VISITING Harare last week Baobab was struck by the number of people in replica Arsenal shirts. Readers who could not care less about English football should note that Arsenal is a moderately successful club based in a newish 60,000-seater stadium in north London. It has not won a championship or a knock-out tournament for the past seven seasons, and is not going to win one this season either. Chelsea or the two Manchester clubs are the English teams to follow if you want something as vulgar as trophies. In five days in Harare Baobab did not see a single Chelsea or Manchester United supporter. Yet Arsenal shirts were everywhere. One red-shirted local insisted that he was in no way disappointed that Arsenal would end yet another season without a trophy. The club makes a profit, unlike many of its rivals, including Chelsea and Manchester City (which are backed by super-rich benefactors). It is not about to sink to a lower division despite its penny-pinching. This is something to be proud of. But what is the point, Baobab asked, of building a big new stadium if Arsenal cannot challenge for trophies? Be patient, said my new friend. The club is quietly shedding the debt it incurred to build its new stadium. Its prudence would eventually pay off.

Arsenal's supporters in London, by contrast, routinely complain about the club’s unwillingness to match rivals’ spending. Many of its best players have deserted because they were unwilling to scrape by on the £100,000 a week that is reportedly Arsenal’s wage limit. The club’s manager, Arsene Wenger, is a famously cautious spender. He is also from Strasbourg and seems closer in thinking to the fiscally austere “core” of Europe than to its wayward “periphery”.

Mr Wenger was also an early champion of African footballers in Europe, which might also explain all those Arsenal shirts in Harare. When in 1995 George Weah became the first African to win the Ballon D’Or, presented each year to the best footballer in Europe, he dedicated the award to Mr Wenger, who had coached him at Monaco. But in recent years there has been something of a clear-out of Africans from Arsenal. It began when two Ivorians, Kolo Touré and Emanuel Eboué, were moved on (at a handsome profit, naturally) after their form dipped.

Perhaps Mr Wenger’s financial rectitude is indeed a big part of Arsenal’s appeal in Harare. Fiscal indiscipline wrecked Zimbabwe’s currency and its economy. Partly out of necessity Tendai Biti, the country’s current finance minister, has adopted an eat-what-you-kill approach to government finances: he will not borrow to finance a budget deficit (though Zimbabwe does not have too many willing lenders in any case). Baobab has it on good authority that Mr Biti is a fervent Arsenal fan.