After 22 Years
Arsenal, North London
Abijit Singh
6/6/20268 min read
Arsenal did it. They actually did it.
After 22 years of waiting, the club I've supported since I was seven years old finally lifted the Premier League trophy. It's been over two weeks since the title was confirmed, yet the smile on my face still hasn't disappeared. Even after that heartbreaking end to the Champions League final, nothing was going to stop me from doing what I'd wanted to do for so long: celebrate Arsenal winning the league. The parade we'd been waiting for—the one we'd come so close to for four straight years—had finally arrived.
My friend flew down from Glasgow, and I went to pick him up from Heathrow. He'd sent me his live location and, yes, I really did follow it all the way to a Terminal 5 toilet while he was changing into his Arsenal kit. To avoid looking completely unhinged, I stood by the sinks rather than outside a cubicle and called his name. He popped out from behind the furthest door, looked at me, and said, "This idiot came all the way to the toilets."
"We won the league!" was all I could shout back, followed by a horrific dance move. The airport was packed with Arsenal fans arriving for the weekend ahead of the Champions League final. Everywhere you turned, there were different accents from all over the world. It was brilliant to see.
Now, the day of the Champions League final wasn't actually that bad. We went to watch it at Rae's in Central London. I rarely venture into Central London, so it was quite amusing to step off the train and find myself wandering through a fresh food market, admiring giant wheels of cheese and stalls selling everything from pastries to cured meats, only to suddenly realise:
"Oh. This is Borough Market."
My friend from Scotland was a little stunned when I said that. Borough Market is one of London's most famous food markets, and there I was treating it like I'd accidentally discovered some hidden gem.
The place was packed with Arsenal fans, and there was a real sense of optimism in the air. Before the final hour leading up to kick-off, we popped into a bar across the road where I got to try my first Guinness. I hate the taste of beer, but it felt like one of those things you have to do at least once. The bartender looked at me and asked what I wanted. My mind immediately went blank. I'd completely forgotten what it was called.
"You know the drink that's famous for splitting the letter G?," I replied.To her credit, she knew exactly what I meant.
My friend and I sat down, and I took my first sip. Ironically, for alcohol, it was incredibly refreshing. Cold, smooth, and somehow managed to hit a spot I didn't know needed hitting. Naturally, I then spent the next ten minutes making increasingly terrible jokes about splitting the G and missing the spot. The jokes practically wrote themselves. By the end of it, my friend simply looked at me and said we should leave before they got any worse.
As we waited in line to get into Rae's, I noticed a couple of younger lads, probably around 18, standing in front of me. No Arsenal shirts. No Arsenal scarves. Nothing. Immediately, I knew these poor souls were PSG fans trying their absolute best not to be identified. I couldn't help myself.
"You two are PSG fans, aren't you?" They looked at each other, smiled nervously, and nodded. To be fair, I was laughing as I asked it. They weren't exactly hiding well. In a queue full of Arsenal fans dressed head to toe in red and white, they stood out by trying not to stand out. I quickly explained that people without tickets had to join the shorter queue, so they moved to the other side. I told them I'll keep their secret for them. Still, for a brief moment, it felt like I'd caught two undercover agents whose disguise consisted entirely of not wearing an Arsenal shirt.
The atmosphere inside was incredible. One of the hosts was a very brave Tottenham fan, which made the whole thing even more entertaining. Every now and then he'd disappear behind the curtain, presumably for his own safety. As we waited for the game to start we introduced ourselves to fellow Arsenal supporters, all with proud smiles.
When Kai Havertz scored the opener in the sixth minute, the place absolutely erupted. I still remember screaming at the top of my lungs with a tear in my eye, grabbing the shoulder of the complete stranger behind me as we shouted in each other's faces in pure disbelief and joy.
We had the lead. As the game went on and eventually headed to penalties, I had to move towards the back. After PSG's equaliser in the game, the atmosphere had become a little unsteady. It was getting incredibly humid, my heart was pounding, and I felt like I needed some air whilst the game went into penalties. During this moment, PSG missed a penalty and we scored the following one. The exact same scene played out all over again.
The room exploded. A large gentleman whose name I never learned grabbed me as we jumped, screamed, and celebrated together. The lad held and and squeezed the nerves out of me for a split second. Only for a moment every person in that room was connected by the same feeling.
Unfortunately, the night wasn't with us. We lost.
The journey home felt strangely similar to losing a title race. The excitement had vanished, replaced by silence and disappointment. We left fairly quickly, partly because football crowds can become unpredictable after a result like that, but mostly because nobody really knew what to say. The faces around me told the whole story. People looked devastated. But beneath the disappointment was something else. We all knew what it meant to be where we were. We'd just watched Arsenal compete in a Champions League final. It hurt because we cared, and because we'd come so close. It was going to be okay. After all, we still had a Premier League trophy to celebrate. We had a parade to prepare for the next day.
