Be a real supporter, get behind them « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
By Walter Broeckx
The wise lessons I learned from “De Croc”
I must apologize because I have to start with talking about someone who isn’t related to Arsenal at first sight but someone who has told me some interesting things that many Arsenal fans should listen to or take notice of. So to start this article I must explain who “De Croc” is. As I live in another country I have supported in my childhood days my local team, still do from a distance. In those days I was a supporter of my local team who played half of the time in the First division (what is the EPL in England) but half of the time we went down, to only come back the next year or so. So it was mostly a rollercoaster ride with a sad finish at times but also with the fun of becoming champions the next season or gaining promotion.
And as a kid I had the luck to be living close to one of the last legends we have had in our team: De Croc. De Croc was the nickname he got and he was one of those players who only knew one team in his life: as a player and as a supporter. He was a few years older than I and he lived around the corner. All his career he stayed a semi-professional player. He was a plumber and had a company together with his father and it was not unusual that at 3 pm he came off the roof of a house to go to the stadium and to play a game in the evening.
De Croc was a boy from the neighbourhood, always had time for a chat, very down to earth. In those days I was helping our supporters club with their own magazine by writing articles and doing interviews of players. So I had the luck and the chance to speak with first class players and could ask them a lot of questions. I was between 14 and 18 years old at that time, just to give you an idea. Now come to think of it, I’m still doing what I did as a kid….
Anyway I have spoken on many occasions with De Croc when I was waiting at the bus stop and he came to get his morning newspaper and you could always ask him questions and he would answer it. I also did an interview once with him for the magazine. And I learned how a player is looking at things. So once the question was asked: Do you hear what people shout at you and does it influence you?
And this is what he told about it: “When we play away from home at Anderlecht, Bruges or Standard Liège as a player you feel the hostile atmosphere. But for me this was something that made me more determined. I wanted to spoil it for them. (Editor note: It mostly didn’t work out that way to be honest) Some players were affected by this but I loved it every second.”
And about the own fans he said: “When the fans are getting behind the team it really gives you wings. At times in a game you almost feel sick from the running you have done and you want to slow down but then the fans shout the team forward and you just want to please the fans and you forget the upcoming cramps in your leg, you forget that you hardly can breath anymore, you just keep running. It is inspiring and it is something that makes you work harder, run faster, dig deeper.”
But about the years when it was all doom and gloom, when we finished at a relegation place he had this to say: “When the stadium is rather empty it becomes painful at times. If there are a lot of fans there is so much noise that you cannot hear what individual fans shout or say. You here the noise of the crowd and that’s it. But when there are not many fans, and when you play not at your best, when you are struggling you sometimes hear nothing. You only hear silence as if the fans are just waiting for bad things to happen. They know you will screw up at some time in the match, as it happened all these times before. And then you can also hear what the individual fan is shouting. And when your own fans are shouting at you or at a team mate: ‘you useless piece of sh*t’ or even worse insulting things, you hear this and it hurts. Nothing is more worse for a player than having your own fans having a go at you. It cuts like a knife and hurts. And there have been times that I wanted to come off the field during the game and speak to such a fan and ask him to support us and not to tear us further down. When you are giving it all on the field and they call you names, you just wonder at times why you are doing it and for whom.”
So this is one of the reasons why I cannot stand it when people boo or insult our own players. It will never help them. And I know that when one fan in the Emirates calls one of our players a piece of sh*t, this player will not hear him. As there is too much noise in the stadium.
But now the shouting at your own players is not done in an empty Emirates. Now it is done at the internet stage. Where people keep on insulting our players and our manager. And let us just forget the manager. But concentrate on the players. The players are young, they all have the technology available that we have. They will surf on the internet and who knows which sites they visit. Just imagine one moment being an Arsenal player and coming on to some sites where you see your own supporters abusing you, calling you names, telling you that you are worthless, telling you should be given away, and so on….
Doing all those things on the internet is the modern equivalent of what “De Croc” has told me about hearing the individual fan shouting and pulling you down on the playing field. It will not help a player. It only undermines his confidence. So I will not throw abusive words to my own players as I know it will not help them in anyway. If you don’t like a player or even if you think you know more than the manager and think a certain player is not good enough, fine. But just say things like: Well I would play with player X instead of player Z, as I think that X is better against a defending team. You don’t just have to shout X = sh*t. Just imagine being X and have to read it every day on the internet. Yeah you could imagine that it would make you feel good.
And I don’t want to say that from now on you must adore each player we have and you must like them all. No, I also have my favourite players in the team. I also have players I rate higher than others. But De Croc taught me that bringing your own players down will not help that player at all. And this is one of the reasons my blood is boiling when I see our own fans having a go at our own players. Just get behind your team who ever the manager has chosen to play for us in our colours. Just support your own players and let us save the abuse to players from other teams.
De Croc taught me that players do need to know and to feel that the supporters are behind them, so lets just be real supporters and get behind our players, all of them, as long as they have our shirt on.
____________________________
What would we do if Wenger would leave?