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As a boy in the apartheid era I saw footage of the Gunners beaten in the 1969 League Cup final ? on Saturday I will attend the Champions League showpiece with my son
I fell for Arsenal in the white?and-black world of apartheid, where television was banned as a tool of communist propaganda and the club of my dreams was 6,000 miles away and mostly invisible to me. So it feels fitting that a surreal love story that began for a small boy in South Africa in 1969 will reach a new peak on Saturday night in eastern Europe. This 65-year-old Arsenal fan and his 25-year-old son, who is just as besotted by the Gunners, will be at the Champions League final in Budapest as we face the dazzling powerhouse of Paris Saint-Germain.
It?s the final game of Arsenal?s tumultuous grind of a season and we are as exhausted as we are still euphoric. We will remember that my last game of this campaign could have been Swindon?s 2-1 home defeat by Chesterfield in League Two. I have had my share of pain with Arsenal; but it would have been a far deeper burden to have spent 57 years supporting Swindon.
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I fell for Arsenal in the white?and-black world of apartheid, where television was banned as a tool of communist propaganda and the club of my dreams was 6,000 miles away and mostly invisible to me. So it feels fitting that a surreal love story that began for a small boy in South Africa in 1969 will reach a new peak on Saturday night in eastern Europe. This 65-year-old Arsenal fan and his 25-year-old son, who is just as besotted by the Gunners, will be at the Champions League final in Budapest as we face the dazzling powerhouse of Paris Saint-Germain.
It?s the final game of Arsenal?s tumultuous grind of a season and we are as exhausted as we are still euphoric. We will remember that my last game of this campaign could have been Swindon?s 2-1 home defeat by Chesterfield in League Two. I have had my share of pain with Arsenal; but it would have been a far deeper burden to have spent 57 years supporting Swindon.
Continue reading...
More...