THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVERRRR!
This morning, at precisely 2:30 AM IST, Manchester City drew 1-1 with AFC Bournemouth, officially making Arsenal the new League CHAMPIONS! Wooohooooooo!
With one game remaining this season, there is absolutely no way City can overtake us now, even if Arsenal loses the final match 0-100 while City wins theirs 100-0. This is genuinely one of the happiest moments of my life because it’s been 22 long years since we last won the league.
And this title has been even sweeter because we finished the last three seasons in second place, hence earning Arsenal the nickname “Teuh-senal” by rival Mizo football fans, as "teuh" means "almost".
Many of my friends used to tease me, saying Arsenal hasn’t won the league since I started blogging. And yeah, that kinda hurts, lolz. Arsenal last won the league in April 2004, and I started blogging in November 2004. Twenty-two years and almost 1000 blog updates later, the title is finally ours again.
What a glorious moment indeed!
So much has changed since the last time we won the league. :D
Today you will find thousands of articles and opinion pieces about how the current Arsenal squad won the league, the resilience of the players, the mastermind of Arteta, the maturity and growth of the young team, etc etc. And of course, thousands of fans are uploading photos, reels and status updates to celebrate this momentous occasion. That’s what being champions means today.
But what was it like being champions 22 years ago?
In this blog post, let me instead take you for a walk down memory lane and talk about what it was like being an Arsenal fan back in 2004, and just how different the experience of winning the league felt back then.
When Arsenal won the league in April 2004, I was in Hyderabad attending CAT coaching classes. In fact, I had originally taken the CAT exam on November 23, 2003, which was the infamous year of the CAT paper leak incident, lolz, and we all had to retake the exam on February 15, 2004. The results came out in March, and I ended up getting shortlisted for interviews and GDs at all six IIMs (yes, there were only six back then). So yeah, my memories of that entire Arsenal-winning era are still incredibly fresh in my head even today.
Here is a photo of me in my single room at my PG accommodation, year 2004. :D
So what was different back then?
For starters, today most of us watched the match on our mobile phones, laptops, PCs or smart TVs, probably through Hotstar or some other OTT platform. Back then, our only option was cable TV, lolz. I used to watch every single Arsenal game on ESPN channel.
And here’s another thing many of you may not know. Back then, we had to watch live Premier League matches around midnight! Yup, I had to stay up really late just to catch an Arsenal game, which made waking up the next morning for my 6 AM CAT coaching classes really difficult, lolz.
Yes, every EPL match actually used to be broadcast very late at night in India back then, similar to how La Liga, Bundesliga or Champions League matches currently are for us today. Because back then, EPL matches used to start at around 6 PM UK time, which was around midnight for us here in India.
It was around 2006-07 that the Premier League began a major scheduling reshuffle after realising the huge fanbase and market potential in regions like the Middle East and South East Asia (probably thanks to Arsenal's incredible Invincible run :P)
That’s when they slowly started introducing earlier kick-off slots in the UK, usually from around 12:30-1 PM UK time onwards, which meant that for fans like us in India, matches suddenly became much more convenient to watch at around 6-7 PM instead of midnight. But for those of us watching the Arsenal Invincibles era before that shift, we had to stay up way past midnight on every matchday, lolz.
Ahhh, good times.
While many of you may have watched today’s match on your mobile phones, back then there was no such thing as a smartphone. In fact, mobile phones were still in their early boom years in India. Most of us were using the sturdy Nokia 3310, lolz.
Text messages used to be expensive as well. Hell, we were even charged for receiving incoming calls back then, lolz. That was when we came up with our own missed-call language. One missed call meant "come outside", two missed calls meant "I have reached", and three missed calls meant "I’m pregnant". :P
And while incoming calls were already expensive back then, outgoing calls were even worse. So if I wanted to call a friend over to watch an Arsenal match together, I would usually walk out of my PG accommodation and head to one of those old PCO/STD booths to make the call. :D
Today, you can easily take a high-resolution 4K video or photo of your victory celebrations straight from your smartphone. Back then, however, we only had the good ol’ roll film cameras, lolz. Yes, digital cameras did exist, but only the uber rich had those.
For the rest of us plebs, if we took a photo of us celebrating Arsenal’s victory, we first had to finish the entire roll film, then take it to a photo shop to get it developed, wait for almost a week, and only then finally see the results. And after all that waiting, you would probably discover something like, "Hey, my eyes were closed in this one", and then retake the photo... only to wait another two weeks to see the new result. :P
And speaking of watching matches using mobile internet today, back then our only source of internet was cybercafés. Slow-ass internet speeds, and some cafés even required you to remove your shoes or chappals before entering, lolz.
So yeah, we did not have coordinated Arsenal screenings like today because there was no easy way to communicate with other Arsenal fans within the same city. And so, I spent that year watching Arsenal win the league mostly either alone or with my three Arab neighbours at my PG accommodation, who were from Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
Here I am with one of my Arab neighbours, Hyder, who was from Iraq. Such a fun guy.
Notice my two O2 Arsenal jerseys, lolz. I always wore those while watching an Arsenal match. And you might also notice the red banner on the left side of the photo. That was my treasured Arsenal vertical banner, which by sheer luck I happened to find at a flea market.
With my sister, who visited me at my PG.
Apart from my three Arab neighbours, I also made a few Arab friends at the YMCA basketball court in Secunderabad, where I used to play basketball 2-3 times a week. They were mostly from Saudi, and many of them were Arsenal fans too.
So yeah, that was pretty much my experience of winning the League 22 years ago. There are honestly so many other little things from that era which I could keep talking about, but I probably shouldn’t bore you too much, lolz. Things like how there was no YouTube to watch match highlights the next day, no football podcasts, no Twitter reactions, no meme pages, and no instant transfer rumours every five minutes. We depended heavily on newspapers for match reports, league tables and football updates, and sometimes if you missed a match, you simply missed it. That was it.
I hope you enjoyed this little blast from the past and the nostalgia trip back to what life was like for football fans in early-2000s India. And honestly, after waiting 22 long years, it feels soooo good to finally see Arsenal become champions again.
The main aim of this post is not to show you all how old I am, lolz. Some older geezer will probably show up and say, "Phish, this is nothing. Back in my time we were called Woolwich Arsenal, and we invited friends over to watch matches by sending telegrams." :P
I’m not trying to compete with anyone here, but simply to show how different the experience of winning the league felt back then compared to now. But in both eras, one thing has remained exactly the same - it has always felt absolutely wonderful being an Arsenal fan. Go Gunners!
And to end this post, here’s a bit of irony. Back in 2004, I mostly watched Arsenal matches alone in my PG accommodation. And today, as Arsenal win the league again, I’m living alone at my farm here at Neihbawih and still watching most matches alone, lolz.
And back when we won the league in 2004, I was single.
Today, 22 years later, Arsenal have won the league again... and I am still single. :D
Perhaps some cute Goonerette out there who laughed and enjoyed this post might wanna go out for coffee with me? Ahems...
Mizohican out. COYG!
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