Friday night at the Emirates Stadium will be a momentous occasion. When Mikel Arteta's side take to the pitch for their Premier League opener against Coventry City, they will become the first Arsenal team to play there as champions.
The Gunners brought an end to their agonising 24-year wait for a league title last season. Their last league match at the Emirates was a tense 1-0 win over Burnley courtesy of a set-piece goal. The stadium, as had been the case the whole campaign, heaved with anxiety. The following day, however, there was a release.
Manchester City's draw to Bournemouth sealed Arsenal's title and saw tens of thousands of fans spontaneously congregate around the stadium for a night of heady celebration. The club had made the move from Highbury to Emirates two decades prior, but that night in May was when it truly felt christened.
When Arsène Wenger plotted this 400-metre relocation across Islington, he wouldn't have imagined that major silverware and feelings of belonging would arrive so belatedly. Last season's title and the subsequent celebrations felt like a circle being closed on a transition that began in 2006.
On the 20th anniversary of the first Premier League match played at the Emirates, ESPN dials the clock back to the dawn of a new era in N7.
'Felt like we were playing away as well'
Arsenal were in a state of flux in the summer of 2006. They were coming off an emotionally draining campaign that had been bookended by a teary farewell to Highbury -- their home of 93 years -- and a crushing defeat in the Champions League final.
The core of the Invincibles squad was broken up, with Sol Campbell, Robert Pires and Ashley Cole all leaving the club. Dennis Bergkamp announced his retirement and his testimonial became the first-ever match to be played at the Emirates. There was a shift in transfer policy towards signing young talent rather than proven stars, as the club began to reckon with their new financial reality due to the stadium loans.
Gilberto Silva was a member of the old guard who remained at the club as they turned the page. The Brazilian World Cup winner had joined Arsenal in 2002 and his midfield partnership with Patrick Vieira had been key to Arsenal's unbeaten league triumph in 2004.
He had fond memories of playing at Highbury, but understood the financial upside of playing in a stadium with a capacity of over 60,000.
"From the time we stepped in at Emirates, there was no way back to Highbury. I had to embrace that idea," Silva tells ESPN. "For example, when we grow up in our life and sometimes we have a small house and then you buy a bigger house to have more people in, some visitors etc ... then you have to adapt to it fast. Sometimes it was a challenge, but we had to embrace that. "
"We had no way back to Highbury and eventually it became a little bit more challenging than we expected. But we tried hard to make every opportunity to be there. The proper home ... to feel that my soul had to be here, my heart had to be here in spite of the time I enjoyed playing at Highbury."
To ensure the Emirates was ready in time for the start of the 2006-07 season, Arsenal didn't play any friendlies at the ground that summer, so their league opener against Aston Villa was the second-ever game at the stadium after Bergkamp's testimonial. A significant chunk of the squad missed that game due to their involvement at the World Cup and it meant that eight of their starting XI against Villa, including Silva, were playing in the stadium for the first time.
One of Silva's favourite aspects of Highbury was the proximity of the fans to the pitch, and how players could touch the hands of supporters during throw-ins and corners. That wasn't the case at the Emirates.
"I think the first thing that I noticed was the distance of the fans was a bit high," he said.
"And far away from them, the first thing you notice because then you are in a massive stadium with 60,000 capacity. There's a lot of people but the distance was a little bit high from Highbury. But when the game started, you had quite a good atmosphere."
Akhil Vyas was part of the sellout crowd at the Emirates that afternoon and remembers that the discussion with his friends before the game was about which Tube station to get off at. This was never a discussion at Highbury, as the stadium's size meant Arsenal station was essentially the only option.
"Here it was like 'Oh, do you go from Holloway Road? Do you go from Arsenal ? Do you go from Finsbury Park?' It depends where you sit and the scale of it was like 'Oh, wow,'" he told ESPN.
There was a buzz in the air about the new stadium but Vyas said there wasn't a real footballing atmosphere for that first game. An iconic feature of Highbury was the North Bank and Clock End singing at each other from opposite ends of the ground. But, the size of the Emirates meant it never worked there. Season-ticket holders were separated from the people they had watched games alongside for years, and Vyas recalls that this made it harder to start chants.
The stadium hadn't been 'Arsenalised' yet. The famous Highbury Clock wasn't inside the stadium, and was situated on the Clock End Bridge outside. Far from the vivid wraparound that's there today, the exterior just had a ginormous Arsenal logo against a dull concrete wall. The inside of the ground was similarly bare. The honours list that runs around the stadium between tiers was absent.
"It was strange; it didn't feel like home obviously for that first game because it felt like we were playing away as well because we weren't quite at home," Vyas said.
Silva, however, wasn't bothered by the aesthetics of the stadium and was focused on making a winning start in their new home.
