"Arsenal Pays Respect to Highbury"

[total_football]

http://uk.sports.yahoo.com/060504/2/j9w2.html

Excerpt:

"Despite all the changes Highbury, unlike Manchester United's Old Trafford ground or Chelsea's Stamford Bridge, still looks and feels like an old-style soccer cockpit with the seating finishing just a couple of steps from the immaculate pitch and the brick-lined, echoing stairways to the stands.
Every day tourists can be seen leaving the Arsenal underground railway station on a pilgrimage, needing help from locals because the ground hides itself well among the houses.
"When you arrive for the first time at Highbury the stadium is suddenly in front of you and you don't know (how) because on the continent you see a stadium from three miles away," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said recently.
"What I always like in England is that you feel the club belongs to the population who live around there. I like the idea that you can go out the door and go to a football game.
"That doesn't exist anywhere else."

[Jay Clark]

Great quote. And yet, the future is right next door. Here's a great picture and contrast of the old/new courtesy of Paul at Arsenal World:

http://www.awimb.com/emAlbum/albums/Ashburton%20Grove/emiratesflyby2.jpg

[gunner 4ever]

http://uk.sports.yahoo.com/060504/2/j9w2.html

Excerpt:

"Despite all the changes Highbury, unlike Manchester United's Old Trafford ground or Chelsea's Stamford Bridge, still looks and feels like an old-style soccer cockpit with the seating finishing just a couple of steps from the immaculate pitch and the brick-lined, echoing stairways to the stands.
Every day tourists can be seen leaving the Arsenal underground railway station on a pilgrimage, needing help from locals because the ground hides itself well among the houses.
"When you arrive for the first time at Highbury the stadium is suddenly in front of you and you don't know (how) because on the continent you see a stadium from three miles away," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said recently.
"What I always like in England is that you feel the club belongs to the population who live around there. I like the idea that you can go out the door and go to a football game.
"That doesn't exist anywhere else."


how true that quote is by arsene.....

last summer , despite the underground bombings, i HAD to trek out to Highbury b/c i would never forgive myself if i have never went in my life before they moved.

I went on fan day, and it was just incredible.

I did exactly that, and as soon as i got out of the tube, i asked a "bobby" the directions...got out of into the open and there was the arsenal shop right outside the tube station exit, and I'm thinking this is so neat!

now i am used to seeing stadiums, i mean real big stadiums growing up in San Fran.....

but i was just bamboozled b/c i kept on walking and walking and walking following the sea of Arsenal jerseys heading for god-knows where.

a couple minutes later, more fixated on the seeming growing crowd, i suddenly felt the urge to look up, and just like that , like how arsene described, there it was , Highbury.

and thus the pilgramage was complete.

it still gives me chills thinking about it almost 1 year on...