By Walter Broeckx from Arsenal Worldwide
The Arsenal Worldwide project off and running.
I mentioned last week the Arsenal Worldwide project has started, and now we really are moving.
It took us some time to get started, and like all new starting things it takes some time before you really get an audience. If people don’t know you exist, they cannot find you between those zillions sites in the world. But even the Arsenal didn’t start playing for a 60.000 capacity crowd in their first games so we all had to start small.
So let me give you an update on what happened so far with this project. Our first article was from my partner in crime Armin Medic from the Bosnian supporters club, or should I say Bosnia and Herzegovina? Anyway if it would have been a darts contest I would say it was in the bulls eye. In Snooker it would been called a 147 break. It was a piece that went right to the heart and was exactly the kind of article you would dream to have as an opener. If you haven’t read it you can find it here.
And then we got the Cape Town Supporters Club from South Africa who came to tell their story. And I must say it was amazing to find out that only a few years ago they started with some 5 persons and now have some 300 members to watch the games together. I must thank them again for their enthusiasm for our project as from the first moment on they gave their support.
We then got an article of a person who most of us already know. Tony Attwood wrote a piece about his own time when he was in fact a member of what Arsenal Worldwide is. As he has spent a year in foreign parts in the world he knows exactly what it’s like to be an Arsenal supporter from afar.
But this is not a site where Armin and I will be writing things and give our thoughts. NO this is a site where everyone of us can have his story told.
And so we published our first story from an Arsenal fan from Senegal who is living in Dakar. And I must say it is quite a story he had to tell. Ibrahima Fode NDIAYE is the name of this fan and even when he is still young, to be honest most people look rather young to me at my age, he has had a well filled life so far. He has had to made a very big decision in his life and he did what Arsenal does: take the right but difficult way. A way that can only be admired. You got to read it, it even has some pictures in it. I really hope he can find many other Gooners in Senegal
The only regret about this article which was written in excellent English is the fact that Senegal is a French speaking country and maybe a lot of Gooners in Senegal cannot understand it. At one moment in time before launching the website we talked about this problem but we didn’t find a solution so far. But I really think the impact of his article would be much bigger in Senegal if it also would have been published in French. Well this gives us something to think about.
Next up will be a story from the supporters club from India, 11 Gunners. And then we will have some other fans who will give their message to the world and I will just name a few countries that you can find in the next days like Malaysia, France, Nigeria, Indonesia,…. . And then to think even I haven’t written an article yet about our supporters club in Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxemburg. And Armin also has to write about his experiences in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
And on top if this now Armin and I are thinking of doing a little bit more. We could be doing a match report. Not the usual match report you can find on many blogs but a match report on how it is when you are following the game on your pc or on TV and with all the problems this sometimes can bring. This is something new and have to be looked upon but I think it could be very recognisable for many fans out there in the world.
So after a first week of running the Arsenal Worldwide site it has been fun and I hope that most people will have enjoyed the articles that have appeared so far.
And again I would call upon you, our readers from all over the world, to send in your articles. (walterbroeckx@hotmail.com) You don’t have to be a Nobel prize winning writer to send in an article. If you think your English is not good enough: don’t let it hold you back. Write it in some kind of English and if you give us permission we will try to correct it for you. If you speak French, German or Dutch you can sent it to me in those languages and I can translate it for you.
The only thing we ask you is to write it from the heart, we Gooners will exactly know what you mean when we read it.
Some other strange stuff that you don’t really want to be bothered with.
Superlike!! Gunners for life!! 🙂
matey! Pakistan please too? tonnes o gooners here!
