Frank Lee
You know when you go to bars in Italy or Spain and see the walls decked with pictures of the local team lining up before a match? Over different seasons and with a variety of players? Well, I love those pics. And I wish Arsenal would get into the habit of having them taken before every game, and maybe making them available for download so we can print them out. They only ever happen before Champions League matches, doubtless under UEFA instruction. But it takes a maximum of 30 seconds and such pictures really capture a moment in time.
Each one tells a story – sometimes of glory, sometimes of lean periods. The one I have chosen for this article is a classic example. Taken before last season’s Champions League home group game against Shakhtar Donetsk, the devil is in the detail. Four of these men had left the club a year later. Only two of them are in the current first choice starting eleven. Fabianski was the first choice keeper, and injuries meant Robin Van Persie, Bacary Sagna and Thomas Vermaelen were absent.
But whereas other clubs have a rich history or such images that tell a story down the seasons, such pictures of Arsenal are sporadic. Obviously, since the advent of the Champions League and UEFA’s requirement for such images for their own media purposes, we now get them more often, but, for example, I am not entirely convinced that such a shot exists of the accepted first choice Invincibles line-up, which is a crying shame. How many of us would find room for a framed photo of that team on the wall?
Additionally, FA Cup finals. Think about it. Huge game. Eleven men ready to start. Real moment in time. A line-up picture is simply not taken. It’s not in the culture of the English game. I am not certain if a single team line-up image exists – of the eleven players who started a game – of an Arsenal side between maybe 1972 and 1994. There might have been one done at the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final in 1980, but I don’t think I have ever seen it if there was.
These line-up pictures tell the story of a club if taken regularly. There are some good ones taken over the 1930s and 1950s from memory. More staged, often involving chairs on the pitch for the front row – but they still serve as a reminder of the group of eleven men on the day.
Perhaps Arsenal should start instigating the taking of such a picture for every game they play, as Spanish and Italian clubs – and doubtless those of other countries – do. It just takes a word to the players before they go out and the club photographer to be ready to snap the image. Job done, and a memory immortalized. Time to start recording the ever changing history of our football team properly.
One final bugbear. The annual squad picture. Can we have less of the backroom boys? Stick to the manager and if you must, his two assistants. But I can do without ‘equipment manager’ (aka Arsene’s gofer) Paul Johnson staring at me from my nipper’s bedroom wall.
