Chelsea 2-3 Kanu

Flashback to 1999… when people thought it was cool to have an email address like “TimTodd2000” because you know, the year 2000 was right around the corner.

Arsenal traveled to Stamford Swamp to take on pre-Abramovich Chelsea, who could only afford players like Graeme Le Saux and Gianfranco Zola.

The entire video is 25 minutes long and it’s a really fun watch, especially if (like me) you either didn’t watch these games much or don’t remember them very well.

A few observations:

1. Man those tackles! I know that this was 18 years ago but I don’t remember football being such a violent game. I watched some other videos from that time and it sure enough was that violent. Imagine all the cards flying if players were diving in to tackles like that next week?
2. De Goey had a nice little beneficial swamp in front of goal. I can’t figure out how Kanu scores his first. He must have hit it about as hard as he could to get it through that standing water.
3. Thierry Henry, greatest ever arsenal forward, under no pressure at all dribbles the ball out of play. I am retroactively slaughtering him for that.
5. Lee Dixon/Graeme Le Saux hated each other, now do commentary together. Lee got the last laugh, didn’t he? 3 League titles, including the famous 1989, the 1998, and the 2001 double at Old Trafford. Le Saux did win the League with Blackburn and a few other cups. Good battle there.
6. Keown, Dixon, Adams, Parlour, and Petit all started this match and were known for their fierce aerial ability. Still, one of the smallest guys on the pitch scores on them after a broken set piece.
7. “Arsenal’s fighting spirit”

Have fun, I have an article being published on another site soon. I’ll let you all know the link in the comments.

Qq

12 comments

  1. Kanu’s why I became an Arsenal fan (young Nigerian etc) – and this game felt like pure, divine vindication of my choice. That winning goal…

    I’d like to think Henry had enough credit in the bank with Arsenal fans by that point to not get taken apart for that. I can’t imagine us being so patient these days (Xhaka, Ramsey [I’m guilty here], Mustafi [also guilty]). In fairness to 2018 Us, those guys had very recently experienced a double and there was a sense of forward motion around the club.

  2. In the old days of Match of the Day (BBC), no social media, and when you sometimes REALLY didnt know the score at 10pm, I tuned in the watch the highlights of that game.

    Kanu’s acute angle goal had me leaping up and down and shrieking like a madman.

  3. Chelsea pre Abramovic & they could still put a decent team out, but what a crap pitch. I’m pretty sure I watched this live on TV, but have forgotten most of it apart from Kanu’s winner.
    Thanks for the reminder of what a player he was, but for such a short while. I think we got about two good seasons out of him.

  4. I should have had this as one of the most enjoyable goals ever in the last post, alongside the Adebayor Liverpool score.
    I was at the game, smuggled in by a Chelsea friend, sitting in the middle of the Chelsea throng. The game looked increasingly beyond us after their second goal and then, with 18minutes left, Kanu works his magic. The first goal felt like a consolation, the second like redemption and the third, from the most impossible of angles, just confirmation that God was a Gooner. So much elation and not able to show a glimpse of it. The rest of the crowd were on their feet in disgust, while I was rocking back and forthsilently like I had a terminal fit, much to the disgust of my mate.
    Absolutely brilliant.
    And so many other things to enjoy: Ken Bates losing, the speed of Overmars and imperiousness of Petit, the Romford Pele in his pomp, Keown and Adams letting Sutton and Flo ‘know they were there’. And Suker, a blink and you missed him 1?1.5? season veteran wonder.
    Brilliant goals, joy in the downpour, happy days.

  5. ha! looking at the substitutes for arsenal, i do not remember paolo venazza.

    i don’t remember if i watched that game but i do remember the goal that flo scored as well as kanu’s third; both quality finishes. i also remember zola being a very good player. likewise, i remember thinking that suker was the player that showed me that the premier league wasn’t for everybody.

    chelsea had a very good team back then but arsenal absolutely owned them. i mentioned them in the previous thread and how they knocked arsenal out of the champions league in the unbeaten season and how much of a shock it was because chelsea never beat arsenal back then.

    henry gets a pass. he’d just signed from juventus where all of his confidence was zapped by ancelotti and his nonsensical deployment of the youngster. the man now has a statue outside of one of the most beautiful football stadiums in the world that was erected before he turned 40. a freaking statue! doesn’t that make you wonder where you went wrong in life?

    1. I admit that I didn’t watch as much Arsenal back then as I do now but I also said “who” when Venazza was announced.

  6. 1. Arsenal got taken apart on the counter.

    2. Arsenal squeezed Chelsea and eventually got the goal.

    3. Kanu is usually very unreliable in front of goal. I think he was playing for a contract extension.

    4. It is the same Arsenal as now 20 years back

  7. King Kanu – not sure I have ever watched such a talented pro player so enjoy his ‘work’.
    I was on the North Bank when Vernazza made his first bench appearance next to a bunch of lads who knew his old man – in that classic stereotype OldMan Vernazza was a barber! (In London immigrant stereotypes Italians were hairdressers/barbers or ran some eating establishment coffee, ice cream or cafe)Paolo was a local lad through and through just never quite made the jump to the first team.

  8. the game that made me an arsenal fan. as a young boy, 3-2 also became my favorite scoreline. so much so that a part of me wanted the opposition to score at the end if we were 3-1 up. aah, for the days when we didn’t look like conceding every time we lost possession

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