And don’t worry wife wont leave you if catch you reading it (tested).
let’s go out and dominate the world.
hi! i was just reading your story about supporting the Arsenal from afar and thought i would add my little bit, im a kinda ex-pat north londoner-i grew up in Wembley-though im irish by nationality,i am 36 now and my earliest memories of being a gooner are the day that charlie nicholas signed and was welcomed on the pitch in fromt of the junior gunners of which i was one! im sure that i remember matches from before that and remember cheering goals and tackles but thats my totally clear 100 percent every moment of the day memory,fast foreward a few years and i was playing football in the various under 12 up to under 15 leagues in north london desperately wanting to be the next tony adams even though looking back he was only a few years older then me,at this stage arsenal was almost a religion,we had finally won a league and i could stand up to all the scouser fans in class at school in finchley-hardly merseyside is it-and proclaim my love of the arsenal far and wide,not that i didnt anyway 🙂 i knew players down to their birthdays and thanks to the sun and mirror even their favourite drinks,it was all consuming,but life moves on and i eventually moved back to ireland,i was 24,i had spent years going to highbury and suddenly i was on the wey coast of ireland and had to rely on sky sports and very scratchy radio 5 for my fix,and this was at the start of the wenger era,i was excited bout this fella named after the arsenal,sick of rioch and his sgt major approach but could not see my team! it was a situation involving monster phone bills and my mom in london sitting with the radio on so i could hear matches,do you remember anelkas scoring run ad bergkamp living up to his god title,big tone was like a colossus and i couldnt et to highbury,eventually i got a routine, i got back to london when i could, sky improved and started showing more arsenal games and today fm in ireland had live football on saturdays,life footie wise was not perfect but it was improving..
two years ago,when the recession kicked in i decided it was time for a change and moved 35 miles north of stockholm in sweden,long story that move the the short of it is, the Arsenal in swedish,talk of limpar everywhere,and thank god the internet,streaming of matches and a english ip address on my computer so i can listen to bbc radio 5 live and bbc london,there is something surreal about listening to the gooners in a forest (where my house is) screaming my head off at a percieved infraction of one of the lads by some northern monkey in the middle of november with 5 foot of snow outside and my long suffering girlfriend looking on with resignation on her face at my antics-rugby supporter that she is-but thats the lot of a ex north bank boy..
anyway thought i would share the brief(or not so brief come to think of it)story of this globe trotting gooner,i have found a few pubs in stockholm that show the premiership but to be honest they are more interested in ice hocky or”zlatan”, its not n5 but somewhere there is a corner of a foreign field that is still england,or at least highbury 🙂
yeah add 4 more gooners from Pakistan , Karachi!
Will be looking foward to further posts.Well done Walter !Will complete and send my contribution soon.
Paul Geddes,
If you would have sent it to the Arsenal Worldwide it would have been a great article I think. Those are part of the stories we want to bring to the website.
Now it still is a great story and thanks for sharing this, be it on the wrong website. 😉
How can you forget the 47% of Kenyans who all support Arsenal in this lovely article?
Gunners for life! There are a lot of Gunners here in Zimbabwe
I would like to ask the fans from Pakistan, Kenya and Zimbabwe to write up their story and send them to me so I can publish them. The mail address is in the article.
So let them coming and I will publish them as soon as possible.
Morning, Walter.
After reading this article, as per usual I checked Arsenal Worldwide to see what had happened there.
Once again, the main headline was About Arsenal Worldwide. But this time I scrolled down to the end and, lo and behold, there’s a list of published articles which I’ve now read and enjoyed.
Just to warn others not to do what I did and think that nothing was there before checking. You too can have a face like mine, red from embarrassment at assuming – even though I know that when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me! 😉
Anyway, great articles, great reads – and well worth the wait.
from Pakistan here again!! actually I know many many more from around here (lahore), hell I even know a couple of people who fly down to London once in a while to see some matches!!
walter I would love to write something when I manage the time!! hopefully very soon!!
Gooneraside,
Yes I noticed that maybe another outlook of the page could be better.
Now the articles are a bit hidden below. We will see if we can change this in the future.
Gooneraside, thanks again for bringing this up. Because when you set it up you know where it is and you know where to look. But other people don’t know this and so I did change the look of the site and now on each page you go you can see the recent posts on the right hand site on the top of the page
Great feedback. Thanks
Hi! I’m an Arsenal fanatic from Malaysia!!