Up For Grabs Now

One of the NY Red Bulls 'Ultras' just after half-time. Omar Cummings scored Colorado's only goal moments later.

For the forty or more years in which the game has been waiting to take off in the States, the assumption has been that ’soccer’ in America has to catch up with us. But what you get from Major League Soccer isn’t a throwback at all, but a nauseating premonition of where the game is heading in more established football nations.

It’s a clean-cut nightmare of flat-pack stadia, wipe-clean concrete, and fat fans queuing for exorbitant fast food. Sadly, the top-level game in England looks more and more like it every year.

The actual game goes on as something to look at between buying another giant foam hand and grabbing a second hot-dog. There are club shops everywhere. These are called ‘Bullshops’, and everything is red and white and Adidas. A lot of the merchandise uses images of ferocious-looking bulls, but it’s a cartoon aggression that can only remind the buyer that they’re spending their dollars in support of a football club that is really nothing more than a sickly energy drink.

If you ever reach your seat, you’ll hear the murmur of polite conversation from the crowd, and the occasional shout from players on the pitch. People all around you are on blackberries and i-phones. Most of them are continually refreshing their Facebook page.

All the support comes from one end of the stadium, where the Red Bull ‘ultras’ make a din. Angry men with megaphones and baseball caps conduct the chanting from specially ensconced plastic platforms, which have a safety rail in case the angry men should get too excited and totter off. When the Red Bulls open up a 2-0 lead, the ultras sing out: ‘Can we play you every week?’ But the conducting’s too good, the phrasing too precise, and it sounds more like a push-button gloat from a video-game than genuine derision.

And in all this, Thierry Henry. He took his goal well, but appeared to lose interest as the game went on. He’s always been a bit of a shrugger, but now his team-mates – apart from Mexican captain Rafa Marquez – really are nowhere near his class.

The last two days have resembled less a serious attempt by the footballing world at a convincing series of events subject to such traditional vagaries as divine providence, chance, and Sod’s law, as a spectacular forty-eight hour long play staged across a series of venues and with a cast of hundreds of thousands, a play scripted and directed by an Arsenal fan as full of wit as he is empty of compassion.

First came the dismissal of Orange Brown. One of our most belligerent irritants has been banished from the Premiership into footballing oblivion. And all because of Nicklas Bendtner’s finishing ability.

‘Gardening leave’ is the most bizarre way I can think of of telling someone to bog off, but bog off Brown has.

And Brown’s afterlife? Not so much the little Match of the Day studio in the sky as a call centre somewhere nasty up north, I suspect.

The Lord Almighty? Former Arsenal goal-getter Henry

To their credit, Hull City will almost certainly now escape plunge deeper into the relegation mire after their cost-cutting appointment of Iain R. Dowie, a man whose middle initial stands for ‘Revival‘ ‘Relegation’.

Bye Hull! Brilliant.

And then, to cap it all, said Drogba gets sent off for almost no reason, the referee conned into punishing one disgusting Mourinho-schooled cheat by the shameless skullduggery of another, Thiago Motta.

Marvellous.

Where were your flip-flops tonight Didier?

 With just one more game (tonight’s) left for Arsenal to play before 2010, it’s a good time to reflect on a remarkable decade in the history of Arsenal FC. And what better way than with a meaningless cyber-gong show.

Sepp Blatter is having his hair done, and Charlize Theron had her contract cancelled at the last minute for reasons which – like everything she would have said – aren’t worth repeating, so I, Grabs, am your host for today’s merriment.  There’s loads of awards to be dished out  so let’s get cracking.

**The Bob Wilson Golden Fist for Goalkeeping**

We began the decade with legendary ‘tache and ponytail exponent David Seaman making saves like this, and we’ve ended it with Spanish English Spanish waiter goalkeeper Manuel Almunia. Almunia is much-maligned. Personally I don’t think he’s that bad, and he certainly doesn’t get the credit that he’s deserved for his best performances.

But the Golden Fist is won by the man who complained bitterly that Almunia only started playing football aged 30. Mad, (often) bad, and always apoplectic with rage, Jens Lehmann is football’s nutty answer to Rasputin. Earlier this month Jens took a piss behind an advertising hoarding and stole a fan’s glasses. His time at Arsenal wasn’t without its moments of mania either, but he was magnificent as the Invincible goalkeeper and saved the penalty which put us into the European Cup Final. Ended his career at Arsenal by sulking in a fashion so immature that I actually found something rather magnificent about it.

**The Martin Keown Boot for Proudest Defensive Warrior**

For a team which attacks with such abandon, we haven’t let in as many goals as you’d think. Always surprisngly tight-fisted in the league, in 2005/6 a defence comprising Eboue, Toure, Senderos and Flamini went on a defensive run unsurpassed in Champions League history that took us all the way to the final in Paris.

