drops they'd eat themselves. The team is cool, man, cool; in the first leg most of them wore gloves below their short-sleeved shirts; crazy cool cats, with added class. Their acolytes swooningly boast they are already the finest English team which has ever kicked off. Barmily premature. Let them conquer Europe first.
Sure, Arsenal have often played resplendently this winter, watchfully egged on by their French coach, a cold fish with a calming temperament, apparently obsessed with studying interminable match videos in darkened rooms. His accomplices are two compatriots — the unshrinking field-marshal Viera, who carries empty space around him like an umbrella, and, in attack, Henry, preux chevalier of insolent speed and a dreamy ingenuity, almost clairvoyance.
Meanwhile, as a diverting plaything, a Russian zillionaire's roubles have assembled from all over a Chelsea team in less than a year. It is a wonder, in a way, that such a babbling babel has performed with such cogent eagerness. Their coach is a put-upon Roman with the engagingly courtly reasonableness, however harassed, of a Vatican monsignor-librarian. It seems the bossman Russki has promised him the sack unless, or even if, they win the European Cup. I have a serious hunch — and hope — that Chelsea can. Well, when I first came to London I arrived at Paddington, didn't I?
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