Sang Tan/Associated Press
Arsenal's Carl Jenkinson, left, battling for the ball with Tottenham Hotspur's Danny Rose on Sunday.
Arsenal wins the derby.Twenty-four hours before the summer sales in European soccer closed, Arsenal beat Tottenham Hotspur in one of the oldest derby matches in the world game.
Not only did Olivier Giroud find the touch, and the finesse, to score the only goal midway through the first half, the Frenchman found the words to sum up the frenzy in a transfer system that resembles a cattle market against a ticking clock.
“I know my teammates,” Giroud said immediately after the final whistle. “And they know me. Theo knew where I would run, and he gave me the ball where I wanted it. We do this so often on the training field, we could find each other without opening our eyes.”
Bravo, Giroud! The run, the timing and the words put to bed, for now at least, the months of speculation that Tottenham knows how to spend it but that the Gunners of Arsenal have reached the closing window and failed.
Indeed, Arsenal’s manager and coach and miserly banker, Arsène Wenger, is reluctant in that aspect of his job. He has, we constantly hear, a hundred million dollars in the purchasing account. He tried to sign Liverpool’s Luis Suárez but was repelled. He dithered, apparently, when he might have bought Real Madrid’s Gonzalo Higuaín, who went instead to Napoli.
Wenger was still insisting late Sunday night, after the victory, that he is in the market and he might have a surprise for the fans. That indicates a purchase, maybe two, and our suspicions center still on Real Madrid which just might release Mesut Ozil, Karim Benzema or Ángel di María.
That depends on Madrid’s completing the deal of the summer window, the $100 million-plus arrival of Gareth Bale. And who was holding up that transfer? Why, the Spurs.
Tottenham has known all summer long that Bale had every intention and a heart’s desire for a lifelong change in his family fortunes that was made possible by the confirmation Sunday that, indeed, Tottenham has sold Bale to Real Madrid.
Time will tell if the Spurs, deadline dealers if ever there were any, has managed to frustrate Arsenal’s buying intentions by holding out until the last 24 hours to release Bale. All this time, Tottenham was gathering seven players (from seven different nations) without until the last minute signing off on the one man, Bale, whose sale would compensate for the sum of their values.
This is what Giroud was alluding to when he spoke of players knowing one another’s movements blindfolded. This is what Wenger, for all his tardiness in going to market, preaches day after day, the trust and belief in the pool of talents recruited not over one hot, short summer but in his case over a 17-year span as Arsenal team builder.
These two teams of north London have been bitter rivals stretching back to 1887. Arsenal moved to the Tottenham neighborhood in 1913, and the real enmity between the two clubs that are a short bus ride from each other fuels a rivalry in which Arsenal has now won 75 “derbies,” and Spurs 54, with 47 ending even.
Rarely, though has the margin been as thin as it was Sunday at the Emirates Stadium, the splendid, 60,000-capacity stadium that Wenger’s parsimony has helped to finance. Tottenham has no comparable home stadium, and cannot match the income that Arsenal draws from ticket sales and hospitality boxes every match day.
Tottenham also has not, yet, matched Wenger’s record of qualifying Arsenal for 16 consecutive seasons in the lucrative Champions League. The Spurs fell one point short of a place in that league last season, thwarted, again, by the Gunners.
From that defeat on, Tottenham lost hope of persuading Bale to stay.
The goal Sunday that was the thin divider between century-old foes was beautiful in its construction, and utterly true to the philosophy that Wenger has devoted the greater part of his coaching career to. The ball was won by Per Mertesacker’s interception deep in his own half. From him it was dispatched by four crisp passes, all along the turf, all sharp and all knowing that the receiver would be in position, or running into position.
Thomas Rosicky, Aaron Ramsey and Santi Cazorla were all involved, and Theo Walcott, the final recipient, pushed the ball into the path of Giroud at the near post. There, knowing it would come and quicker than any defender to the ball, the French striker poked the ball past his countryman, Hugo Lloris.
Spurs tried might and main to rescue this game. Its players largely dominated the field, but Arsenal, together now in a remarkable defensive resilience, saw out the contest, including five minutes added on at the end for injuries and substitutions.
The season ahead will tell how wisely Tottenham has spent its Bale money, and how long it might take to forge a team unit and a playing style out of such wholesale player purchasing. Arsenal needs more players and will pursue them until the window closes. But right now, Arsenal has the bragging rights in north London.
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