HIGH summer had truly arrived at the prodigiously luminous, garishly resplendent, and gloriously jam-packed Times Square, otherwise known as the centre of the universe.

As befitting its Broadway and 42nd Street location, and to a backdrop of steam rising through the packed streets and traffic cops with their obligatory flourish of whirring arms directing unsteady traffic, as if offering guidance to lost giraffes, came a succession of cameos and characters.

New York, New York: never mind being the city that doesn’t sleep, it’s the city that keeps you awake.  

Issuing past hungover, tired, and still slightly jet-lagged — but never jaded — visitors from north London came hustlers attempting card scams (always refused but unfailingly intriguing) as scantily clad women adorned with flamboyant headwear dotted in sequins vied for your attention alongside Mickey Mouse.

Panhandlers shunted the entirety of their sombre lives in supermarket trolleys as studious types in John Lennon-style glasses played chess with giant pieces, while bright pink neon ads for the Barbie movie slid past above all our heads, blinking constantly, refreshing themselves relentlessly, as any number of hotdog purveyors trundled past. 

Like all the best cities, no-one bothers nor cares about what you look like, nor what you wear.

Yet in that maelstrom, that whirling, whirring, tumult of chaos, noise, sights, and sounds, at various times during our hypnotic perambulation, five complete strangers came up and fist bumped me, nodding to my shirt. My black Arsenal top. “Go Gunners,” they invariably said, satisfied at such brief contact, uninterested in learning more, completely indifferent to our story.

Utterly apathetic to the fact we had travelled from England to Washington DC and then the Big Apple to cover, and watch Arsenal’s pre-season tour.

The US strangers weren’t being rude in any way. They simply weren’t interested in our accents, nor my fandom as editor of the Gooner Fanzine, nor my inside track on the Gunners trip as a journalist.

To make the briefest contact with fellow like-minded souls deep in the bedlam, confusion and disorder of Times Square was all they required at that given moment.

And then the thought struck my parochial self. Football, or soccer, is absolutely huge in the United States. Massive. And growing exponentially all the time.

Apologies to all that have been beating that drum for a long time. In mitigation, all the wonderful US Arsenal supporters I have met over the last few years already dispelled long dissipated myths over their passion for the Beautiful Game, for the Premier League, for The Arsenal, through their informed insights, good-natured badinage, dedication and devotion.

Long gone is the cliched mockery of our Stateside cousins’ faint grasp of the world’s most popular sport, to be replaced — certainly by the raft of knowledgeable denizens we met during our 10-day sojourn to the eastern seaboard — by impressive awareness of football, or soccer.

Such ardour is only going to grow over the coming years. More than 170,000 fans turned out to watch Arsenal’s three US matches, including the 70,000 in LA that witnessed Mikel Arteta’s side eclipsing the mighty Barcelona 5-3. 

Already there is a Premier League Summer Series, this month involving Chelsea, Brighton, Fulham, Brentford, Aston Villa and Newcastle United — with matches being spread far and wide, from Orlando to Atlanta, Philadelphia to Maryland.

And that’s without factoring in Manchester United’s schedule which took in Arsenal at the impressive Meadowlands in New Jersey that we attended as fans as part of an 82,000-sellout crowd on a searingly hot day, a handful of miles from the Sopranos’ homeland.

Nor the Red Devils clash with Wrexham — which incredibly brought in more than 34,000 in San Diego for the equivalent of an EFL Trophy group stage match between United’s U21 side and a League Two team.

Throw in Lionel Messi signing for Inter Miami in the ever-growing MLS. Kudos for his agents who already had the Messi Burger on sale at the Hard Rock Cafes in DC and NYC and no doubt everywhere else across this land of excess — Messi’s arrival was labelled as a “game changer” by MLS supremo Don Garber.

I was present at the Washington Hotel to hear Commissioner Garber — a consummate salesperson in the land of plenty — insist that the MLS will be a major driver in the growth of football/soccer in North America.

While he was too canny to hand out the headline that there would be a Premier League match contested on his continent, he didn’t have to. Because, given such interest there will be. It’s just a question of when.

However, the next three summers will provide feast enough in the MLS alone in the build-up to the 2026 World Cup to be held in the US, Canada and Mexico.

“North America is driving a lot of the energy and a lot of the potential value of soccer on a global basis,” I heard Garber say at a hotel situated in the shadows of the White House — where its manicured lawns had already played host to football/soccer that week in the build-up to the MLS All Star game against Arsenal — before adding: “And we believe that MLS is one of the drivers of all of that energy.

“All of the opportunity and energy and excitement about what’s going to happen over the next number of years is going to have the whole world saying, ‘Well, they finally got it’.”

New York certainly got it the week we were there. As did DC.

After Arsenal’s underwhelming 2-0 loss to United in New Jersey, we took in New York the next day. The city was as reassuringly mesmerisingly dazzling as I hoped it would be two decades after my first trip.  

We visited the stupendous One World Trade Centre, its 102 floors of glass and steel shimmering in the heat, its honouring the dead of September 11 understatedly thoughtful. 

At the top, with its incredible views of the five boroughs of New York, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island, unveiling themselves in a litany of skyscrapers, streets cut deep into the sandstone, steel and glass, surrounded by the Hudson River, and linked by the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. Further afield was New Jersey, East Rutherford, home to the Meadowlands, near to the Sopranos’ Satriale’s Pork Store and all.

We took in a drink at the top of the world. 102 floors up the effortlessly cool and unhurried barman, clad stylishly in all black, nodded at my sweaty, crumpled black Arsenal shirt.

“Go Gunners,” he said. New York got it. Even if the bartender didn’t ask about Arsenal’s chances at Boreham Wood this weekend at Meadow Park, my next Gunners game, back across the Atlantic, on the border of north London and Hertfordshire.

He didn’t have to. New York, and America, simply got it.