13 October 2001
Remember the night that Drew Barrymore hosted Saturday Night Live amid the “Amerithrax” crisis? Well, that was 13 October 2001, the day that Arsenal beat Southampton 2-0 to go to 2nd place in the League table.
If you don’t remember – or were born after 2001 – the story goes like this: a few weeks after the September 11 attacks letters (full of white powder, which turned out to be anthrax spores) started appearing in prominent places. Anthrax is a naturally occurring bacteria that can infect cows and other livestock. It is so prevalent in the soil that as recently as 6 September 2024, 50 cows died of anthrax in Wyoming. However, the anthrax used in these terror attacks was one which had been grown in a lab and which was sent as a powder to prominent senators, TV personalities (Tom Brokaw, presenter of the nightly news) and others. In the end 5 people died and 22 others were sickened (reports sometimes cite 30 sickened).
The bioterror attacks frightened the nation and so, when it was reported that anthrax was found in the building where Saturday Night Live was being filmed, many people working there decided to just leave and go home. Tina Fey and Drew Barrymore were two of those folks.
Tina Fey later wrote that she was shamed into returning to work since she was apparently the only one in her group (she was a writer for SNL at the time) to leave the building. And Drew Barrymore, in her opening set on SNL that night, credited Rudy Giuliani telling NYers to “be brave” with her returning to work.
This whole story feels foreign to me, or something from another century (which it very nearly is). The idea that people would just return to work or allow themselves to be convinced to return to work by being shamed into it or by Rudy Giuliani telling people to “be brave” is just wild. This isn’t a fake anthrax attack, like we have now, this was an actual biological weapon which infected one of their coworkers and which was directed at the company they worked for. And they just returned to work. Everyone did! The audience showed up!
As for the match, there’s just a short video courtesy of DM Arsenal Archives on YouTube and it’s not a great watch. I’m reminded that the reason I often refer to Southampton as “Soton” is because of these “Match of the Day” style videos which used “Soton” as the abbreviation. So apologies to all Southampton supporters who hate that abbreviation or that a Yank would use it.
The game itself is fairly awful. Arsenal started with a back line which, for the first time in 16 years, didn’t have a player selected by 1989 title winning coach, George Graham. Richard Wright was in goal for David Seaman, Bisan Lauren played right back, Ashley Cole at left back, Sol Campbell played RCB and Matt Upson made one of his ten starts that season at LCB.
Arsenal’s approach to the match was fairly basic: play a lot of long balls, looking to exploit the power imbalance between the Arsenal forwards (Henry, Ljungberg, Pires, and Wiltord) and the Southampton defenders. Still Arsenal took quite a few long shots and got a little lucky for the first and second goals.
The first goal came from Henry playing a ball to Wiltord, breaking through the middle (looked offside but no flag given), and Wiltord may have touched the ball over to Pires but it’s hard to tell. Pires fired in from just inside the box. One nil to the Arsenal.
Southampton didn’t really have a response in the match, generating just three shots. So, Arsenal sat back and time and again attacked Southampton in space. Henry missed the biggest chance of the game when he collected Ljungberg’s shot off the post and with no one in goal, just 10 yards out, opened his body up for the shot and blazed wide. It’s the kind of miss that these days would have folks wondering if the player was good enough to be in the first team.
In the second half, Southampton MFer Chris Marsden was sent off for a really dumb two-footed tackle on Patrick Vieira. I often mention that refereeing is about vibes and this is one call where you can see that in action. Vieira had just evaded multiple tackles and kept possession through a wonderful series of counter tackles when Marsden gets clearly frustrated and jumps at Vieira with both feet (studs up). Yes, Marsden jumps at Vieira but he lands several feet away and while it is both two-footed and studs up it’s not what you’re thinking. There’s no contact with PV4 and Marsden stands straight up at the end. I mean, personally it’s a dumb ass tackle because you aren’t doing anything constructive for the team, it’s born of frustration, it’s dangerous and reckless, and could have been a lot worse. But then it’s also one of the tamest dumb ass dangerous tackles you’ll ever see. So, on vibes, I think the ref was right to issue a second yellow rather than a straight red (two-footed tackles like that are typically a straight red and this was a time when the PL was trying to get rid of those and tackles from behind).
Marsden is off and Arsenal from here on out take complete and utter control of the game, hemming Southampton in to their own half and playing intricate little passes to try to get some more goals. The second goal comes from Henry getting in a shot from outside the box that’s deflected off a defender and into the goal. Funny enough, Henry gives the fans the “ear full” celebration, cupping his hands around his ears, suggesting that he was getting stick for the earlier miss. I dunno, footballers and football supporters are funny, man.
Late in the game Bergkamp will also miss an easy chance when Henry plays a delightful back heel to him in the box after an intricate maneuver.
Once again, I’m surprised by the lack of quality in this Arsenal side but the result is good enough that Arsenal are in 2nd place behind Leeds United in the table.
Weird sentences.
By the way, the FBI claims to have closed the Anthrax case and has pinned the blame on Bruce Edwards Ivins. Ivins was a troubled man and without a doubt there is something real fucked up in this guy’s head: he was obsessed with sorority girls, had a restraining order taken out on him by his former mental health counselor, told people he was going to go out in a blaze of glory and bought weapons and body armor, and in the end killed himself by ODing on tylenol. He also had access to the anthrax, since he worked with anthrax at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Still, he’s never been tried or convicted and many people (including his coworkers) don’t believe Ivins could have done it. The story is the subject of a Netflix film which I haven’t watched and probably won’t watch any time soon.
The anthrax attacks had such a profound effect on the USA that we have terrorists sending white powder to election officials just last month and as a precaution protocols are in place to deal with this potentially deadly attack.
We have never recovered from 9/11. If there are stages of grief that a nation can go through, I feel like we are still in the anger phase.
