- Why are Tottenham so much better at home than away?
- Arsenal’s defeat, the calls for new players and the PSR rules
By Tony Attwood
Football is no longer about playing and winning matches. Now it seems it is about the club telling the fans how they should support and what sort of banner can be put up.
Oh yes and it is also about learning a new vocabulary with words such as “tifo”.
This “tifo” thing is, according to google, “a large, coordinated visual display performed by fans in a stadium. It’s a collective expression of support, often involving large flags, banners, signs, or even elaborate card stunts that reveal a message or design.” It appears that the word comes from the Italian “tifoso” meaning ‘supporter’.
Except this wasn’t a banner arranged by any Arsenal supporters, for nothing done by Arsenal fans would be this bland, and bland is what Tottenham does. (For example “Oh when the Spurs go marching in”). Banners arranged by fans are usually vibrant and often funny. Those arranged by fans those arranged by the club tend to be bigger, to make up for the fact that they are generally much more obvious and much more staid.
Now banners have a purpose, which generally is thought that be “to enhance the atmosphere and demonstrate fan support for their team or a specific message,” according to the BBC.
However, I would disagree. The purpose of banners that are arranged by the club seems to be for the club to take over the way that fans express themselves and appreciate (or otherwise) the players, the referee and the match. The tifo is thus yet another element of control.
Now I don’t mind the club getting involved to some degree with how we express our support. For example, the acceptance and promotion of North London Forever is to me a very good idea. It is unique to Arsenal, it was written by a local Arsenal supporter, and it also has the subtext of mocking Tottenham and relegating that club into a position of being not really north London.
Indeed it rubs in the lack of originality of Tottenham supporters who sing “When the Saints go Marching in” but with a word changed. What’s more it is far better than Liverpool’s “You’ll never walk alone” which when we had Peter Storey playing for us became the song “You’ll never walk again” sung by some Arsenal fans.
The problem is that a lot of the songs that are used by supporters have nothing to do with them, their area or their club. “You’ll never” is a perfect example.
It is a song from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. So it is 80 years old – although I guess some things do take a little time to travel north. Mind you it is 64 years or so since Tottenham won the league, so maybe they could adopt it.
Regarding that song, basically in the second act Nettie Fowler sings “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to Julie after Julie’s husband stabs himself while trying to run away after a robbery goes wrong. Very north of England.
But to get back to tifos, I am told that Red Action didn’t like the design Arsenal came up with as being a bit underwhelming, and indeed they apparently came up with other ideas which the club rejected. And certainly when we compare the Arsenal tifo we got, with the sort of things associated with PSG, Arsenal’s version it does look very staid and ordinary.
Because Getty Images seem to have the rights to the pictures of the tifos I can’t reproduce them here but if you go to BeSoccer.com you will see a whole series of videos revealing just what can be done when the club stops giving that awful excuse of running out of time. Arsenal knew that they were going to be in the Champions League this season over a year ago, and so really that is just about the worst excuse Arsenal have ever had.
The simple fact is that there is infinitely more creativity and innovation in the stands than there is in the officialdom at Arsenal, and if only the club would recognise that we could start creating more vibrancy. Instead the key word seems to be “control”.
But as to whether it would have made any difference to the performance, I don’t really know. I know the players like the noise, because we sometimes see players gesturing toward the crowd to turn the volume up, but banners? Personally, as I enter the stadium I am supporting Arsenal come what may. Indeed that’s why I have been running this blog for something like 15 years.
Having the club do the banners for us is a pretty awful idea. Not quite as awful as having the team sing “Good old Arsenal” on a record, but getting close to that.
Involving fans is good. Taking up “The Angel” as the club’s opening theme song has been an excellent idea. Saying that the club had to rush through a bland and ordinary banner because of lack of time is pretty pathetic.