"But as the game developed, it was not like that," he said.
'This kind of circumstance happened with me and Arsenal'
Soon after the break, Villa centre-back Olof Mellberg headed in from a corner to become the first-ever player to score at the Emirates.
The visitors, too, were embarking on a new era with Martin O'Neill making his debut as Villa manager. Thomas Sørensen, who was in goal for them that afternoon, recalls it being a special occasion to be a part of but said it was an equally big game for them as players were keen to impress the new manager.
"I guess that also playing spoil sport can be an additional motivating factor," he told ESPN.
"That everyone here to celebrate this new occasion in this new stadium, let's try and get a result here or something like that in some ways."
Arsenal struggled to find a breakthrough against a Villa side that had finished 16th the previous season, and Silva said it was an issue of adaptation to the new dimensions.
"The pitch was bigger than Highbury. In Highbury, we had one, two touch and we were on the other side, scoring goals sometimes, especially when we had Thierry," he said.
"But at Emirates, it was not like that. In the first season we suffered a little bit because we were not used to that size of home stadium. And for some clubs, they were used to this kind of environment, they had a little bit of an advantage playing against us, even though we were at home. But for us, it was a big challenge because of that. On a bigger pitch, we have to adapt ourselves to a new environment, a new way of playing there, and have to adapt to it in the fastest way possible."
Big pitches necessitate play being widened, so it wasn't a surprise that Arsenal found a way back through their rapid new winger. Theo Walcott was a huge figure of intrigue following his surprise selection for the World Cup that summer and the 17-year-old's introduction in the second half for his Arsenal debut created a ripple through the new stadium.
In the 84th minute, he hoisted a ball into the box after neat footwork and it made its way to Silva, who lashed home a half-volley from a tight angle at the far post.
"I'd love to be first in the game to score...But it did not happen like that," he said.
"But at the end of the day, especially a defensive midfielder, not someone appointed by the fans who they want to score in the game. Sometimes you think 'oh, the strikers are going to score, somebody else upfront.' But not a defensive player.
"But in my case it was special because there were a few occasions that I scored important goals at Arsenal. For my debut against Liverpool, I scored in the Community Shield in my first game and we won the game 1-0. Later on, I scored in the Champions League, the fastest goal in the Champions League against PSV Eindhoven. We beat them 4-0.
"And then this important goal at the Emirates in this draw of 1-1 against Villa, this kind of circumstance happened with me and Arsenal."
Building home advantage
Modern stadia have become increasingly common in English football, with Tottenham, Everton and West Ham all moving into new homes in the past decade. So it's easy to forget how anomalous the Emirates was when it was unveiled in 2006.
Sørensen recalls the size of the dressing rooms being unlike anything he had seen before.
"At that time, as I remember it, it was definitely probably alongside Wembley, best facilities in the country, I think. Because even if you went to Man United or Liverpool, it was still the old changing rooms, still small. It might sort of look modern from the outside, but still pretty old school on the inside where this was totally different, obviously," he said.
The Emirates' swanky corporate boxes and increased capacity was seen as a way for them to compete financially with their rivals. But the massive influx of money from the ownership groups at Chelsea and Man City during this period meant Arsenal's new stadium didn't give them the advantage that had been envisaged.
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The loans for the new stadium crippled them in the transfer market and the Emirates became associated with the malaise at the club through the 2010s. The toxicity in the stadium was one of the first things Arteta sought to address when he took over in 2019 and in the years since, he systematically went about improving the team and atmosphere in tandem.
In the last four years, they have the second-best home record in the Premier League and the Emirates was integral in their run to the Champions League final last season. For the upcoming season, the club have introduced safe-standing in the lower tier of the Clock End to ratchet up the atmosphere.
So is the Emirates today what fans had hoped it would be when they relocated 20 years ago?
"I think anyone who says they want to go back to Highbury now, certainly after the league title, I think they would be confused. I think we had to do it," Vyas, who is on the board of the Arsenal Supporters Trust, says.
"It feels a bit more intimidating. You get inside the concourses that are more designed, decorated. It's all red and white. It feels like our home now. Certainly the league title has helped, but over the last four or five years, probably since Arteta has come, it has really felt like home," he adds.
Vyas is partial to the Emirates, considering that he got married in one of the banquet halls in the stadium. It's something, he says, that wouldn't have been possible at Highbury.
Silva, the man who became Invincible at Highbury and scored the first Arsenal goal at the Emirates, has a tougher time picking between the two. While Highbury had its unique charm, he spoke of enjoying the club's progression into a new and bigger home. It's something the players had to learn to adapt to.
"The fans also adapted to how to be an Arsenal fan in the new home, how to behave and how to make that atmosphere something very unique and special for us. I think we've learned from each other which was great, a great journey."