Pipping Toure to the Keown Boot is the man who returned with a goal in that final, Sol Campbell, Tottenham’s greatest ever player. The strange nature of his exit from the club shouldn’t obscure just what a rock he was for the championship wins in 2002 and 2004. We can only hope that with the arrival of Vermaelen we have finally found a successor.

**The Grimandi Gong for Midfield Endeavour**

Arsene knows a good midfielder when he sees one, and he’s seen a few. Robert Pires was the best player in the world for most of 2001/2 and was pretty handy after that too, Freddie Ljungberg was a dream of a footballer until he was knackered by injuries, and Cesc Fabregas, the latest true talisman of the club, has deserved much more success than he’s had.  The next decade should be his; the one past belonged to Patrick Vieira.

**The Bastin Prize for Goalscoring**

Thierry Henry

**The Dennis Bergkamp Award for Genius**

Thierry Henry. Highly commended: Dennis Bergkamp

**The Invincibles Award for Best XI**

Lehmann; Clichy, Campbell, Toure, Sagna; Pires, Vieira, Fabregas, Ljungberg; Bergkamp, Henry

**The Dennis Bergkamp Award for Best Goal**

1. Ljungberg vs Juventus

2. Bergkamp vs Newcastle

3. Henry vs Man Utd

**The Vic Akers Award for Manager of the Decade**

… is Vic Akers! No it’s not, it’s obviously Mr Wenger. Recently the subject of not inconsiderable amounts of thoughtless, vulgar criticism from the press and then from certain bleating fans who don’t know their Arsenal from their – ahem – elbow, the decade saw Arsene Wenger bring Arsenal two Premiership titles, two European finals, three FA Cups, one of the worlds’ greatest modern stadiums, some of the best players of this or any other era, a world-famous style of play and a decade of uninterrupted Champions League football. Mr Wenger, we salute you.

**The Professor’s Cup for Best Buy**

There’ve been a few. Buying Campbell for £0.00 was a tidy bit of business and Kolo Toure was pretty reasonable at £150k. The fact that nobody thought Van Persie worth more than the £2.75m we paid for him is pretty baffling too, but the best buy has to be Fabregas, who joined up with an alarming mullet and the number 57. I have no idea what we’d pay for him now.

**Wengerballs: Quotes of the Decade**

1. ‘I tried to watch the Tottenham match on television yesterday. But I fell asleep.’ – Arsene Wenger

2. ‘Sometimes in football you have to score goals.’ – Thierry Henry

3. ‘I am still hopeful that we can go through a season unbeaten’ – Arsene Wenger, 28 September 2002. Haha what a numpty, let’s make a t-shirt comparing the modern era’s great football visionary with the Iraqi Minister of Information. Haha. Oh.

**The Adebayaward for Bastardliness**

A hotly contested field this, with Phil Brown, Roy Keane, Ruud van Nistelrooy and assorted other dreadful people not even making the top three. There isn’t even a place for the violent madcap Togonian himself.

Third prize goes to Wayne Rooney. If he ended our first unbeaten run with a brilliant goal for Everton, he ended Invincibles’ streak with an atrocious dive over Campbell which cost us that run and the 2005 league title, and for which he should never be forgiven.

In second, because he doesn’t deserve to win anything, is Ashley Cole.

But the Adebayaward goes to a man from whom we have heard exactly nothing, but who has been more ruinous to Arsenal’s success than any other. If Roman Abramovich hadn’t shown up, the second half of the decade would have been a hell of a lot better for Arsenal. We’d have won the 2004 quarter final against Chelsea and surely gone on to win the Big Cup. Rumour has it we were on the verge of signing Terry and Lampard just days before Roman’s helicopter touched down. Players with Arsenal written all over them – Essien, Wright-Phillips, Cech, [whisper it] Drogba – might have been signed and chances are we wouldn’t have Manchester City to worry about either. We are tremendously lucky to have Arsene Wenger; it’s just infuriating that he’s up against billionaire owners who make the sport a nonsense.

**The No Prizes Prize for Tottenham**

Had Spurs written all over it until their whole squad shat themselves. Then they re-bought Pascal Chimbonda, and hired and fired eight different managers.

The last ten years have seen St Totteringham’s Day arrive each year as dependably as Easter, Christmas and birthdays. We’ve seen 20 league encounters between the teams, in which Tottenham have emerged victorious exactly ZERO times.

When they finally won a trophy it was the ickle Carling Cup, and the exuberance of their celebrations was incredible. A trophy won in recent years by teams of the calibre of Blackburn, Leicester and Middlesbrough was welcomed into the eerie White Hart Lane trophy cabinet with the kind of scenes usually reserved for the end of global conflicts, a true reflection of Spurs current standing in the game.

Let’s hope the next ten years are as successful for Tiny Totts as the ten just passed.