The meaning of the term “The Double” has changed considerably over recent years. For most of English football history, it referred exclusively to the traditional “Double” of winning both the League and the FA Cup in the same season. Then, over time, as the European Cup/Champions League became more important and the FA Cup correspondingly less significant, it was occasionally used to mean winning both the European Cup/Champions League and the League in the same season, as Liverpool did in 1977 and Manchester United in 2008. However, it is now possible that a new idea of “The Double” is emerging, one that reflects the truly global nature of sport in the 21st century, and that the ultimate “Football Double” now is for the same owner to win both the Super Bowl in American football and the Champions League in non-American football, i.e. soccer – something the Kroenkes are unlikely to achieve.
The Kroenkes Stand Little Chance of Completing the “Football Double”
Only One Owner Has Done it So Far
So far, only one owner or one family of owners have achieved this new 21st-century “Double” and that is the Glazers, who have overseen two Super Bowl triumphs with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (in 2003 and 2021) and one Champions League victory with Manchester United (in 2008). It is worth Manchester United fans remembering that historic achievement, even if the chances of the current Manchester United side winning the Champions League remain fairly remote.
The American owners of the other traditional superpower of English football, Liverpool FC, are the Fenway Sports Group, or FSG, and although they have not achieved the “Ultimate Football Double” of Super Bowl and Champions League victories, they can claim to have achieved their own equivalent of it. That is because before leading Liverpool to the Champions League in 2019, they had overseen the near-miraculous renaissance of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, who had gone more than eight decades without winning a World Series until FSG led them to four World Series triumphs in 14 years between 2004 and 2018.
However, there is little or no chance of the Kroenke family making it a unique US hat-trick by achieving the ultimate success in two completely different sports on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. That is because, unlike the Glaziers and FSG, the Kroenke family appear to have put all their sporting eggs in one basket – their LA Rams American football team, which won the Super Bowl last weekend against the Cincinnati Bengals – and virtually forgotten about the actual football club that they own, namely Arsenal.
The Kroenkes’ Indifference to Arsenal is Clear
The Kroenkes’ indifference to Arsenal, or at best relative indifference in comparison with their near-obsession with the Rams, is clear. It starts with the failure of Stan Kroenke, the head of the family, to attend many, if any, games at Arsenal in recent years, which is in contrast with the far more regular attendance of members of the Glazer family or FSG at Manchester United and Liverpool games respectively. And of course it is in stark contrast with Roman Abramovich at Chelsea, who may have faced visa difficulties in attending home games in recent years but has nevertheless been a visible and voluble presence when it mattered most, including at the Champions League final against Manchester City that Chelsea won last season.
However, there have been other signs of the Kroenkes’ indifference to Arsenal, perhaps most notably, because of their symbolic importance, the two occasions on which Josh Kroenke, Stan’s son, appeared in public at the Arsenal training ground wearing an LA Rams shirt. To do so once could have been considered unfortunate; to do so twice invites the accusation that Kroenke Junior was sending a message to Arsenal players, coaches and fans about the club’s place in the Kroenkes’ sporting pecking order.
Nevertheless, for all their absences from games or acts of thoughtlessness (at best) at the training ground, the really damning evidence against the Kroenkes is that they have effectively inverted, or switched around, the order in which the Glazers and FSG went about achieving their success in soccer. Both the Glazers and FSG achieved great sporting success first on the US side of the Atlantic, leading their American football and baseball teams respectively to world championships, before they set about re-establishing their newly-purchased football/soccer teams in English and European football. The Kroenkes, by contrast, have done the absolute reverse.
Effectively, through their mismanagement of Arsenal over the last decade or so – as evidenced in the club’s continuing failures in the transfer market, in appointing managers and, most importantly, on the football pitch itself – the Kroenkes have turned what was once an elite football club into a mediocre franchise, one that they seem content simply to hang onto until they can realise their dreams of attaining European Super League riches (dreams, of course, that may never be realised). Meanwhile, they have done exactly the opposite with the LA Rams, transforming what was a relatively mediocre NFL franchise (especially since its one previous Super Bowl win in 2000, when the Rams were based in St Louis and not LA) into a new member of the NFL elite, complete with stunning new stadium, a near all-star roster and of course the Super Bowl itself.
The Kroenkes Will Probably Never Win the Premier League With Arsenal, Let Alone the Champions League
Consequently, at this moment in time, the fortunes of the LA Rams and Arsenal, and the Kroenkes’ relative interest in their two most high-profile sporting ventures (they own other clubs/franchises in other sports, including basketball), seem almost an Atlantic Ocean apart. Now that the Rams have won their first Super Bowl in LA, the Kroenkes, and particularly Stan himself, seem determined to try and build an NFL empire in the City of Angels, something that has never really been achieved before.
By contrast, their failure to attend games, their propensity to wear Rams merchandise while meeting Arsenal players and coaches, and above all their failure to take an interest in running Arsenal properly, let alone successfully, means that under the Kroenkes Arsenal will probably never win the Premier League again, let alone the Champions League. As a result, Arsenal fans can only hope that eventually the Rams-loving Kroenkes sell Arsenal to someone who actually loves the club, because they themselves clearly do not.
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