Are you a MexiCAN or a MexiCAN'T?
Some thoughts on the role of a football crowd, and the decline of its symbiotic relationship with the team on the pitch.
A few weeks back, in uncertain times for my football club, I jumped on the Arseblog Discord server mid-match and registered a complaint: The crowd at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal’s home turf, was poor.
This observation was not well-received. My fellow supporters blasted my ridiculous statement from all angles: Maybe the team should do something to get them going, was one refrain. Or: They paid good money for those tickets and they can do what they want.
A week or two later, Everton came to the Emirates, and early on in the match, the NBC commentary team got in on the crowd critiques. Around 35 minutes, Peter Drury and Lee Dixon said, there’s often a vibe shift at the Emirates. Drury described it as a kind of low, guttural sound of frustration in the home support, something like the grinding hum of the London Underground. The stress of 22 years without an English league title begins to wear on Arsenal fans if the team drifts into the middle part of the match without scoring. There’s a 10-minute spell to open the second half where the atmosphere is revitalized, Dixon added, but once the halftime pints and chat wear off, the bone-crushing anxiety sets in again. It’s beyond tetchy, bordering on aggro.
Of course, that match ended with one of the great moments in Arsenal’s recent history, the show-stopping heroics from 16-year-old Max Dowman that generated the best scenes around the Emirates since Reiss Nelson’s last-gasp winner against Bournemouth in 2023. The crowd roared its approval, the gigantic sound powered by relief as much as joy, and none of us will soon forget where we were or how we felt in that moment.
But still, there were all those minutes before Arsenal got the opening goal, and before a teenager delivered the points with such a flourish.
I’ve been thinking ever since about what role the crowd has to play, whether the home crowd owes the team anything. Match commentator Clive Tyldesley wrote last season about how even the famous Anfield atmosphere has changed because “our relationship with our football heroes has changed…even Liverpool heroes. It’s now up to them to give us something to get excited about.”
He was describing the decline of the symbiotic relationship between team and crowd over the years, surely tied to the growth of the game as a worldwide entertainment product and a tourist attraction. The team has always owed the crowd a performance—hard work and graft at the minimum, even if the football was less than sparkling—but there was a time, in this telling, when the crowd served something back free of charge. The price of admission was lower, but it was subsidized by an obligation to get up and sing even when things weren’t going well.
There was a belief, and there still is, that the crowd can change the outcome on the pitch. For a story on Anfield last season, I spoke to Liverpool supporters who carried a devout conviction that they’d won that famous Champions League second leg against Barcelona as much as the team did. “That victory was our victory,” one told me.
Now, all of this is easy enough for me to say from my borderline academic vantage point as a Yankee Arsenal fan who’s been to 10 or 11 games in English football. I’m not a season-ticket holder going to matches week after week through the slog months of January and Feb, when the damp cold of the British Isles creeps into your bones and you might rather be on the couch.
But I have, like many of my fellow Gooners, weathered two decades of heartbreak and disaster, close-run things and total collapses. I am wracked with anxiety about how this season will end, yelling at my television through that Everton match and plenty of others, and I don’t begrudge anyone in the stadium who does the same sort of yelling.
Because my detractors in the Arsenal fan chat were exactly right: Match-going fans are under no obligation to cheer and sing when they don’t feel like it. They have a right to express themselves however they’d like, and Arsenal fans in particular have paid a pretty penny for the privilege of passing through those turnstiles.
But this debate about whether fans have the right to behave as they please is kind of a red herring, isn’t it? It’s not unlike the incessant debates about Free Speech, where certain people prattle on about how they should be allowed to say whatever they want. You can!1 So, how will you use that right?
The privilege of attending your team’s matches week-in, week-out carries with it a choice, and a weighty one if you believe the crowd and the atmosphere can affect the team’s performance. You don’t have to do anything, but what will you choose to do? What kind of crowd do you want to be a part of?
It brings to mind that Johnny Depp one-liner from Once Upon a Time in Mexico: “Are you a Mexican, or a Mexican’t?”2
In the end, the home crowd wants to see the team win. Will they help that effort, or hurt it? Knowing you can express yourself however, will you choose to support the team when things get rocky, or will you howl and moan at the slightest setback? Will you roar your team forward, or will you shift nervously in your seat, letting the anxiety overwhelm you, pleading quietly for something to change and give you a reason to cheer?
When I say the crowd has been poor, I’m saying they have every right to say what they want—but in my view, they’ve chosen poorly.
In that 2022-23 season where Reiss scored his famous goal, there were so many moments where Arsenal players made mistakes and the crowd immediately responded with a warm roar of encouragement. I remember a disastrous error by William Saliba that was greeted this way.
It’s understandable that things have changed since: That young Arsenal team exploded out of nowhere to compete for the title, and after so many years where the club failed to challenge, the faithful responded with an outpouring of love and joy. They were just happy to be there, particularly coming out of the pandemic. But after three straight years of coming up short and 19 before that without a title, the goodwill has ebbed as expectations have flowed. Mikel Arteta has been given all the tools to succeed, and I’m among those who believe his position may be untenable if he does not bring home the bacon this season.
Still, high standards don’t need to mean cantankerous vibes in the stands. Yes, you paid hundreds of pounds to be there. With great expenditure comes great responsibility. That’s jokes, of course—it’s not about the money. It’s about winning, and if you think the crowd plays a role in that, there’s only one way to act. In Arsenal’s case, it means channeling a little bit of that 2022-23 feeling. Let young Max Dowman be the catalyst for change. Be the crowd you want to see in the world, and—I say this to myself as much as anyone—try to enjoy yourself along the way!
Well, in the USA anyway. European nations have a more complicated view on speech—one I disagree with—but you can still broadly speak your mind about almost anything on either side of the Atlantic.
Disclaimer: I can’t actually remember the context of this line, and the movie may well have aged horribly. I last saw it on basic cable (with frequent commercial breaks) around 20 years ago.