James Benge (Front left in glasses) reporting on Arsenal from the press box
James Benge (@jamesbenge) started his journalism career at the London Evening Standard before moving to football.london with a focus on covering Arsenal.
He is currently the Soccer Correspondent for @UCLonCBSSports.
When did you start supporting Arsenal and why?
I grew up in Solihull in the West Midlands and no one was an Arsenal fan at school.
While most people supported Manchester United or Aston Villa, I was very contrarian and I didn’t want to share my team with anyone.
I was on holiday in Italy early in the 1997/98 season when I saw the highlights of Leicester against Arsenal when Dennis Bergkamp scored his famous hat-trick.
I wasn’t even that much into football but watching him that evening really made me appreciate his artistry and it clicked that this was a sport that I wanted to watch.
I was probably a Dennis Bergkamp fan first of all and the club was other-worldly, with that famous old badge.
It helps when the team you choose wins the Double in your first season but as a seven-year-old, choosing the best team is fine in my mind as long as you stick with them.
Before they won that title, they weren’t exactly playground favourites or the team who kids pretended to be but that very quickly became very different.
What was your first Arsenal match?
My uncle lives very near to Highbury so I had a few chances to see them but they were the biggest show in London so it was generally very hard to get a ticket.
I experienced more of the games through television but there are a generation of people my age who could not imagine going to see Arsenal live because of the expense of travelling and season ticket prices.
My first game was against Barnsley at Highbury (Arsenal won 5-0) but I didn’t get to go very often.
The games I went to were local Shrewsbury Town games – and when they played Arsenal in the League Cup in 2010, seeing my two teams play each other was very special.
Which Arsenal player did you first love and why?
It has to be Bergkamp.
He made the game look so easy and so graceful and as a seven-year-old kid I didn’t think of football being transformed as art before.
You could see what he could do with the outside of his right boot.
I wished he was left-footed like me – that was the only thing I would have changed and when you play every lunchtime and weekend as a boy, it’s agony trying to be as good as he was.
His touch and composure came so easily to him and he didn’t seem to care and it looked amazing and just really cool.
That season when we won the Double there was something mesmeric about him and even now I spend hours watching clips of him.
Who is your favourite ever Arsenal player and why?
My relationship with Arsenal changed when I started as a sports journalist, initially at the Evening Standard.
There was a kit launch for Puma and I ended up sitting down with Santi Cazorla and he was as charming, open and honest as you would imagine.
He was really impudent and played these passes every game that provided moments you just didn’t see coming. He was skillful, had vision, he was two-footed, and he loved assists but scored a few goals as well.
He was a lovely guy with no ego and wanted to help the team. He could have demanded to be a Number 10 but he went left even though it was not his position and then central midfield with Francis Coquelin and there was a beautiful period where it looked like it might work.
If he had remained fit (in 2015/16) we could have won the Premier League title.
I would love to see him back at the club and I’m sure it will happen.
What is your biggest Arsenal regret/disappointment?
For a lot of people the Champions League final against Barcelona in 2006 in Paris will stick in the memory but I never thought we would win that game. I have never watched it back and I never will.
The one that hurts me a lot more was losing to Chelsea in the quarter-finals at Highbury in 2004.
My Dad is a Chelsea fan – he had to apologise to me for winding me up so much after the game!
If we’d beaten Chelsea, that Arsenal team would have won the Champions League convincingly and it’s a real disappointment that our great team never won the trophy.
I would never sacrifice The Invincibles record of going a season unbeaten for the Champions League because that is something that we have for ourselves.
What is your favourite Arsenal memory and why?
I am really privileged to have gone on overseas tours and one that sticks in the memory was when Arsenal played in the United States in 2019.
Andrew Mangan (Arseblog) and Elliot Smith (YankeeGunner) did a podcast at a bar in Malibu and needed someone else so I went along
I was a bit shy and awkward but people had come from Texas, Florida and New York not just for the game (Arsenal 2 Bayern Munich 1) but to talk about the team.
Meeting people who had travelled across America blew my mind and made me realise that there is a sense of community that stretches way beyond North London and it changed how I viewed the club.
I also got more understanding about my job and that you are doing it for this Arsenal-supporting community around the world.
Whether fans are from Holloway or Honolulu, they deserve that you do the job to the best of your abilities and they know as much as you and care as much, if not more.
It’s one of the joys of covering Arsenal and a reminder that we are part of a global family and we have to take that responsibility seriously.
What is your favourite ever Arsenal match?
It has to be the FA Cup final against Chelsea in 2017.
That season had been so dispiriting and draining and it felt like something at the club was unfixable, especially related to the relationship with Arsene Wenger.
I had only really known Arsenal as a Wenger team and so he is one of the most significant figures in Arsenal fans’ life. You invest a lot in this individual who you don’t know and his success.
We would have loved to see him get a European trophy but that FA Cup win gave him the record against a Chelsea side everyone expected to batter us.
That Antonio Conte team had changed English football with three at the back and we were worried whether we would have to play Per Mertesacker on half a leg and Rob Holding who was in and out and I feared they would kill us.
It meant a lot seeing that game go right for Arsene and it was a privilege to be there.
I also loved the FA Cup game against Sutton, which was the strangest experience.
The team were playing at a tiny ground, the bus got stuck in traffic and players getting had to get off and walk, the changing room was tiny and it was a dreadful pitch.
Alexis Sanchez came on as a favour to Sutton, there were no plug sockets for the press and Wenger did his interview to two journalists with everyone interested in the Sutton manager, along with the pie eating controversy.
It was so odd and you never forget those moments and there was also a real pride about how Arsenal conducted themselves, paying for Sutton’s changing rooms to be updated.
That was game I most enjoyed.