I really enjoy public speaking and presenting. I always have done. Yet I am an absolutely useless networker. I cannot speak conversationally with people that I do not know or am not comfortable with very well at all. I am too hyperaware of the tics and social conventions that drive small talk and it makes me very anxious and unable to relax into idle chitter chatter.
When some of my previous jobs required me to attend conferences, I would always spend the section of time marked ‘teas / coffees / networking’ hidden in the toilet with my phone until it was safe to re-emerge. Yet I was very happy on stage talking to the exact same people en masse in a way that is exposing and in a way that many struggle to handle.
A few years ago, I really gave this some thought, how could I be simultaneously so extroverted and so introverted? I decided that I liked public speaking more than awkward conversation for one main reason (aside from ego). Control. There is a structure to public speaking that is under your authorship and it’s didactic.
People have to listen to you (or appear to be listening while their minds wander) and sit still and be quiet. Conversation is mutual and that introduces a random element not under my control. When public speaking, I am usually prepared but in polite conversation, someone might say anything and I just have to shoot from the hip with a response.
I enjoy and endure a similar contradiction with crowds. In places like football stadiums, big concerts or rush hour on the London Underground, I am regularly surrounded by so many people that I am at close physical quarters with other human beings and it doesn’t bother me at all.
Because in these setpiece events (loosely counting rush hour as a concept with a sense of choreography to it) pretty much everyone knows where they are going, it’s usually the same place and direction that you are going and they are trying to go there quickly (usually). Yet in busy markets, be they outdoor, or supermarkets, I cannot handle it.
In the days before shopping delivery I often had to step outside when doing the weekly shop because I would find the anxiety crushing. The crowds in this setting are far less structured and more chaotic. Everyone is moving in different directions at different speeds and I simply always had the sense I was in the way and that I had to get out of the way in a never-ending shadow boxing session with the general public.
Again, control and structure sits at the core of this dichotomy. Football and Arsenal in particular is another thing that makes me very nervous and anxious and when I am nervous and anxious, I crave structure and control. I don’t want the football to be bright and colourful in the sense that a lot of other people do, I just want Arsenal to win.
So when I say I have appreciated Arsenal’s style of play under Mikel Arteta, I mean it. Obviously I know that football requires risk (and when I look at where Gabriel and Saliba tend to be positioned when Arsenal attack I see that) and creativity and I certainly enjoy those things too, as much as the next person. But at my core, I want Arsenal to be solid, hard working and difficult to beat.
One of the reasons that conversations about football- especially on a deeply de-personalised setting like the internet- become so charged is because one’s thoughts and opinions are usually an expression of who they are. When someone attacks your subjective standpoint, they are attacking something that strikes at the core of who you are. And that can hurt.
It is also often informed by your football upbringing. The vast, vast majority of Arsenal fans the world over ‘grew up’ (either literally or in the footballing sense) with Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal. His football and his ideas form an essential part of the identity of the Arsenal fan base. (I am certainly not exempt from this, I was 12 when Wenger took over).
For me, I think Arsenal’s 1994 Cup Winners Cup triumph is the most formative and impressionable of the trophies Arsenal have won in my lifetime. I won’t bore you again with why. I wrote about it here. Grinding out those sturdy 1-0s against Parma, Torino and PSG will stay with me forever.
I was even more anxious watching Arsenal then than I am now so having a team built on such a stingy foundation really appealed. I loved the sense that the rest of the country hated it too. It’s probably no surprise that I am quite taken by the foundations we have seen re-emerge under Mikel Arteta’s tenure.
I will also say that I suspect Arteta would like to play a more expressive brand of football than we have seen this season. The absences of technical pillars like Saka, Odegaard and Havertz have diminished that, as well as the fact that a really top-class striker just has not become available over the last few years and last summer, Arsenal decided that they could not keep waiting for a unicorn to fall out of the sky.
Style is usually defined by your talent and your talent is defined by the market, Arsenal’s elite talent is behind the ball. That said, even if Arteta had prime Messi, Suarez and Neymar upfront, I am sure his teams would be built on the idea that you run back into position, you respect all facets of the game and you do your fucking work.
I don’t just appreciate that, I cherish it. I find it nurturing (when it is done well, of course. There isn’t a style of football in the world that is enjoyable when it is not done well). I understand that is not the case for everyone. I do think football inflicts a dogma on football fans that there is only really one vision for what entertaining or attractive football can mean.
I suspect there is a lot of conformity when people ask for ‘attractive’ or ‘expansive’ football and we all understand what that shorthand means. I think that is a shame. To me, that is like saying there is a ‘right’ type of music or film. At the same time, it’s not for me to judge other people’s preferences because, in the words of Nick Hornby, we all have our reasons for loving things the way that we do.