Arsenal’s Black connection continued to develop beneath Arsene Wenger, one other milestone coming in September 2002, once they turned the primary English membership to subject 9 Black gamers in a sport.
An Arsenal staff containing Lauren, Ashley Cole, Kolo Toure, Sol Campbell, Gilberto Silva, Patrick Vieira, Sylvain Wiltord, Nwankwo Kanu and Henry, in addition to David Seaman and Pascal Cygan, subjected Leeds to a 4-1 thrashing that day at Elland Street.
Nwonka factors out that, as with the expansion of Black Arsenal extra broadly, the make-up of the facet that day felt utterly natural.
“Arsene Wenger didn’t choose 9 Black gamers to make an announcement,” he says. “These had been simply the very best gamers at his disposal.
“Folks typically ask me if I feel Arsenal, as a membership, domesticate this sort of Black identification and I at all times say probably not. After all, they recognise it now and so they do issues to harness it…”
Nwonka makes use of the instance of this season’s black, pink and inexperienced away equipment, made by adidas and designed by Foday Dumbuya, the founding father of menswear model Labrum, which is meant as a tribute to African icons similar to Kanu who helped domesticate the membership’s giant African fanbase.
“However Black Arsenal has at all times been about how Black folks transfer to Arsenal, moderately than Arsenal shifting to Black folks,” continues Nwonka. “I feel we regularly flip and confuse it.
“If something, I would love them to not bundle it a lot. That’s in all probability oxymoronic given I’ve executed the e book, however the level I make is that it doesn’t must be hyper-marketed or celebrated as a result of it will occur anyway, no matter whether or not you make Jamaica away shirts or Arsenal Africa shirts.
“I feel the Black connection is one thing you might want to acknowledge and recognize, however it’s additionally one thing you can provide area to as a result of it’s at all times going to be there, to the purpose the place you don’t even actually discover it.
“If you go to the Emirates Stadium as a Black individual, you’re not consciously conscious that you simply’re in a stadium with quite a lot of Black individuals who you wouldn’t usually see at video games or sporting occasions elsewhere.
“It’s simply what it’s now and that’s the fantastic thing about it.”
Black Arsenal makes no declare that Arsenal are uniquely answerable for driving social integration in English soccer, or that they’re an ideal establishment in terms of the problems of race and illustration.
The membership’s ladies’s staff have a historical past of fielding Black gamers, together with Alex Scott, Anita Asante and Rachel Yankey, however there was outcry final 12 months following the publication of a squad picture which confirmed an absence of Black or ethnic minority gamers or employees, a difficulty Arsenal acknowledged on the time.
“I don’t assume that was a consequence of any malpractice or wrongdoing on Arsenal’s half, by way of the enjoying employees,” says Nwonka.
“However I feel the rationale it stood out is as a result of, as a society, and given the membership’s historical past, we anticipate extra from Arsenal.
“I feel that’s one thing that needs to be embraced, and I feel Paul Davis makes a superb level when he talks concerning the subsequent section of Black Arsenal, in his thoughts, which refers back to the issues we are able to’t see, so the infrastructure, the boardroom, these in stakeholder positions.”
It’s a reminder of the work nonetheless to do, at Arsenal and past.
For now, although, it’s price celebrating the progress already pushed by the membership, and by the lengthy line of gamers who’ve helped to forge its distinctive Black connection, from Batson, Davis, Rocastle and Thomas, to Campbell, Wright, Henry and Saka.
Black Arsenal, edited by Clive Nwonka and Matthew Harle, is out now from W&N