Separated by an ocean, a five-hour time difference and a scarcity of English sporting lore, I nevertheless committed to watching Sunday’s consequential Arsenal-West Ham soccer—sorry, “football”—match. Recorded it for viewing later in the day.
If this were the kind of report I typically filed for Newsday in a half-century of sportswriting, I’d get right to the dramatic finish: Final score, controversies, key developments and so forth. But that wouldn’t address the fluky root of the duel’s appeal.
So, start here. My 6-year-old grandson is an Arsenal fan. Proud owner of an Arsenal shirt. It’s my understanding that his attachment to the team started the first couple of years of his life when he and his parents lived in Islington, North London, not far from Arsenal’s home stadium, and maybe because my daughter has friends who attend Arsenal games.
When Alden was 3, his family relocated a short distance away in the London borough of Bow, just down the road from Stratford, where West Ham plays its home games. Not that Alden switched allegiance, but I meanwhile was introduced to a delightful novel assigned by my wife for her regular library book discussion group. In author Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, the fictional group of pensioners in a retirement village who go about investigating cold cases included Ron Ritchie, a fiery former union boss regularly attired in a West Ham shirt.
So.
I should explain that, though I grew up typically American in the ‘50s and ‘60s—baseball, basketball, football—I subsequently covered all manner of sporting competition, including two soccer World Cups, and our regular visits to the United Kingdom have helped fill in some background of what legitimately has been called the “world’s game.”
The English Premier League is generally accepted to be the most popular and commercially successful soccer operation on the planet, and of the 20 Premier League teams, seven are based in London: Arsenal, West Ham, Brentford, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur.
Anyway, what made this week’s Arsenal-West Ham match really compelling was that Arsenal, with four games to go in the season, sat at the top of the EPL standings—sorry, “table”—on the verge of wrapping up its first title in 22 years. While West Ham was battling to avoid relegation, the practice typical in European leagues whereby the three bottom-feeders at the end of each season are demoted to a lower league and replaced for the next year by the lesser league’s top three finishers.
Also, there was some fun London history involved. Arsenal had commenced operations in 1886, founded by the munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal establishment, which dealt with ammunition and explosive research for the British armed forces. West Ham’s team debuted in 1895 as the Thames Ironworks Football Club, the company team of the largest and last surviving shipbuilder on the River Thames.
But about Sunday’s big match. West Ham wore its home claret (maroon) shirts, with the name of its major sponsor—the Irish gambling company Boyle Sports—prominently displayed across the chest. Arsenal’s white shirts similarly announced airline patron Emirates, with the slogan “Fly Better,” and the promotion “Visit Rawanda” on the left sleeve. American spectators, with keen vision and careful examination, might have been able to spot the team names on small logos on the upper left chest.
There were the usual soccer lulls throughout a scoreless first half and deep into match, but with occasional lightning-strike near misses and athletic saves and, as one British TV commentator rejoiced, some “glorious chaos!” in goal-mouth scrambles.
In the 78th minute of the regulation 90-minute affair, West Ham’s Portuguese midfielder Mateus Fernandes suddenly materialized alone with the ball six yards from the Arsenal goal, but Arsenal’s Spanish keeper David Raya smothered the attempt. Finally, in the 83rd minute, Arsenal’s pesky Belgian forward Leandro Trossard at last struck the apparent winner—his first goal in 25 matches. Except the afternoon’s most gripping theatre was yet to come, at a point when Trossard might reasonably have been doing a curtain call.
An additional six minutes—what in soccer is termed “stoppage time,” had been appended to the competition to compensate for those moments during the match while players lay on the turf to emphasize fouls, or to recover from actual pain inflicted, with the clock always running.
Mere seconds before those six minutes expired, on a West Ham corner kick that brought a pell-mell scramble during which Raya leaped to deflect, but could not catch, the ball, West Ham’s English forward Callum Wilson left-footed the rebound through the crowd and across the goalline.
Except! Replays appeared to show West Ham’s Brazilian forward Pablo guilty of one of the dark arts practiced during grappling set pieces, impeding Raya. Pablo’s left arm was thrown back across Raya’s throat—and referee Chris Kavanagh called for a video review to determine whether Arsenal indeed had won, 1-0, or would be saddled with an histrionic, impossibly late 1-1 tie. Leaving 64,000 fans on site and television viewers waiting, and waiting….
And that’s when my TV’s recording of the match expired.