The Osama bin Laden and Arsenal connection

Life, and its taking, is often filled with its curious assortment of ironies and oddities. The biographers start twittering about accounts. For the famous and infamous, commentators start consulting the records to sort out the details.

The death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of US Special Forces is no different. As his remains merge with salt at the bottom of the sea amidst congregations of aquatic life, a few connections with sport come to mind. For one thing, the ex-Al Qaeda leader is said to have been an Arsenal football buff.

Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it came to the fore that Bin Laden had supported the Gunners during his stint in London in 1993-4. Officials of the club got somewhat desperate on hearing this: ‘We’ve seen the reports in the papers. Clearly he wouldn’t be welcome at Highbury in the future.’

Charmingly, an attendance ban was instituted in November that same year. ‘I think we owe it to the war against terrorism,’ wrote Giles Smith in The Telegraph (May 16, 2001), ‘to take seriously these allegations about Osama bin Laden being an Arsenal fan.’ Bin Laden, it is said, took Arsenal seriously enough to bring back an Ian Wright replica shirt for his son Abdullah. Whether he ever was at Highbury is another story.

Fans took heart with the revelations of the football connection with the globe’s most wanted figure. A chant was born as a result of the terrorist leader’s tentative flirtation. ‘Osama, woah-woah, Osama woah, he’s hiding in Kabul, he loves the Arsenal.’ In being accepted in the cavalcade of notable supporters by the fan-run website Arseweb, Bin Laden found himself alongside a motley collection of fabulous and flawed personalities, ranging from Cuba’s seemingly eternal Fidel Castro, the intensely dishonest publishing supremo Robert Maxwell, gangland personality ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser and, somewhat incongruously, the Queen Mother.

The editorial collective at Arseweb had their own reasons in accepting Bin Laden into their web-promoted hall of fame. ‘You may shudder at the thought of having rubbed shoulders with the man back then, but Arseweb would like to believe that this makes north London ever so slightly less likely to become a target.’ Poor unfortunate Liverpool could simply go and hop it.

Giles had another suggestion: woo the Saudi, entice him to attend a football match with every incentive imaginable. ‘Right now the world wants Bin Laden where it can see him: if that’s row 12, seat 43 in the Clock End, then so be it.’ Instead, the wise men of the Bin Laden hunt couldn’t care less, ignoring Arsenal in their blood curdling calls for capturing and killing the fugitive. Not once, laments Giles, was Arsenal mentioned in press briefings.

Biographers on the subject of Bin Laden’s football interest have had more opinions than confused economists. For one thing, they can’t agree about his match attendances. Adam Robinson hazards a guess in Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of Terror: he attended four matches while in England, scouting about for finances to nourish his emerging jihadist outfit. Was he in the terraces as Arsenal notched up European Cup Winners Cup victories against the Italian side Torino and the French club Paris St. Germain? Arsenal loyalist Nick Hornby could not recall a giant of man with a long beard attending the Arsenal-Torino fixture. Nor could anyone else.

It seems that, being a mere flirter with the club, fidelity was not Bin Laden’s strong suit. His gunner (should we perhaps say gooner?) fantasy was pointed in another direction. The Arsenal connection was soon forgotten.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.