Zohran Mamdani is a popular and likeable mayor who is also extremely polarizing. The people who really detest the guy tend to be either rich or very supportive of Israel. To that group of haters he is in danger of adding a largely unnoticed but not insignificant subset of New Yorkers who are being driven absolutely mad by his constant boosting of Arsenal football club.
There he was with Spike Lee at the Arsenal bar FancyFree in Fort Greene celebrating the club’s recent victory in the English Premier League — its first in 22 years. There he was in an Arsenal kurta at prayers for Eid, offending both the Islamophobes at the New York Post and self-respecting soccer fans everywhere. There he was in The Athletic, delivering a saccharine ode to the club he has misguidedly supported since boyhood. And there he was on social media, rooting for his team to win the UEFA Champions League final today against Paris Saint Germain.
To be fair, Mamdani occasionally flashed his signature charm while taking this seemingly endless victory lap. “My relationship with my club began the same way it does for most football fans: before I was old enough to understand what I was getting myself into,” he wrote in The Athletic. But for the most part he’s just been dialing up every non-Arsenal fan’s Arsenal hatred, which reached its peak before the UCL final. What happened to governing for all New Yorkers?
