Arsenal’s league title in 2025/26 might be bigger than you think
· Yahoo Sports
The last time Arsenal won the league, I was 10. More than that: living in America, Premier League matches were not readily available. I think you could pay a lot of money and watch on pay per view. So in April 2004 my dad told me Arsenal won the league, in May 2004 he told me we went unbeaten, and I went, “cool.” Given this was Arsenal’s third league title in 6 years and second in 3 years it felt like something that came pretty frequently, if not exactly like the Yankees winning the World Series (my primary concern as a disgruntled Mets fan with a soft spot for the Red Sox because by that point we were living in southern New England).
Visit umafrika.club for more information.
By 2007, things had changed. Matches were more readily available. There were illegal streaming sites. There was a Champions League campaign in 2006, watched on ITV in England and then on VHS that my dad’s friend recorded. I–or my parents at least–still have the VHS of Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Villarreal, the final European game at Highbury. During that campaign I fell in love with Cesc Fabregas, who featured heavily in my membership DVD that I got for the 2007/08 season.
And that season was the first heart break. I didn’t watch every game – we hadn’t yet discovered illegal streams – but I watched a lot of it: the 1-1 at Anfield, the 2-2 against Manchester United, the 1-0 against Chelsea at the Emirates, and I was reading the MBMs on The Guardian. And then there was the 2-2 at Birmingham City, the Eduardo leg break, the 2-0 win in Milan, the non-penalty against Liverpool in the Champions League and finally the 2-1 loss against Manchester United.
Fast forward 10 years later, and there were plenty more heart breaks. 2013/14, the year we were top for so long but were out of it at the end, the Leicester year, and then Arsène left, and Emery came, and it really didn’t look like we were going to win the league for a long time.
In Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby famously makes a comparison between George Graham and his dad. While I don’t want to speak for my generation, I wonder if that might be apt for Mikel Arteta. For those of us born in the mid to late 1990s, Arsène was already in place. But Mikel came to the club during the dark days of 2011 and became someone to hold on to. Van Persie left and Mikel stayed and captained the team and lifted the first silverware since 2005 and was underappreciated by the wider footballing public for his shortcomings rather than his strengths (hmmm, sounds familiar). And then he left and went to Manchester City, and then again during some very dark days, where the club was aimless and drifting he came back and gave us something to believe in. Perhaps, then, he’s the dad that stepped up.
That isn’t to say there wasn’t heartbreak in the intervening period or doubts. We all know the history. But what I want to get into is the experience of winning the league, and why it might be bigger than we all think it is.
Last Tuesday, I went to work knowing there was a chance we could do it. I packed my Arsenal CHAMPIONS 25 shirt, acquired after Arsenal Women had won the Champions League on 24 May 2025. And I also went to work knowing that I had my 7th and 8th periods that day, working on their final senior essays, and that I wasn’t going to watch Manchester City’s game against Bournemouth until the end.
At this point, I think I should clarify that my students are well aware of my love and fixation on Arsenal. After Arsenal beat Atléti, I shamelessly wrote ONE NIL TO THE ARSENAL on my whiteboard. After Arsenal beat West Ham, I kept ONE NIL TO THE ARSENAL ON MY BOARD and added the Premier League table, handwritten. The students who are aware of the Premier League knew, and the ones who didn’t, well I made sure they knew too. And so on Monday, after Arsenal beat Burnley and I saw a senior trying to take a candid photo (despite the ban on cell phones in schools) I told them that they might get a good one if City “don’t win tomorrow, because that means Arsenal win the league.” On Tuesday afternoon, as I checked the score during the first half, I punched the air, and then told my friends to text me updates because I wasn’t going to watch. By the time 8th period began, it was in the 80th minute. I told the same student from the previous day, “that thing we talked about yesterday…it could happen.”
I took attendance and got Wordle started, trying to be as unbothered as possible (meanwhile, I was sweating profusely and my palms were shaking). By this time I had the game up on FotMob, and when it went to 90, I gave up and put the game on. I missed Bournemouth hitting the post; saw Erling Haaland score, and thought the worst. But then it happened, and I think my combination of lifting my arms and then putting my hands to my face caused some confusion. One student asked “Are you crying? It’s not deep” but when some in the back realized it was about soccer they said, “That’s valid!” A week and a half later, when they had their final class with me, I told them I’d always remember them because they were in class when Arsenal won the league for the first time in twenty-two years.
And then class carried on. I was in a better mood than usual but it didn’t really sink in, not until it was the end of the day and I was able to watch videos with envy of celebrations in North London, talk with my parents, and text with friends (something that I refused to do after the game because of professionalism…having watched the end of a game of football during class).
Since then, it’s been full on celebration mode. Arsenal shirts everyday. Going to the Arsenal supporters pub on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate with the 7 other people who had the same idea, cheering every time a new person showed up. And it’s been countless comments about Arsenal in the 10 days since we won the league, from people saying congratulations to people yelling “COME ON YOU GUNNERS” to the driver of a TriMet bus pulling up beside my bike and saying, “Nice shirt! Twenty-two years!”
All of this is happening about 5,000 miles from North London. Today, on the eve of the Champions League final I was asked about the final by several students. Someone brought it up to me unprompted at a bar. All of this feels very surreal: watching Arsenal can sometimes be a very lonely experience. Perhaps once a season I get to see a game at the Emirates, but it’s often an experience I go through on my own unless I’m watching with my dad or at the Arsenal pub. To have people bring Arsenal up to me rather than vice versa has been fundamentally weird.
We all know the numbers by now: an expected 500,000 to one million people in North London for the parade on Sunday. We’ve seen the videos across the world of people celebrating Arsenal winning the league and lifting the Premier League the following Sunday. And even then this feels like scratching the surface of something that has truly become a global phenomenon: something that I doubt anyone would’ve predicted twenty-two years ago.