Welcome back then, English football. Sport in the time of plague: this was never an easy prospect. In the event the Premier League’s live return was jarring, dream-like and lodged at all times on the spectrum between startlingly odd and startlingly everyday. Some things were reassuringly the same. Grass remains green. The ball is still round. And Mesut Özil didn’t turn up. Literally so on this occasion: Özil was left out of Arsenal’s matchday squad for the trip to Manchester City.
Football even had something special for us. Not just an infuriating debate about technology, but an infuriating watch-buzzing goalline conspiracy theorist shemozzle, as Michael Oliver’s wristband failed to vibrate as the ball crossed the Aston Villa line in the night’s first match.
Best of all there was even a little genuine exhilaration as, in between the strangulating protocols, and the sense of some formal dance being staged in no-man’s land, Kevin De Bruyne dished up his own little vision of the sublime on a rainy night at the Etihad Stadium. It came from a standing start. The atmosphere at the Etihad was, of course, eerie and strange. But then the world is an eerie and strange place at the moment. Non-eeriness, an absence of strangeness: well, that really would be jarring.
Pep Guardiola picked a strong team for City’s game in hand, the selection of a manager still with an eye on that condensed Champions League.
Arsenal looked callow on paper. Mikel Arteta has spoken of his desire to create a spikier, more aggressive team, or at least one that is, to any noticeable degree, spiky and aggressive. He picked a commendably young, quick starting XI here, with Bukayo Saka, Joe Willock and Eddie Nketiah, 18, 20 and 21, in the front four.
Otherwise this is an Arsenal team of odds and ends. Pablo Marí made his second league start and went off with an injured achilles. Granit Xhaka was also taken off on a stretcher early on, to be replaced by Dani Ceballos, who might have expected to be back in Madrid by now, but has instead become the football equivalent of an overdue library book.
For a while Arsenal stifled City’s midfield and threatened their high defensive line. Steadily, though, something else began to happen. Mainly De Bruyne happened. Midway through the first half something just clicked, muscle-memory kicking in, City’s midfield duke timing his passes and his runs, turning a slightly frantic game a cool shade of blue.
Some things are indivisible, unaffected by the oddity around them. Extreme talent is one of them. David Luiz’s ability to flap wildly inside his own penalty area appears to be another. It was De Bruyne’s pass that led to the opening goal just before half time, although David Luiz provided his own on-field welcome basket, producing a failed knee-trap that simply nudged the ball to Raheem Sterling close to goal. He smashed it across Bernd Leno and into the back of the net.
De Bruyne kept on driving the game from the centre of the pitch. And four minutes into the second half David Luiz decided the game, dragging down Riyad Mahrez, conceding a penalty, earning himself a red card and completing a truly miserable – and these are some rare standards of misery - 26 minutes on the pitch. De Bruyne spanked the kick into the corner.
And that was pretty much that for a game that was just as much about the process of restarting this global show. At both games there was a genuinely moving minute’s silence before kick-off, no doubt felt very personally by some of those around the pitch. Since we were all last here 42,000 British people have died of this wretched viral bug, and many others of its ripple-effects.
The players at Villa Park and the Etihad also took a knee, a moment that felt unapologetically powerful. In Sofia last year Tyrone Mings played through horrendous racist barracking with grace, strength and tangible defiance. This is not simply a gesture. For now the rows of empty plastic seats seemed touching, a significant absence.
No doubt we will get used to the TV presentation. At Villa Park the pitch-side pundits stood coolly apart, motionless as wedding cake figurines. At the Etihad the managers lined up in front of their advert boards for a long-range pre-match interview as though calmly facing down a firing squad. The lack of stadium noise offers a choice for the home viewer.
The piped crowd sound on Sky was a vague, restless whooshing, like the sound of a seashell clasped to your ear, albeit a seashell filled with a billion football-obsessed sea microbes. The sea-microbes chuntered restlessly, occasionally joining in a shout, then dying back just as quickly.
But it was on balance preferable to the real-life managerial shouting option. At the Etihad there were shrieks and screams. For long periods at Villa Park the noises-off suggested a lone spectator being thrashed with a piece of rope somewhere up in the eaves of the Holte End, bellows of manfully borne agony mixed with shouts of “our ball” and “corner”.
City’s 3-0 victory was crowned by a goal from Phil Foden, and marred by the worrying sight of Eric García being carried off after colliding with Ederson. Otherwise this was a successful return, both for the Premier League itself, and for City, who played their own kind of social-distance football, easing through the Arsenal midfield without contact or collisions; and looking, on this evidence, like a team ready to run to the end.
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