I have watched two goalless draws this week - as have many football fans in England. On Tuesday night the big game was Manchester City versus Inter Milan, two giants of European football; last night my team Arsenal played away at Atalanta. It is, I suspect, incomprehensible to many American readers 1) that a sport can remain scoreless 2) that one would willingly watch a sport where this is a possibility and 3) that one would willingly watch a sport where this is a possibility on consecutive nights. It literally can’t happen in US sports, because in the unlikely event that both teams fail to score, then they just keep playing until someone does. (I should point out that I once saw a 1-0 in Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, and the one ‘run’ was scored on an incomprehensible technicality -a baulk? Is that right? Anyway, it might well have been one of the worst games ever played.)
First of all, football is a low-scoring game. That’s just the way it is. Let’s say I see Arsenal win 2-0; it’s perfectly possible that one goal is a penalty, the other a header from a corner, which is an unexciting way to score (unless it’s the winning goal, away at your deadly enemies.) So yes, I have seen goals in the game, but the total goalscoring action lasted maybe twenty seconds, if one discounts the arguing and the VAR decision that precedes the award of the penalty. It is perfectly possible that a 2-0 game is much less exciting than a 0-0 game in which teams hit the post, or miss open goals, or one goalkeeper, maybe both, makes several extraordinary saves. Last night’s Arsenal game was TERRIBLE, but contained a moment that will be remembered for a long time. Arsenal’s goalkeeper David Raya saved a penalty - hard to do - but in doing so presented the penalty-taker with an open goal. Raya saved the second attempt too, quite brilliantly.
There is a way in which those two saves might have a profound effect on Arsenal’s season. The goalkeeper is relatively new, and there was some doubt about the wisdom of buying him, but last night turned him into a hero. It maintained Arsenal’s unbeaten start to the season. Our defence looks impregnable at the moment. And a draw earned one point in a league competition, which even the sports-illiterate can see is better than no points at all. The goallessness did not render the game meaningless.
The Manchester City-Inter game was actually pretty good. City should have scored right at the end, but if they had done, it wouldn’t have made the game any better or worse. Football is less about goals than about flow, style, occasional acts of great skill or bravery or luck. It’s also about context. Drawing 0-0 away at Barcelona is a fantastic result. Drawing 0-0 at home to Luton is a disaster. Unless you are a Luton fan, of course, in which case a 0-0 draw away at Arsenal is a triumph, and each passing goalless minute is enthralling. In other words, there are great nil-nils and there are boring nil-nils, sometimes in the same game, depending on who is watching. I have seen boring 2-2s, and boring 3-0s. Sometimes you can see a 0-0 and the crowd is roaring its way through it; other times, you can hear the players shouting at each. other.
Whenever I take an American to football, I am always slightly nervous. On balance, I would prefer Americans to see a goal. At the end of December, 2012, I got tickets for an American writer friend and his sons to see a game at the Emirates; the boys were quite young, so if they were to be converted to this foreign sport and to my team, maybe it would be best, I thought, if there was at least a modicum of action. Arsenal scored a goal early, but Newcastle United equalised. Arsenal scored again, and Newcastle equalised for a second time. Arsenal scored…Anyway. The final result was Arsenal 7, Newcastle 3. I have been going to watch Arsenal since 1968, and that remains the only occasion I have seen ten goals in a game. At the end, the youngest boy was buzzing like a kid who’d drunk fifteen expressos. Last year I watched a game in NYC with him - the match he saw created a connection that never left him, and he watches every game from afar. I am pleased to say that he has sat through, and understood, a lot of nil-nils since. He gets it.
https://youtu.be/nmuC8iohU88?si=FXTpJg3bQ_w9F5Rf
Chicago born and bred here. Liverpool fan for life, i have never taken to American sports at all.
i know how lucky and rare i am.
great piece, thank you