{"id":90013,"date":"2026-05-28T08:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/90013\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T08:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:21:08","slug":"zohran-mamdani-on-celebrating-arsenals-title-and-making-the-world-cup-affordable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/90013\/","title":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani on Celebrating Arsenal\u2019s Title and Making the World Cup Affordable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arsenal chose Zohran Mamdani at around the turn of the century, when, aged 10, his uncle bought him a set of fridge magnets bearing images of some of the team\u2019s leading players\u2014Sylvain Wiltord, David Seaman, Sol Campbell, Thierry Henry<\/a>. He was captivated. When we spoke, it felt only right to find out which footballers lived longest in his imagination, and so I asked for his dream Arsenal XI.<\/p>\n

He went for David Raya in goal, plus Gabriel and William Saliba as the centre backs, for whom he had \u201ca real soft spot\u201d. And, \u201cfor nostalgia’s sake,\u201d Ga\u00ebl Clichy and Bacary Sagna as full-backs. \u201cOK,\u201d said Mamdani. He was pensive now, gathering his composure as he came to select the team\u2019s midfield and forward positions. \u201cThis is now difficult.\u201d In central midfield, he chose Cesc F\u00e0bregas and Patrick Vieira, the France World Cup winner who would smear Vicks VapoRub over his shirt to assist his breathing when he was tired: a tactic which Mamdani had emulated in his own playing days, but apparently to little effect. \u201cI used to put that shit on, as if it was gonna help me!\u201d he laughed. On the wings, Mamdani chose Robert Pires and Bukayo Saka<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His selection of Saka meant that Freddie Ljungberg, the Sweden international famed not only for his many crucial goals but also his great natural beauty, had to miss out. \u201cEven though you know it\u2019s tough for me to not have our Calvin Klein model, I\u2019ll keep it that way,\u201d grinned Mamdani. That left only the forward positions, where he opted for Robin van Persie and Thierry Henry. On the bench, the five subs were: David Seaman, Sol Campbell, Martin \u00d8degaard<\/a>, Freddie Ljungberg, and Samir Nasri. \u201cDo you remember Samir Nasri versus Porto<\/a>?\u201d he asked, and the mayor\u2019s joyful reminiscence over the French attacking midfielder\u2019s goal in the UEFA Champions League was only interrupted by the start of another meeting.<\/p>\n

Like Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to Muslim and Hindu parents before moving to South Africa and then the US when he was seven years old, Arsenal represents many things to many people. The club, which was established by a group of munitions workers, has retained this strong connection to its blue-collar origins, running a series of long-standing community projects in the neighborhoods that surround the stadium. Its players and supporters have been crucial to the development of Black British identity, with several of them playing leading roles in the media, politics, music, and fashion. Its women\u2019s team is one of the most successful in the world and its success owes so much not only to English figures such as Herbert Chapman, who led Arsenal superbly a century ago, but to those who have come to grace it from abroad, such as France\u2019s Thierry Henry, the Netherlands\u2019 Dennis Bergkamp, and Brazil\u2019s Gilberto Silva.<\/p>\n

Though his Arsenal fandom has ingratiated Mamdani with local Gunners supporters, it isn\u2019t just because they share a club. \u201cZohran gets smoke,\u201d sighs Jason Andrew, co-founder of the Brooklyn Invincibles, a group of Arsenal fans who gather each week to watch their team in New York. Andrew got to know Mamdani last summer as he was running for office, when the mayoral candidate would turn up at FancyFree, the Invincibles\u2019s favorite bar since the group\u2019s inception five years ago. \u201cYou know the slurs of \u2018Mamdanistan\u2019 and whatever else they want to say. It\u2019s disproportionate, but you know, as a person of color in any position, you\u2019re gonna get questions. Especially when you\u2019re trying to give back to the people. But if you think about how many things he\u2019s activated\u2014some of his initiatives to get dollars into people’s hands, and during the snowstorm to still make the city function? Dude, he\u2019s doing a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal chose Zohran Mamdani at around the turn of the century, when, aged 10, his uncle bought him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[148],"tags":[48969,3316,28265,48968,560,27727,51,6927,11312,11469,553],"class_list":["post-90013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zohran-mamdani","tag-_exclude-reg-gate","tag-culture","tag-digital_syndication","tag-gq-sports","tag-new-york-city","tag-onecolumn","tag-politics","tag-soccer","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-world-cup","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116651234706936685","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}