Zohran Mamdani at the Cost of Living Classic football tournament, 19 October 2025, New York. Photo: Angela Weiss / AFP
The list of politicians who have tried, and failed, to flaunt a love of football to burnish their electoral credentials is long and, sadly, inglorious. But not all politicians are Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s 34-year-old mayor-elect. In an appearance on US podcast the Adam Friedland Show earlier this week, Mamdani could hardly have done more to prove that his relationship with Arsenal FC was no cynical political flirtation, but rather a deep and loving affair.
Just two minutes into the interview, host Friedland (described by GQ as a “millennial Jon Stewart”) pretended to search for a text before handing his phone to Mamdani, where a greeting from 62-year-old Arsenal hero Ian Wright was playing. “Hi Zohran, how you doing? Ian Wright here. I just want to say a massive, massive congratulations on what you’ve achieved.”
Mamdani, speechless, went straight to fanboy mode, and looked across at Friedland like a child who had had all his Christmas wishes delivered. He seemed close to tears, then his face broke into his luminous smile (the subject of a brilliant essay by Anand Ghiridharadas) and, as he stared at the phone, he said quietly: “I love you.”
“How did you do this?” he asked Friedland. When Wright’s message finished, Mamdani held on to Friedland’s phone. “I’m gonna watch it again. I love this man.”
Later, on X, Mamdani posted that he was, indeed, close to tears when watching Wright’s message.
There followed a 10-minute bromance during which Mamdani and Friedland (himself a hardcore Arsenal supporter) swap stories about Wright, and their shared pain and love for “this soccer team”.
The moment that really nails Mamdani as a genuine fan is when he declares: “Every day I wake up and I think about Sébastien Squillaci.”
Sébastien Squillaci?
No further questions, your honour. Squillaci, barely a household name in his own home, was a fringe player who played (or, rather, very often didn’t play) for the club for three years in 2011-13. He made 23 appearances in the Premier League – 22 of those in his first season, one in his second and none in his third.
The moment that really nails Mamdani as a fan is when he declares: ‘Every day I wake up and I think about Sébastien Squillaci’
After mentioning Squillaci, he trots out two more names he says he thinks about when he wakes up: “Pascal Cygan, Marouane Chamakh.” While not quite as obscure as Squillaci, they were not headline names at the club during their time. It is doubtful that many Arsenal fans, even the most devout, wake up thinking about Cygan or Chamakh.
In an interview with Cygan, the former Arsenal player told the New York Times that he was moved by the interview and said: “I’m going to send Zohran Mamdani a jersey I wore during the Invincibles season [when Arsenal went unbeaten for an entire season]. I’m not doing this to get invited to New York. It’s just to say thank you.”
The first viral moment about Mamdani’s Gooner credentials came three days after his mayoral election victory when Sky News’s US correspondent asked him a question about Democratic party members. Mamdani was sent into a reverie about Sky’s transfer deadline coverage and completely forgot the question.
Politicians who have tried and failed to project sporting fandom – not least British ones – could learn from Mamdani’s genuine love for football. Former prime minister David Cameron, in a speech ahead of the 2015 general election, urged his south London audience to support West Ham — forgetting that he had always claimed to be a hardline Aston Villa supporter.
Liz Truss, during the Tory leadership campaign in 2022 and prior to her cameo as prime minister, implored her audience in Leeds to “channel the spirit” of a Leeds United manager of the 70s who was in fact a passionate Labour supporter.
Another political colossus, the then-Conservative health secretary Matt Hancock, referred to Marcus Rashford, during the Manchester United player’s campaign for free meals for disadvantaged schoolchildren, as “Daniel Rashford.” Hmmm.
But Mamdani is no ordinary politician, and it turns out no one should really have doubted his relationship with Arsenal. Born in Uganda, he fell for the club at a time when it featured several African players, including Kolo Touré, Nwankwo Kanu, Emmanuel Eboué and Alex Song. He told the Vulture podcast: “It was my uncle who introduced me to the team. My dad’s family is from east Africa, and Arsenal was one of the first teams to have a number of African players.
“As a Ugandan kid looking at this team, I was just so proud.”
For Mamdani, football is not just a hobby or passion, but also something of a political cause. Last month he helped launch the Cost of Living Classic, a five-a-side tournament designed to draw attention to the growing cost, and inaccessibility, of playing soccer in public spaces in New York City.
The same week, he launched Game Over Greed, a campaign demanding Fifa cap resale prices for next year’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada, after early ticket sales were heavily criticised for high prices and dynamic pricing. Mamdani wants 15% of World Cup tickets for matches in NYC to go to local fans. The launch video (which has 480k likes on TikTok) features Mamdani practising shooting in a football cage and – for a brief and glorious moment at the start – speaking in an English accent.
Anyone still to be convinced about Mamdani’s lifelong interest in football, and his devotion to his north London club, could rifle through his tweets. Among them is a post about another Arsenal hero, Robin van Persie. From 2011. Case closed.
Journalist John Mulholland is a former editor of Guardian US. He is based in California.