When the striker Eddie Nketiah joined Crystal Palace from Arsenal in the summer, it felt like a deep loss to me and many other Arsenal fans. Why? Nketiah isn’t from north London, but grew up in the south-east London area of Deptford and went to school in New Cross; his parents immigrated to England from Ghana; he didn’t join Arsenal as a child but aged 16. Yet Nketiah was, to me and others, inextricably part of Arsenal. This is because he embodies a concept that was unknown to me until very recently, but which I immediately recognised upon learning about it: black Arsenal.
Black Arsenal might sound like a reductive notion. Should we really be reducing footballers and fans to their race? But it is the opposite of reductive: black Arsenal is an inclusive idea of fandom and belonging, reflected in its origin story. Black Arsenal did not begin in the London borough of Islington, the home of Arsenal football club since 1913, but in two different places: south London, and the principality of Monaco.
South London, not because Arsenal was established there, in Woolwich in 1886 – by munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal – but because many of the club’s defining black players during the 1980s and 1990s came from south of the river. Two of them, Ian Wright and David Rocastle, even grew up in the same estate in south-east London neighbourhood of Brockley and were childhood friends who played football in the Honor Oak recreation ground.
It starts, too, in Monaco where, from 1987 to 1994, the future Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger was the manager of AS Monaco. During that time he played a pivotal role in the career of the Liberian striker George Weah. Wenger signed him in 1988 and Weah later became the first African footballer to win the Ballon d’Or (the best player in the world) in 1995. This illustrated beyond doubt that African players could compete at the top of European football. More pointedly, Wenger, in his last year as Monaco manager in 1994, gave a debut to a 17-year-old player who grew up in the rough suburbs of Paris and came to define Arsenal at their very best in the 21st century: Thierry Henry.
All of this is found in Black Arsenal: Club, Culture, Identity. Edited by Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Matthew Harle, this is a handsome coffee-table book, containing many enjoyable photos and contributions by figures from Wright to Amy Lawrence, the Arsenal correspondent for the online football publication the Athletic; from the academic and Arsenal fan Paul Gilroy to members of the jazz quintet Ezra Collective.
Black Arsenal also works effectively as engaging social history. It is not just the story of Arsenal’s black players from the 1980s to the present; it is also a fascinating portrait of the changing nature of black British identity over the past 40 years.
Put crudely, many black Londoners have chosen to support Arsenal not because of geographical proximity, or out of family loyalty, but because other London clubs – especially Millwall, Chelsea and West Ham – have been characterised by intensely racist fan bases. Arsenal, in comparison, has been welcoming. Lawrence recounts a match between Arsenal and Everton in January 1989 at Goodison Park. Everton fans were shouting: “Shoot, shoot, shoot that n*****” at Arsenal’s black players. It was also an Everton fan, it should be remembered, who threw a banana peel at the Liverpool winger John Barnes the year before. The iconic image of Barnes backheeling the banana peel came to represent racism in the 1980s in microcosm.
As a boy, Wright often went to watch Millwall play at their stadium, the Old Den, in New Cross. Millwall was the club closest to where he grew up. He even had a six-week trial when he was 14 and, according to his autobiography, despite showing “enough skill and ability in that time to warrant something from it” he was rejected. But Wright was rejected by the club in a more fundamental way. At the Old Den he would often hear racist abuse from Millwall fans directed at the black players of opposing teams. These fans would sometimes turn to Wright and reassure him by saying: “Nothing personal, mate, it’s because he’s one of their black bastards.”
The racism Wright witnessed as a boy was later directed against him when he was a footballer playing against Millwall. In 1992 and 1994, Wright was the victim of monkey noises and racist chants when was playing for Arsenal at Millwall’s stadium. In the 1994 game, the manager George Graham substituted Wright early in the second half because he was already on a yellow card and Graham thought he might be sent off due to the provocation. In 1995 Arsenal played Millwall again. Wright was again subject to racist abuse. But this time he was marked by a black defender, Tony Witter. The Millwall fans shouted: “Not you Tony, we mean him.”
