Our member Chan Kie shares his visit to The Arsenal to watch the team take on Monaco in December 2024.

Thanks to Arsenal Singapore, my son and I managed to ballot for 2 tickets to watch The Arsenal vs Monaco in a Champions League game in December 2024! We are lucky to have watched the team in action before but this was our first ever Champions League game. Before kick-off, we walked through the tunnel outside the Emirates where there were several art pieces by Northbanksy and there was a new piece of our set-piece coach Nicolas Jover! A poster of the late Kevin Campbell  was also put up by the club as we were playing Everton a few days later. For Gooners not old enough, he came through our academy in the late 80s, played for Everton later in his career, and sadly passed away this June due to illness. Another classy act by the club. Before we got into the stadium, we saw the social media crew of Goal.com interviewing some Gooners and my son got interviewed as well.

Inside the stadium, it was a good atmosphere with the Monaco ultras singing loudly too, credit to them. Goosebumps appeared when the Champions League anthem came on, as usually we would be in front of the television at 3am or 4am in Singapore. Prior to this game, we had been relying mostly on set-pieces to score as teams have been defending deep and we missed captain Odegaard’s creativity. Jesus wasn’t sharp yet and true enough he had a few chances there were denied by good goalkeeping. It was Myles Lewis-Skelly’s first start for us in the Champions League but he didn’t look out of place and in fact played a superb pass, a pre-assist, out to Jesus on the left wing, who then crossed brilliantly for Saka to score our first goal.

In the second half, good pressing by Kai gave Saka the chance to score our and his 2nd goal and then Saka’s shot was in turn diverted into the 3rd goal by Kai late on. Comfortable win and finally some goals from open play!

Great atmosphere all round and I would say my son is really lucky to be following the team now and not during our ‘banter era’ a few years back lol. Actually we did go to watch Arsenal in Sydney with Arsenal Singapore a few years back too but he was too young to even remember and those were just friendly games. Happy that the club has ticket allocations for overseas fan club members like us. One may not be able to ballot successfully for the game that you want 

all the time but it’s understandable with the overwhelming demand.

Thanks once again to the Official Arsenal Singapore Supporters Club committee for helping to coordinate the tickets, we will try to ballot again when I strike Toto, come on you Gunners!