22 years later, Arsenal finally came back to me

I’ve been trying to understand why Arsenal’s Premier League championship win feels emotional in a way I did not expect.

After 22 years, it’s quieter than I imagined. Maybe because, as an Arsenal fan, success has always belonged to someone else.

I did not inherit Arsenal like most fans did — through family. I was not raised on the stories of Arsenal FC winning titles. I wasn’t even around for the Invincibles. No childhood memory of mine exists wherein I’m watching trophy lifts in real time. 

I was gifted an Arsenal jersey before I even fully followed football. That was it. No deep reason. Nothing that was documentary worthy. Just the feeling of “I have this shirt, so this is my team.”

It sounds ridiculous now, considering how meaningful football has become for me — it’s literally my job now. But at the time, it felt distant. The club was just colours, a badge, and a decision that felt accidental. 

Years passed and slowly, without realization, Arsenal became one of the ways I began to understand football and all its glory. The strange thing about supporting Arsenal over the last decade is that so much of the club’s identity has existed in memory than reality. 

People spoke about titles the way they do cities they once lived in. There was always a sense of looking backwards. Conversations about dropped standards. About what we “used to be.”

You inherit the emotion before you inherit the memories. 

So when Arsenal finally bested the league after 22 years, I realized something that I had never really thought of before. 

This, along with the women’s champion’s league win from last year, feels entirely mine.

The complicated part of my falling in love with this team is that I do not immediately think of the men. Sure, Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, and Ian Wright, to name a few, are legends in their own right. For me, however, I think about the women, the players who made football feel personal: Tobin Heath, Alex Scott, Jen Beattie, Kim Little, and Leah Williamson.

Heath probably influenced how I watch football more than almost anyone else. Not because of her short stint with Arsenal, but because she made football feel expressive. Watching her always felt like watching somebody who understood that sport could also be creative. Technical, but emotional. 

Then, there was Williamson, who influenced me differently. 

She made me realize that football clubs aren’t just places where matches happen. They become a home. A language for people of different cultures. How she speaks about the responsibility of wearing the badge represents something bigger than herself — it always made Arsenal feel less like a brand and more of a family. 

The Arsenal women’s team stopped feeling like an extension of the club but became the part of Arsenal that I most connect to. 

This is probably why this season feels emotionally difficult to summarize. The men finally did it. After 22 years. Yet, the women missed out. Marginally. 

Last year, they delivered something unforgettable — the Union of European Football Associations Women’s Champions League. A win that felt impossible and what eventually influenced me to get an Arsenal tattoo. It was like watching belief become tangible.

Yet, this year makes it more meaningful. Supporting a club across both teams has changed how I think about football. Clubs aren’t singular — and neither is their success. Watching one team win something historic, while mourning the fact that another missed out is what being a supporter is: continuing to care even when the emotions refuse to organize themselves neatly. 

Maybe, what makes this title feel so emotional is not the fact that Arsenal have finally become successful. It’s because after years of borrowing stories and tales from the past, I finally have my own version to celebrate.