Arsenal scored two victories in their Champions League semi-final second leg win over Atletico Madrid on Tuesday night. The first was a 1-0 triumph that took them to the final of the competition in Budapest at the end of this month.
The second was something that, in some ways, felt even more important. Their supporters, who have long been maligned for either scholarly reserve or toxic hostility to their own team, turned the Emirates into a spine-tingling cauldron of fervour that helped drive their team past their Spanish opponents.
Much of that triumph, of course, was down to a performance for the ages from Declan Rice, who is playing like a titan just when his team needs him most and whose place at the heart of Arsenal’s challenge for the Premier League and the Champions League may yet see him overtake Bruno Fernandes in the polling for the Football Writers’ Association’s Footballer of the Year Award.
But much of it was also down to a spine-tingling atmosphere that many of us had begun to fear was a thing of the past at Premier League grounds where clubs are increasingly prioritising tourists, day-trippers and corporate clients who spend more money but make less noise.
The Emirates bucked that trend on Tuesday night. I have been going there since it first opened nearly 20 years ago and I have never heard it alive with that kind of mayhem. I didn’t think it was capable of producing an atmosphere like that but the Atletico game felt like its coming of age.
Because of the social engineering that is taking place in top-flight football now, many clubs have felt the need to exhort their supporters to increase the volume of their support at matches this season.
The tone for the raucous atmosphere at the Emirates before, during and after Arsenal’s win over Atletico Madrid was set by a bus welcome organised by fan group REDaction Gooners
I have been going to the Emirates since it first opened nearly 20 years ago and I have never heard it alive with the kind of mayhem that it had on Tuesday
When Arsenal’s players came out of the tunnel, the players were met with a wall of sound and a giant tifo with ‘over land and sea’ written on it – a lyric from a favourite fan song
Arsenal even put a message on the big screens at the Emirates before kick-off for the Premier League game against Bournemouth last month. ‘Mikel has specifically requested that as many people as possible are in the bowl before kick-off,’ it said, ‘and to make as much noise as possible before, during and after the game.’
That call-to-arms didn’t work. Some of it was down to the social engineering that is afflicting every stadium but that game was also a lunchtime kick-off against a low-profile side in a match that Arsenal supporters were, quite rightly, worried about losing. Things were very different on Tuesday night, under the lights.
The club and the supporters group, REDaction Gooners, both deserve plenty of credit for that. The group organised a ‘greet the team bus’ event before the match and it was a spectacular success. Thousands of fans crowded into the area at the front of the stadium, at the roundabout on Hornsey Road, and turned the team’s arrival into a raucous carnival.
It was reminiscent of the way Liverpool supporters lined up in their thousands on Anfield Road to welcome Jurgen Klopp’s team to Anfield when they were challenging for domestic titles and for the Champions League.
If the atmosphere at Highbury and subsequently the Emirates has sometimes been met with mocking chants of ‘Is this a library?’, this was the opposite. It was brilliant bedlam. When they came out of the tunnel, the players were met with a wall of sound and a giant tifo with ‘over land and sea’ written on it – a lyric from a favourite fan song.
The club, and Arteta, deserve credit for getting the supporters to this point. They got everything right on Tuesday night. Interviewing Martin Keown on the pitch before the game was another master-stroke. Keown is a one-eyed Arsenal fan and a fine rabble-rouser, too, when he is called upon and he played his part in raising the atmosphere to fever pitch.
The final ingredient in Tuesday’s cocktail was the hardest thing to create: success. For much of its 20 years of existence, the Emirates has been associated with decline. It has become synonymous with the internecine bitterness of the declining years of Arsene Wenger and the toxic atmosphere inside the stadium.
If the atmosphere at the Emirates has sometimes been met with mocking chants of ‘Is this a library?’, this was the opposite. It was brilliant bedlam
Bukayo Saka celebrates after scoring the goal that sent Arsenal to only their second Champions League final in their history
It all felt as if Arsenal supporters were finally beginning to believe that they were on the brink of a new era of success
It has suffered from the ongoing decline of the club after Wenger left and a feeling that Arsenal had lost their position in the firmament of great English clubs. A symptom of that hostility was the rise of AFTV, a channel that feeds off fan-resentment and hostility.
But on Tuesday, it felt as if Arsenal supporters were finally beginning to believe that they were on the brink of a new era of success. They have suffered through three runners-up places in succession in the Premier League but now, even though they could still slip up, they are three games away from the title and oozing belief.
That belief is transmitting itself to the fans and they roared out their conviction against Atletico Madrid. Wayne Rooney pointed out afterwards how different the atmosphere was compared to when Arsenal lost to his Manchester United in a 2009 Champions League semi-final at the Emirates. But then, Arsenal were underdogs in their own home. Not on Tuesday night.
When I left the stadium an hour or so after the final whistle, I glanced over at the Tony Adams statue, around which AFTV often conduct their post-match sessions with disgruntled fans. There was no one there.
