Arsenal Advent: Why the Invincibles were first love for me – and so many fans

Welcome to the Arsenal Advent Calendar: The Invincibles edition. Every day in the build-up to Christmas, The Athletic will bring subscribers content to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the unbeaten season in 2003-04. It could be a short story, a long interview, or a segment of audio. It might be published early or late in the day. Whatever it is, there will be a little something, a reminder, or a new take on an event that happened during that campaign.

If you miss a day or want to gorge on it all at once, like the small chocolates in your festive calendars, we won’t judge. Simply step this way to find all the treasures in one place. Enjoy!

It was May 15, 2004, and, although many recollections from that time are hazy, I vividly remember being plonked on the carpet in front of the TV, inches from the screen.

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It was far closer than any optician would recommend for a seven-year-old, but this was before flatscreen TVs. We didn’t have Sky Sports at this time either, so for a big game to be on the box was a special occasion.

And it was: Arsenal, 90 minutes from becoming the ‘Invincibles’.

I’m not sure how I grasped the magnitude of the achievement but my mum tells me I only took a slow-motion forkful of my dinner every few minutes, my eyes not even looking at the food.

It was just weeks after we had been to Blackpool on holiday, which was when she realised I had become obsessed with Arsenal as I begged her for a Thierry Henry strip.

Being from Glasgow, it is common for kids to have an ‘English team’ growing up but this affection was less about caring for results. It was about falling in love with a football team for the first time.

At that age, interest in football is usually based around exotic names, 40-yard screamers and fancy haircuts but Arsene Wenger’s masterpiece team invoked something more intoxicating in me.

As a pastime at school we would, for unknown reasons, write down our best Premier League XI and debate whose side would beat whose. That year was the only time I can remember most of the boys picking players from virtually one team.

So many professional players around the same age (give or take five to 10 years) also cite that Arsenal side as the first team they felt strongly about. There must have been an extra quality that ingrained the side in the imagination more than other great teams.

To me, watching that Arsenal team felt like they had taken you to the future, that you were witnessing something that wasn’t supposed to be allowed yet.

It didn’t matter who they were playing, you were hooked by Arsenal alone. They played with such swagger and imagination that it felt like it was their game and they could do what they wanted with it. 

That was how different they seemed to a young boy slowly understanding how the game was played.

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There was something otherworldly about them as a collective but Henry was the player most of us idolised. No one comes close when ranking which player had the biggest impact on my generation. Henry felt ubiquitous just as footballers started to truly recognise their value as commercial assets.

The way he glided past players, he was like an alien. I’d start trying to cut inside from the left like he did at my boys’ club games — much to the annoyance of my coach who was a stickler for getting to the byline and crossing — and impersonating the way he said “Va va voom” in the commercials was a daily competition at school.

That was the time I started collecting Power Pods — small figures of players with attribute ratings on the bottom that you would use to compete with your mates — and he sat pride of place, a row in front of the other players, on top of my PS2.

The Invincibles introduced seven-year-old me to the idea that football could be distilled as an art form.

They were the zeitgeist for millions my age. No team will ever be as mesmerising as they were.