The goal itself is lovely but the buildup is just exquisite:
Liquid football.
I can remember George Graham as manager, so that makes me the elder statesman of SoSH Gooners. Something I wasn't shy about telling people in my younger, more insecure days. I probably liked Arsenal due to the beautiful shirts and I have a nearly 25 year old dog-eared copy of Fever Pitch, which my mom got me as it was pretty much the only book on soccer available at the bookstore. I re-read every other year or so, and it makes more and more sense each time as the references to Hampstead Heath and NHS spectacles are now part of my daily life. I remember hanging on highlights from the Premier League highlights show on SportsChannel, Futbol Mundial and very expensive copies of World Soccer and a few other magazines (definitely used to plaster posters from Shoot on my walls).
Two strokes of luck locked me into Arsenal for life: the signing of Bergkamp (my aunt's lived in Holland for 35 years and deluged me with Ajax and Holland stuff as a kid, so I knew him) and my 5th grade science teacher being from Finsbury Park, so I had somebody to talk about it with.
That Americans being Arsenal fans is a basically a meme now is befuddling. I can still remember talking the ear off a poor guy in an Arsenal top at a music festival in 2001 or so, and when I got my first Arsenal shirt (a longsleeved one from 2004/05) a Keith Richards lookalike who went to my college yelled out "holy fuck mate, you're a Gooner?!". Now I don't even say anything when I'm home, it's too common. How did this happen? Seriously, I just bookended the glorious Wenger years with those stories of how rare it was to see people exhibiting a love of the Arse. People became fans *after* Arsenal stopped winning trophies.