July 22, 2006, 20 years ago: The Emirates Stadium, the new home of North London's Arsenal Football Club, opens, just 500 yards from their former home since 1913, Arsenal Stadium, nicknamed Highbury for its neighborhood.
Arsenal had played at Highbury since 1913, but after the Taylor Report demanded that all British soccer teams convert to all-seater stadiums, its seating capacity was reduced to about 38,000. In order to compete for top players with the more successful teams in Europe, Arsenal needed a bigger stadium with better amenities to meet revenue needs.
The first event at the 60,704-seat bowl is a testimonial match for retiring forward Dennis Bergkamp.
The current Arsenal players are joined by several former club stars in a game against the club with whom the man Arsenal fans called "God" began, AFC Ajax of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The 1st half was each team's current players, although several on each side were unavailable due insufficient rest from the recently-concluded World Cup. Arsenal would have Bergkamp (the guest of honor usually plays in the testimonial, presuming he can), but no one else of note, as Thierry Henry was being held back for the "Legends" team in the 2nd half. In contrast, Ajax were able to field Maartin Stekelenburg, Jaap Stam, Wesley Sneijder, Jan Vertonghen, Klaas Jan Huntelaar, and a man who would later captain Arsenal, Thomas Vermaelen. In the 37th minute, Huntelaar scored the stadium's 1st goal.
Bob Wilson, the goalkeeper for Arsenal's 1971 Double-winning team, introduced the Legends teams. Ajax's players included Frank Rijkaard (who had just managed FC Barcelona to defeat Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League Final), Marco van Basten, Edgar Davids, Danny Blind, twins Frank and Ronald de Boer, Edwin van der Sar, and Ajax' greatest legend, Johan Cruijff, 59 years old and 22 years past his last competitve match, who managed and appeared as a substitute.
Arsenal's legends included Henry, David Seaman, Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn, Patrick Vieira, Steve Bould, Ian Wright, Emmanuel Petit, and 3 men who had played for both teams: Bergkamp, Marc Overmars and Nwankwo Kanu. Also appearing for Arsenal, though he had played for them for just 2 seasons, was Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who had captained the Netherlands at the World Cup, but had starred for Ajax's arch-rivals, Rotterdam side Feyenoord, and had played against Arsenal in the recent CL Final. No hard feelings on either side.
In the 55th minute, Henry put a shot past van der Sar, then the star goalie of Manchester United. Ronald de Boer missed a penalty in the 61st. Kanu gave Arsenal the lead in the 80th. Every Arsenal player seemed to be trying to Bergkamp the ball to let him score, but it just didn't happen. It did still end 2-1 in Arsenal's favor. Afterward, Bergkamp said a few words to the crowd, and was picked up on his teammates' shoulders, and given a lap of honor.
The 1st competitive match at the stadium didn't go so well: On August 19, 2006, Arsenal opened their Premier League season at home, against Birmingham team Aston Villa. Olof Mellberg, a Villa defender, scored the 1st official goal at the stadium in the 53rd minute. Gilberto Silva scored the 1st Arsenal goal in the 84th, and the match ended 1-1.
Arsenal were in a transition period, and not just from the old stadium to the new one. Paying off the stadium debt meant selling off some stars, including Vieira the season before, and Henry the season after; and some players who were not yet stars.
Manager Arsène Wenger had won 3 Premier League titles and 4 FA Cups, including 2 Doubles in 1998 and 2002. But now, he had broken his great team up and rebuilt around youth: Whereas the centerpiece of his trophy-winning side had been French-Senegalese defensive midfielder Vieira, it would now be Spanish-Catalan attacking midfielder Cesc Fàbregas.
But it never seemed to be enough. There was a 2nd-place finish in 2008, trips to the Semifinals of both the CL and the FA Cup in 2009, and defeats in the League Cup Final in 2007 and 2011. But he couldn't finish the job. Over the next few years, for reasons of both finances and players' egos, Wenger would also have to sell Fàbregas, Ashley Cole, Freddie Ljungberg, Jens Lehmann, Aliksandr Hleb, Emmanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie. Wenger still managed to win the FA Cup in 2014, 2015 and 2017, and keep the team in the top 4 places in the PL, thus keeping them in the CL.
Some of these players were more easily forgiven for leaving than others, but many fans blamed Wenger, rather than team management who had to pay off the stadium's debt, for a period of "decline" that would have been considered a spectacular success by most teams' standards. Many people, including Arsenal fans, blamed the new stadium itself, claiming it lacked sufficient "atmosphere." Fans of arch-rival Tottenham Hotspur, as they had with the previous stadium, called it "The Library," since it sort-of rhymed with "Highbury." Begging the question: How would a Tottenham fan know what the inside of a library sounds like?
On a personal level, knowing that the United Arab Emirates are a dictatorship, treating women, immigrants, and people of religions other than Islam badly, but ignoring such things if they happen to be wealthy tourists for their resort cities such as Dubai, I would prefer that both the stadium's name and the team's shirts would no longer have Emirates Airways as a sponsor.
In 2018, Wenger was given the 1960 Casey Stengel treatment, and he "resigned." Then came a true decline, but it was stopped before it could become disastrous. Mikel Arteta, one of the Cup-winning players Wenger had signed, became the manager, and won the 2020 FA Cup, before restoring Arsenal's PL position. In 2026, he won the PL title.
Statues of Wenger, Bergkamp, Henry, former Captain Tony Adams, 1930s manager Herbert Chapman, and Ken Friar, who started working for Arsenal as a 12-year-old messenger boy and, in 2022, is the 87-year-old president emeritus of the club, now stand outside the stadium.
The Emirates Stadium has hosted international matches, including 9 by the Brazil national team through the 2025-26 season. It has also hosted concerts, including by Bruce Springsteen in 2008, Coldplay in 2012, Green Day in 2013, and The Killers in 2022. In 2008, considered "a shining example of Anglo-French co-operation," it hosted a summit meeting between Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
Fans of other big clubs, or would-be big clubs, wanted their own showplace stadium now. Manchester City had already gotten one in 2003. In 2016, West Ham United moved from Upton Park in the East End to the 2012 Olympic Stadium, renamed the London Stadium, not tucked so deep into East London, and, like Arsenal, their fans complained about a loss of atmosphere.
In 2019, Tottenham, a.k.a. "Spurs," having left their old White Hart Lane stadium, and spent 2 years playing home games at Wembley Stadium while the new stadium was built on the site of the old one, moved into Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which, to one-up Arsenal, had a slightly higher capacity of 62,850. Of course, Arsenal fans called The Lane "The Shithole," and noticed that the new stadium, from the outside, actually looked like a toilet bowl. Clearly, Spurs management didn't think the design through. Nevertheless, it has begun regularly hosting regular-season NFL games, as had the old Wembley, the new Wembley, and rugby venue Twickenham Stadium.
In Liverpool, Everton FC replaced Goodison Park with Hill Dickinson Stadium in 2025, while neighboring Liverpool FC have instead chosen to modernize and expand Anfield. Also in 2025, Manchester United approved a 100,000-seat "New Trafford," a.k.a. "Wembley of the North," adjacent to Old Trafford, hoping to open it by 2030. Contractual issues still stall West London team Chelsea FC's plans to either expand or replace Stamford Bridge, mostly rebuilt in the 1990s and 2000s but with one stand still in use since 1973.
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