Can't believe the second and first most important games of soccer happen tomorrow.
Yes, tomorrow's game between Manchester City and Arsenal is one whose ramifications are significant for the top of the Premiere League table, as Arsenal currently is 5 points ahead with 2 more games played over Man City. Their current run of form has been...strange, with a mighty offense being paired with a defense that seems almost lackadaisical and undisciplined, tying both formidable Liverpool away at Anfield, and the lowly surely-to-be-relegated Southampton at their own stadium. A win here, while seeming unlikely given Man City's incredible run of form across the EPL, Champions' League, and FA Cup, would be a massive boost and give them significant confidence in being able to hold onto their table. A tie is, well, quite possible and would mean there would be almost no margin for error between them and City -- and City, who have Kevin, the final boss of football, and Erling "never count out hat-trick" Haaland, are surely to be superior in that regard. But given that they just played in the FA cup two days ago and Arsenal's last game on Friday has given them just a little more time to prepare and be well-rested, they may feel the pinch of fatigue a a little more strongly. Man City are favored, but Arsenal has much better chances than I think a lot of people are claiming, if only to force a draw out and make City win those two other games.
While it's not quite a signature rivalry among the fans of the two teams, it's one that's going to be very contentious. Mikel Arteta, the current Arsenal manager, was one of several brilliant players on the team a decade ago. Moving to coaching after retirement he started with an assistant position -- under no less than Pep Guardiola, considered by many to be one of the greatest tactical minds in football of all time, and who was coaching for, of course, Manchester City. Arteta's time as head coach, at Arsenal, started in 2019 right after Man City's history-making treble run, and Arsenal have been climbing up the table since, reaching the fifth-place spot last season after two years at 8th. The narrative, of the upstart student seeking to upset his former head, is of course instantly familiar to anyone that reads sports fiction (the obvious culmination of so many shounen manga training arcs), and the tension in this game, where both go head-to-head in a way that is quite likely to determine the final table results, is obviously full of excitement and tension.
But that's only the appetizer. An afternoon delight, if you will, for fans of the world's game living here in America. No, the true hot-blooded rivaly to watch tomorrow is one of three incredible rivalry moments happening in playoff soccer this year.
You're probably aware that in a few weeks that a Champions' League playoff semifinal (two legs -- home and away) will be played between AC Milan and Inter Milan. These teams are two of the strongest in Italian football (go figure -- it's where all the money is) and with them and Napoli ensured that Italy was the most represented country in the quarterfinals. Expect a hot-blooded fight for the spot in the final. The prestige of all of Europe is on the line for this one, after all.
Another big rivalry moment is of course the upcoming FA Cup Final. With Manchester United finishing ahead of Sheffield United on penalty kicks on Sunday, they've finalized their spot in the final, and (as you probably guessed from context earlier in the article) they are facing none other than Manchester City. Two heavyweights of British football since the turn of the millennium facing off yet again for a significant title, and they're from the same part of the country. No two ways about it, that one will be a tense match.
But no, the game I'm talking about is tomorrow evening here. Phoenix Rising faces New Mexico United in the US Open Cup. We might speak of two forces being locked in destiny, made to fight each other forever in an eternal struggle. Well, if there's a pair of teams that this could apply to, its these two in the Open Cup, who have drawn each other since they've both been around and have that level of geographic closeness that all but guarantees they'll be at each other's throats. In 2019, the first year New Mexico United played, they won. In 2022, the next year the Open Cup was truly open (due to, of course, the pandemic), the same draw happened -- at the same time as a regular season game, both away. Phoenix won both games that year. It's happened once again, and this time it's happening at home.
Sure, last year around this time the pundits said it wasn't much of a rivalry with New Mexico despite the difference in result being a single goal each time: 1-0 in league play mid-week, and then 2-1 in the cup. But later that year Phoenix would have several of their players catch Covid on the season's return game at home. The game was rescheduled for two days later, and New Mexico won by a whopping 7-0, their largest margin of victory ever.
Phoenix fans did not like this at all, belieivng that the league was conspiring against them. And I say this as a pretty partisan NMUtd fan -- if that were true, we wouldn't get half the officiating we do. Phoenix's supporters' protestations rang hollow to my ears, especially when this was the obvious result of a conservative government's failed response to the pandemic; say what you will about the victims of policies of right-wing governments, Phoenix Rising is a victim, if anything, of their own hubris here. By 2022, we knew what COVID was. We knew how to protect ourselves. Rising is not a club that is struggling financially. I do have sympathy both for the players who caught it and for the academy players they called in to fill their shoes for that game, but as far as I'm concerned that's a failure of leadership to take the protection of their own players seriously. That's an issue at the level of the club as an institution, not the players. It is a fundamentally political force.