Wright (“Wrighty”, as fans call him) is Mr Arsenal. Whenever he is on TV or radio, his enthusiasm for the club is striking. In his contribution to Black Arsenal he goes out of his way to say he never supported Millwall in his youth even though he went to many of their games. He insists he is an Arsenal fan. But as Les Back puts it in the book: “Ian Wright has always been ‘on loan’ to Arsenal and north London.” Ironically, Wright was born in Woolwich. Even when he played for Arsenal, Wright lived in south London: Bishop’s Walk, Shirley, Croydon. He told the Daily Express in 2023: “A mix of south and north London; that’s me.” That also serves a description of black Arsenal.
A few months after that Everton match in which Arsenal’s black players were abused, Arsenal came back to the city of Liverpool to clinch their first league title in 18 years. The game at Anfield on May 26, 1989, was watched by more than 12 million people. Michael Thomas, a black player from Lambeth, scored the second goal which secured Arsenal’s victory. Paul Davis, who also played for Arsenal in the Eighties and also came from south London, writes fascinatingly about being part of that group of players, with Thomas and Rocastle, who came from south London and from a black Caribbean background.
A striking feature of Arsenal in the 21st century was the sharp rise in African players: Nwankwo Kanu from Nigeria; Emmanuel Adebayor from Togo; Emmanuel Eboué and Kolo Touré from the Ivory Coast; Lauren from Cameroon. Sean Jacobs writes well about the particular impact of Kanu. Many people in Nigeria became Arsenal fans because of Kanu. At the start of Wenger’s time in Arsenal in 1996, the majority of black people in Britain came from a black Caribbean background. According to the 2021 census, there are two and a half times as many black African people as there are black Caribbean people in England and Wales: a demographic change the club has reflected.
But the most vivid representation of black Arsenal under Wenger came from black Europeans. His most charismatic and influential players were French: Henry, and the captain Patrick Vieira. (In 2002, with a team including Henry and Vieira, Arsenal became the first club to field nine black players in a Premier League game.) As Gilroy puts it, these black European players came to “embody Wenger’s particular sense that the game could be beautiful as well as efficiently played”.
The current Arsenal team embodies the rich history of black Arsenal. Following the injury of the Norwegian playmaker Martin Ødegaard, Arsenal’s captain in recent weeks has been Bukayo Saka, the winger that fans refer to as “Starboy”. Like many of his predecessors, Saka wasn’t raised in north London; he grew up in west London, in the borough of Ealing. The holding midfielder Thomas Partey, from Ghana, continues the great tradition of black players from Africa, as do two excellent centre-backs, Gabriel Magalhães and William Saliba, who come from Brazil and France respectively. The legacy of Wright and Wenger lives on.
Black Arsenal is also the story of how black people from outside Islington have come to develop an affinity with Arsenal. The brothers Femi and TJ Koleoso from the band Ezra Collective grew up in Enfield, and lived much closer to Tottenham than Arsenal. Despite this, they are both staunch Arsenal fans, or “Gooners”. In an interview with Nwonka, Femi says: “Our primary school was very black and I don’t… remember anyone that supported anyone other than Arsenal.” He adds: “Arsenal felt like the immigrant home beyond black people. All the Turkish people we grew up with are Gooners, all the Greek kids are Gooners.”
Black Arsenal, then, isn’t just about race, or about being black. It is about coming from somewhere beyond Islington, or London, or Britain, and finding a home in Arsenal: the ultimate cosmopolitan club of England.
Black Arsenal: Club, Culture, Identity
Edited by Clive Nwonka and Matthew Harle
W&N, 320pp, £35
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[See also: Arsenal Women must regret letting go of their star player]
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This article appears in the 09 Oct 2024 issue of the New Statesman, 100 days that shook Labour