“We’ve established a fantastic relationship with the club. They sent us a signed shirt which we raffled to raise money for the victims of the Valencia flooding back in 2024. It was a great gesture and we raised around \u00a37,000 for those who needed. It showed again the power the club can have and how our supporters rallied to help others.”<\/p>\n
While the group started with a few expats, it’s now grown to over 300 members, who are located all over Spain. From Saints & Scholars bar in Valencia to The Irish Rover in Madrid, supporters under the official banner come together to watch Mikel Arteta’s side in action – something which brings great pride to Josh.<\/p>\n
He said: “I’m most proud that it isn’t just British expats and it’s not just Spanish people, it’s like a mix of them and other people as well and seeing that mass appeal Arsenal has as a brand, it is impressive.<\/p>\n
“If you’re a local Arsenal lad like myself, you’re not as aware of that global connection, but it’s there. Whether it was Cesc Fabregas coming through or the impact of the Invincibles, or even now, the Spanish connection that’s at the club. <\/p>\n
“I’m proud of how it’s grown into supporters connecting all over such a massive country and the friends you make as a result, all connecting purely because of this football club. <\/p>\n
“You walk around Barcelona or Madrid and you now see so many Arsenal shirts, not just by tourists but by kids from the regions, it’s wonderful to see.”<\/p>\n
Spanish opposition greet us in the Champions League semi-final as we take on Atletico Madrid in the second leg at Emirates Stadium.<\/p>\n
A 1-1 draw at the Wanda Metropolitano means the match is evenly poised in N5. While the 44-year-old remembers our last European triumph back in 1994, Josh knows it would mean the world to all supporters in Spain, including those who are yet to see us triumph on the continent.<\/p>\n
He said: “I’ve been lucky enough to see that a lot of these supporters have ever seen us really win apart from a few people in the group. I was lucky I grew up in an era where we won quite a lot. <\/p>\n
“I think it would mean the world to these supporters. Atleti are a tough side to crack but it would mean so much to get beyond them in this prestigious competition. The final step can be the hardest I think we can do it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Each month, we’ll be speaking with supporters’ clubs throughout the world to shine a light…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}