The English Football Diary - E04: Arsenal – Leicester 3,219,09 kilometers, 4 games, a British football diary

“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”

Nick Hornby, an Arsenal fan, writes it in the incipit of Fever Pitch, autobiographical novel released in 1992. 

Islington is a neighbourhood in northern London and if you were born and raised here, or if your father used to take you to Highbury on Saturdays instead of the park, here, football is part of you and Arsenal is your family. The metro station is just Arsenal, you walked for four minutes and you arrived in Highbury. Now you walk three minutes and get to the new Emirates. Easy no? Almost trivial. But just put one foot out of the Metro to be catapulted into the Victorian London of the small red brick houses, all the same, with the chimney on the right and only a minimum of living space in the front. If that day Arsenal plays at home, the path is easily marked by the countless stalls that fill the road making it even tighter, almost claustrophobic, forcing you to be part of that family that leads you by the hand to the stadium, making you feel at once a gooner.

“It’s not easy to become a football fan. It takes years. But if you put in the hours, you’re welcomed without question into a new family. Except in this family, you care about the same people and hope for the same things. What’s childish about that?”

Fever Pitch, 1997.