The following morning, we headed towards North London. The closer we got to our spot near Finsbury Park, the bigger the crowds became. Everywhere we looked, more and more people were pouring into the streets. Children had climbed traffic lights and fences for a better view, while others watched from rooftops, waving flags and cheering long before the parade had even arrived. There was definitely a sense of pain lingering among the crowd. The mood was bittersweet. We were there to celebrate, yet the disappointment of the previous night still hung in the air. At the same time, we knew the players were probably going through something far worse. Less than 24 hours earlier, they had been on the biggest stage in club football, within touching distance of a historic double. Now they were travelling from Budapest back to London, running on little sleep, trying to put on smiles and celebrate one trophy when everyone knew how close they had come to lifting two. It all felt slightly surreal. The league title was still an incredible achievement, but after coming so close to something even greater, the whole occasion carried an unusual mix of joy and heartbreak.
We knew how busy it was going to be, so we made sure to get there for around midday. More than a million people were estimated to have attended that day, with fans travelling from all over the world. By the time we arrived, the streets were already packed. Every available space had been claimed, and people continued to pour in from every direction.
As the hours passed and 2pm approached - the time we knew the team bus would be leaving the Emirates - we waited patiently for our first glimpse of the parade. Every now and then, a red flare would ignite somewhere in the crowd, immediately followed by cheers and chants echoing through the streets."North London Forever", "Champions Again", And my personal favourite: Gabriel's "King of Brazil." That one always hit differently. We all knew the pain Gabriel must have been carrying after the penalty miss the night before. Football can be cruel, and nobody needed reminding of that. In moments like these, though, that's part of what being a supporter is about. When one of your own is hurting, you pick them back up, and from the volume of that chant, it was clear that every Arsenal fan there felt exactly the same way. Big Gabi, you won't read this but you did us all proud.
Time ticked on as we stood in the same spot for nearly two hours. During that time, I met a friendly father-and-son duo standing behind me. We spent the wait chatting about the club, the upcoming season, transfer rumours, and, of course, the game from the night before. At one point, I told them that whenever my Insta360 camera went up in the air, they should give it a wave because it would be recording and I'd be able to send them the footage afterwards. Sure enough, they did, and they seemed genuinely pleased when they emailed me back. Eventually, word began to spread through the crowd that the parade bus had left the Emirates Stadium and should reach us in around thirty minutes. That was when the mood really started to change. The excitement became contagious. The disappointment from the PSG defeat slowly faded into the background as everyone remembered why we were there in the first place. After 22 years of waiting, Arsenal were Premier League champions again. Now the atmosphere had truly cranked up.
Then it started.
The fans further down the road - the direction we knew the buses were coming from - began setting off red flares. We still couldn't see anything, but we knew they were close. The noise began rolling towards us like a wave.
"Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal!" The roar grew louder and louder. It was unbelievably beautiful to listen to. Red flags filled the air. Scarves were raised above heads. Thousands upon thousands of hands pointed towards the road ahead. Then I saw them. The buses. At first, just glimpses through the smoke. Then a little more... and suddenly I found myself joining in.
"Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal!" This was it. The players' bus. I caught brief glimpses of Merino and Martinelli through the haze, but the combination of the smoke, the distance, and the speed of the bus made it almost impossible to make anyone out properly. None of that mattered. After 22 years, our champions were finally driving past us.
"Oh my God."
The buses swept through the sea of red and disappeared around the corner fairly quick, much quicker than we expected, and the moment they were gone, the place erupted. The noise was deafening. For a few glorious moments, thousands of Arsenal supporters celebrated together as one.
Everyone started drifting away from the rush back towards the station, even though we knew it would be closed. It turned into a waiting game, but that didn’t mean things slowed down. A group of lads had climbed onto a bus stop behind us, leading chants from above like it was their own stage. From “Waka Waka Eh Eh, 60 million down the drain, Kai Havertz scores again,” to “Champions again,” they were rotating through every Arsenal chant known to man. I was right there with them, singing my heart out to the ones I knew. As we moved closer - having walked past them to head in the direction of the station - we spotted a Manchester United fan in the crowd. Instantly, people began pointing and shouting, “Who are ya?”
He just pointed at his badge in response, but it was all light-hearted banter. Nothing serious, just football fans winding each other up after a long day. That said, I’ll admit I was slightly wary for a moment, especially since the lads on top of the bus stop were holding glass bottles. At one point, water was thrown down, and his twin brother - an Arsenal fan - stepped in immediately, telling him to calm down and zip up his shirt. It was chaotic, loud, and a bit messy… but all part of the day.
It took us about three hours to get home in the end, with the rush, station closures, and queues slowing everything down. The walking over the last couple of days had completely worn us out, but we knew it had all been worth it. My friend and I had waited for this moment over the course of our nine-year friendship, which really began after that Europa League final loss against Chelsea all those years ago. There was a strange irony in the fact that we were together again for the Champions League final defeat too. But being there for the parade put everything into a completely different perspective. We’d waited so long for this, and standing in the middle of it all, surrounded by thousands of people who felt the same way, it genuinely felt like we were in a different kind of trance - one built on years of disappointment finally giving way to something real.
