Beauty is the job, victory the pleasant possibility.
April 21, 2015 3:14 PM   Subscribe

Corley Miller of Eight by Eight magazine writes a wonderful piece about Arsene Wenger.
posted by pasici (7 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is probably the first piece that's ever really captured why I've stayed an Arsenal fan for the past decade. What a lovely bit of writing.
posted by asterix at 4:35 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's beautiful to read this kind of passion, too bad the author felt the need to stain the piece with false and biased information on Mourinho: tell people he's only ever managed the richest club in his league, nevermind the brilliant work at União de Leiria, or the fact that he won the UEFA Cup and the Champions League with FC Porto, or even that the year he won the Champions League with Inter they had a net spending of around +10M€; that bit about the trophied ruins of Inter, maybe you could say that he managed to win the greatest honour in European club football with an already irrelevant club instead? Come and destroy the club I support, please! (Although our current manager is way sexier.)

So many superlatives should be able to stand by themselves, it seems the author doesn't really believe what he's preaching.
posted by khonostrov at 5:03 PM on April 21, 2015


That prose was about as labored as Arsenal's attempts to get a shot on net.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:21 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


Who said it: Arsène or Aristotle?
posted by hangashore at 7:10 PM on April 21, 2015


Man, this hit home for me. In any fair sports league, there will always be more seasons when your team doesn’t win than seasons when it does, so all that you can hope for in those other years is to have fun while ultimately losing. And any sports fan who expects her team to win it all every year, and becomes cross when they don’t, has not yet developed the necessary coping mechanisms for a career as a sports fan. So the question becomes: what do you want out of your team for that other 96% of the time when they’re not hoisting trophies?

Being a lifelong Saints fan has paid off once so far, and I resist pondering whether the ups and downs have been worth it, for the same reason a lifelong gambler doesn’t want to keep track of his total gains and losses. But, man, that 2009 season was sublime — not just because of the trophies, but also because it made a friend of mine tweet one mid-season Sunday: “Man, I wish my Cowboys were as fun to watch as the Saints are.”

(Relatedly: my Pelicans are on track to get swept in the first round by the Warriors, and I’m not even mad, because those Warriors exude “ridiculously good” from every pore, and I’ll be astonished if they don’t coast to a championship this year.)
posted by savetheclocktower at 10:28 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

What was Wenger thinking sending Walcott on so early?

The thing about Arsenal is, they always try to walk it in.
posted by kcds at 5:21 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


A bit much to think of Arsenal as a middle class club though, it's the eight richest club in the world.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:29 AM on April 22, 2015


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