Arsenal vs West Ham: Adventure of a First- Timer

On the 9^th of August, a close friend of mine invited me over to his place to watch a football (or soccer, whichever is appropriate for you) game with him. The match is between the teams Arsenal, which my friend is a huge fan of, and West Ham United. 

Now I am not a big fan of football, usually being the “defender” that never gets the ball whenever I do play with my friends, let alone watching football. Usually from what I recall here in Malaysia most games start past midnight which means I am either asleep or too tired to watch 22 men running around after a ball. But for this specific game it starts at 8.30pm as it is one of the first games being played of the night. Against my better judgement and with a slight bit of curiosity, I took my friend’s offer and went over to his house at 7pm to watch the game. We had our dinner beforehand and then made ourselves comfortable for the game. During the start of the match where the players from both teams lined up and started shaking hands with people, my friend explained to me the details of the game. The match is being held in the Emirates Stadium which is the home of Arsenal, giving them the ‘Home advantage’ of having the crowd support whereas West Ham is the Away team. He also told me that Arsenal had recently bought a goalkeeper from Chelsea (Hey! Another team name that I'm familiar with) named Petr Cech and this will be his first match playing for his new team.

And with the start of the first half of the match, I realised that there is a whole different side of my friend that I have never seen before. Within 5 minutes of the game, a West Ham player gets a yellow card and is followed suit with another yellow card to yet another West Ham player a few minutes later. My friend got mouthy and making jokes about them. Wasn't very funny but I laughed all the same. Nothing really happened from then on till the 30th minute. Arsenal went on the offensive and got close to scoring some goals against West Ham. During this time, my friend was sitting at the edge of the sofa, screaming encouragements to the Arsenal players and then proceeded to scream obscenities at them when it didn't work out. At this point, I found it more entertaining to watch my friend watch football instead of the game itself.

(Image credits: Perform Group)

And so comes my favorite part: 40 minutes in the game. After so much talking about Arsenal and about other things I can't remember anymore, he out of nowhere said "stupid Arsenal, can't score goals. It's just gonna be 0 - 0 the whole game" right as it was nearly going to be 42 minutes into the game. The timing was perfect. As he uttered those last words of the sentence, the West Ham player Kouyate (I had to look up his name online) made a header and scored against Arsenal making it the first goal of the match. 

Header from Kouyate past Petr Cech (Image credits: BBC Sports)

There was a 30 second silence where me and my friend just stared at the screen stunned. The sheer irony (if you can't tell already, I really do enjoy the suffering of my friend here) of the situation is just simply amazing. After recovering from his shock, my friend just turns to me and says the words "I give up." I couldn't help but burst out laughing. And the first half of the match ends with Arsenal getting another failed shot at a goal.

The obligatory celebration (Image credits: Dailymail)

From then on, it was downhill for Arsenal and my friend's hopes. Every attempt to score by Arsenal doesn't connect and my friend gets more flustered with more screaming at the screen.

Arsenal's manager defeated, just like my friend. (Image credits: Telegraph UK)

10 minutes after the second half of the game started, another goal by West Ham this time by Mauro Zarate. At this point, my friend just cupped his face in both his hands and made sad sounds (much like a whale). I tried to hide the smile that was breaking out to no avail. Nothing more interesting than that happened, for me anyways, after that since my friend already lost interest in the game. What a way to start a football season. There was the headbutt between two players that made the game stop for a moment while medical personnel checked on them to see if they are alright but like I said, nothing else interesting.

With the game wrapping up 5 minutes past the 90 minute mark, my friend gave his opinion on the game. He said that the reason for the goals against the team was that the defenders and the new goalkeeper were not well coordinated together and he admitted that West Ham played well against Arsenal.

What I have experienced here in watching a live football match with a friend really opened my eyes to what a game of football really is. The way I see it, its not really just about the game where you watch 22 men run around chasing a ball to score points but its more about the emotions that fans have when they see their favorite teams play the game. The joy and exhilaration when they win or the disappointment and frustration when they lose. Maybe that is what makes football what the fans call The Beautiful Game.

I do apologise for such a long post. As people who watch more than 90 minutes of football, I'm sure this shouldn't be much of a hassle. I hope you all enjoy reading about my experience watching a match of football with my friend as I enjoyed watching said game.