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This is a bit of a rant about Arsenal's disappointing attitude
to the France-Australia friendly match organised for 11th November 2001.
See list of newsreel entries below
for a full history of this issue.
Arsenal vs France vs Australia:
Friendly unfriendliness
(by Rupert Ward, 27th October 2001)
As an Arsenal fan, I have to say that I feel rather
embarassed by Arsenal's attitude to the match.
Why shouldn't France and Australia call up who they
want? Why should the players be denied the chance
to play for their countries?
We don't have another game back in England till the
following week. That's because this was always going
to be an international week. There is a 10 day gap in
the domestic schedule precisely to enable international
matches.
Ok, Australia is a long way away. But the French FA
are flying their team there in a private jet, and
they're going to play one friendly. Many other players
are going to be playing TWO hard-fought competitive matches
in those 10 days. Arsenal should be thinking themselves
lucky that we don't have many players involved in
the world cup play-offs, not moaning about a perfectly
reasonable friendly match.
One also has to consider the Australian football fans,
who are understandably feeling like FIFA are treating
them as second class citizens of the world footballing
nation. They have had this game set up for some time,
it is a really big deal to them that the World and
European champions are making this effort to visit them.
Quite apart from the fact that they need the practice
before their own world cup play-off. The match is scheduled
for November 11th, a date of some significance to the
people of both France and Australia. And it's been
advertised on telly over there for months, with Henry,
Vieira, Pires and Desailly all featuring: saying how
much they want to win the game, to get revenge for the
loss to Australia in the confederations cup.
It's not just a game, it's a big event. And as such it's
not just about whether the game takes place or not.
I heard David Dein on the radio tonight talking about
the "big clubs" offer to pay to stage the game in Europe.
What a joke! As if playing the game over here would have
been any substitute.... and it would probably have had
to be played in the middle of the Aussie night !!!!
Ok, there's one other point I wanted to make which is
the contrast between this situation and that of the
League Cup game between Arsenal and Manchester United.
As you no doubt know, this has been moved from Wednesday
7th November to Monday 5th. Apparently the reason is
that Sven Goran Eriksson has asked for his England players
for the friendly earlier than expected.
Once again, the fact that this was going to be an international
weekend was known ages ago, months before the date was fixed
for 7th November. Moving the cup tie means that quite a few
Arsenal fans who have already bought tickets will no longer
be able to go (me included - plans for bonfire night! but
this isn't just sour grapes!). And many Man Utd fans had
already bought non-returnable and now useless train tickets
for the Wednesday.
The argument for moving the game from Wednesday to Monday
appears to have something to do with the availability of
Arsenal and Man Utd's international players. But how many
of them would be playing in the league cup anyway? And
how many of them are going to be playing in it now, now
that they've moved the match to the DAY AFTER Man Utd travel
to Liverpool in the league and Arsenal host Charlton???
If we are to believe, despite the above, that Arsenal
and Man Utd do want their England players available for the
league cup game, couldn't they have put their fans first and
asked Sven to let at least some of them play on the Wednesday
even though it's only 3 days before the England game? I mean,
it's only a friendly?
If they weren't prepared to do this, but were prepared to go
as far as appealing to FIFA to stop France and Australia calling
THEIR players up, isn't that a pretty clear case of double
standards?
Like I said, it's embarrassing. Arsenal are supposed to play
by the rules, the club's supposed to be bigger than this, and
they claim to like playing by the rules. Now they're trying
to get the rules rewritten for petty and inconsistent reasons.
The contrast
between the clubs' treatment of France-Australia and
Arsenal-Man Utd was quite telling. It looks like
maybe they're only making a fuss about the former in
order to win a battle in the ongoing club-vs-country war
(FIFA's recommendation already represents a small victory,
and if they go further in the face of France and Australia's
responses it could become a big victory).
In both cases, it's the fans who will lose out, whether
in Australia or in England.
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