Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta celebrates with the Premier League trophy after ending the Gunners' 22-year league title drought.
The 2025/26 football season will be remembered as the year the long-suffering pragmatists finally broke the matrix.
From the Betway Premiership to the English Premier League and the unforgiving terrain of continental Africa, three massive football institutions stepped out of the shadows to end painful title exiles. Orlando Pirates, Arsenal, and Mamelodi Sundowns are officially champions of their respective realms. For the neutral, it is a fascinating study in footballing execution.
For me, a thoroughly miserable, deeply envious Tottenham Hotspur fan, it is an absolute modern horror story. To watch your bitterest rivals lift a league title is a unique kind of sporting torture, but for the sake of this column, I can put my tribal biases aside and applaud the blueprint of their success.
Breaking a chronic title drought — 14 long years for the Sea Robbers of Mayfair, more than two decades for the Gunners, and an agonising decade-long obsession with the Holy Grail for Chloorkop — requires a delicate, volatile cocktail of three essential ingredients: unyielding patience, clinical recruitment, and that beautiful dame called “Lady Luck”.
