‘Inclusion is a family’: Arsenal’s sign language change is spreading the love

The majority of football matches are middling to dull, and before the start of every season, the majority of fans know their team will spend it ensconced in mediocrity. So why do we keep coming back?

Max Parsons has been going to Arsenal all his life, since the Highbury days – “I used to go with my dad but he’s stopped, he’s an old man,” he says. “Arsenal’s like family to me. And it’s part of my love. I have a partner, a son, and I feel like I love Arsenal as well. That’s my life.” Because he is deaf, he has never felt quite fully welcomed – until now, thanks to the incorporation of British Sign Language into everything that happens on the Emirates’ big screens.

It is a first for Premier League clubs. Jon Dyster, the club’s disability access manager, says: “We have a British Sign Language interpreter pitchside for all of our content, pre-match and half-time. So any interviews that are taking place, we have someone explaining exactly what’s happening to deaf fans within the stadium and on the big screens.”

It’s an initiative so brilliantly simple, you wonder why it took so long and why every other club isn’t immediately following suit – all the more so when listening to Christopher Clelland explain what it means to him.

“I’m fully deaf, my first language is British Sign Language,” he says with a joy moving in its intensity. “I’ve been coming to Arsenal Stadium since it opened and I’ve enjoyed it – it’s my number one, I love Arsenal. But a few deaf fans have been feeling left out and I was always missing information … but now I have full access, I can see it on the screen, or on the pitch. So it makes me feel included, and it’s so positive and so happy. I feel like part of the team and part of the family.”

Parsons first saw the signing at the Newcastle game in January. “I was like: ‘Is that real?’” he recalls. “I was shocked, I was speechless – it really had a massive impact on me, I just couldn’t believe it. I thought: ‘Finally we’re included.’ The interpreter is translating English into BSL using facial expressions and heuristics and it makes us feel more connected to the game because we know what’s going on. It makes us very happy.”

The vibes have not been confined to Arsenal’s deaf supporters. Both Clelland and Parsons have been approached by people around them in the ground, eager to find out what’s going on and share the happiness. “People are like: wow, it’s fantastic,” says Clelland. “I’ve seen people practising and getting involved in signing. It’s really nice to see.”

There is a strong on-pitch role model, too: during lockdown, Jorginho taught himself BSL and fronts a video the club show pre-match explaining why it’s important that BSL is now a recognised language in England, Scotland and Wales. “It’s amazing,” Clelland enthuses. “It’s really nice to see an Arsenal badge on him and he’s signing. It’s not stiff. It’s not nervous. It’s very natural and it’s just wow!”

Arsenal are one of few clubs who send staff to support disabled fans at every away game, but there is more work to do elsewhere. “I would like others to follow us,” Clelland says, “so that all deaf fans can have the experience that we’re getting. Inclusion is a family.”

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“A guy can change anything,” said Pablo Sandóval in the Oscar-winning film The Secret in Their Eyes. “His face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there’s one thing he can’t change, Benjamin. He can’t change … his passion.”

Sandóval was, of course, talking about football. We are stuck with our clubs, a reality those who run them understand only too well and often to our detriment. But when there’s a will to make things work, we get uplifting innovations such as Arsenal’s.

When considering the depths to which the modern game has sunk, it’s very easy to become very aggravated – and with good reason. But while the majority of matches remain middling to dull – if not currently at Arsenal, as Christopher Clelland and Max Parsons are eager to point out – disparate people celebrating life through football remains the best of what planet Earth has to offer, and inclusion of this ilk is one of countless little things sustaining that status. Now, who’s next?