Maricopa County is one of those ones that you probably recognize because you've heard about some of the political figures it's produced over the years, quite possibly the epicenter of the fascist coagulation clogging up our political institutions over the past decades. More than anyone else in the country, I feel, their former sheriff Joe Arpaio made a name for himself on being the guy who believed that extralegal immigration was destroying the nation, and that we needed to strengthen our law enforcement agencies to adequately respond to this threat. Unlawful detentions, abuse of non-citizens -- and publicity stunts that all came at the consequence of failing to address crimes that we'd nearly universally consider unethical that the state, if it is to exist, should get involved in, like the sexual abuse of children. If you didn't hear about him during the Bush years, you knew him for the way he was part of the Trumpian chorus claiming Obama had no right to the presidency. These are the political figures that this part of Arizona stands for. If the region isn't, strictly speaking, in the tank for Republicans, it is at least deeply libertarian, of the Cato Institute form. The region's idea of a left candidate is Kyrsten Sinema.
While discussing this with some guys from one of the supporters' groups at an away game for the academy team, we came to the conclusion that while our rivals in El Paso Locomotive are unquestionably heels, they weren't necessarily evil per se. This came right before the club had a minor scandal relating to player contract continuation that may have been in violation of the players' CBA, so take that with a grain of salt, but while the players themselves are some of the league's all-around nastiest on the pitch, consensus is that they're a force for good in their community.
Phoenix Rising, on the other hand, we decided, are in fact just straight up evil. Locomotive play to win, as that is in their self-interest, and they play in a way that draws the ire of the supporters of teams they play against. Phoenix, in comparison, is a team whose actions on the pitch go beyond being the Laimbeers of the sport and into much darker territory, in ways that (at least at the time) had been condoned or tacitly supported by their leadership. I don't mean to just point at some Gerrymanders in the state's districting and saying they stand for the politics of the community and the team by proxy; no, the evidence supports this being the team's values, though I won't blame people for reading the outsports link above and coming to a different conclusion about where then-manager Rick Schantz stands on the issue. They've since poached former Oakland Roots manager Juan Guerra in August of last year. Guerra was kicked out of Roots for breach of contract as a result of this interviewing, though he had previously served as an assistant under Schantz.
It's easy for United to look like the good guys here. US Soccer just published a fairly glowing little puff piece about the team and the connection to the community. Focus spent not only on a very successful first-year open cup run, but also the connection of the team to artists and to the state's indigenous communities. I don't want to get too hagiographic here. Even in the best of times, sport exists to launder money and reputations, and has for at least as long as we've had the notion of "bread and circuses" to begin with. Our games may start with land acknowledgements but a commercial entity making one is saying, in essence, "this is your land...we're still keeping it though" (note that Rio Grande Credit Union Field, where they currently play, is a stadium owned by the city of Albuquerque leased to the Albuquerque Isotopes and New Mexico United -- the private stadium to be built for United has no specific location yet, though hints that it will be near Balloon Fiesta Park mean that it will be either near or potentially on Sandia pueblo territory).
Murkier aspects of this divide notwithstanding, I don't think it's surprising that we might turn to sport for times of clarity in moments of uncertainty and stress in the wider culture. Jack Johnson's fight against James Jeffries wasn't just a fight; its status as "the fight of century", a tag it received despite coming in so early in the century, was deserved because of how invested white supremacist structure was in removing Johnson from his title. In his victory, Johnson gave an example of how white supremacy could be, in a very literal sense, beaten. His actions galvanized him as an icon in the civil rights era, influencing Black culture across the US. Muhammad Ali -- low-key one of the biggest names in both Black liberation and anti-war action -- took direct inspiration from Johnson in his own career. Yes, we as an audience bring the baggage we put upon athletes, no different from any other entertainment -- but if these men could, through their work, grow into legends, it should be all the more obvious that a team sport is more than the dozen or so players on its payroll.
As above, so below? In a sense, yes, the culture of the team echoes the larger culture it sits itself within. A team must stand for something, inherently represents something; it is not capable of inoculating itself against politics, even if all it stands for is the location in its name, or the dollar itself. Paraphrasing a bit from the Men in Blazers interview with UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin, FIFA looks a lot like the catholic church, except the weekend services run a bit longer. It's not just kicking a ball around -- it never is.
The game will be broadcast 7:00 mountain time (6:00 Arizona and west coast time). As with the previous round, it should be broadcast on the NM United youtube channel. I don't believe there are any region restrictions. I, however, will be in the stands.