POST-MATCH ANALYSIS

As I was writing this book, everything came to a shuddering halt, and suddenly, Bill Shankly’s tongue-in-cheek comment about football being more important than life or death never felt more inappropriate. But another quote became even more pertinent. It was new to me, and there is some dispute over who said it originally (probably Arrigo Sacchi), but when I first heard it during a podcast in the first week of lockdown, it was as though a light bulb had pinged on the top of my head, and I was given a way to crystallise everything I think about our wonderful game into just a few words: ‘football is the most important of the unimportant things’.

God, I missed it. Although not so much the game itself. In fact, I quite enjoyed the respite from result-based anxiety. What I really missed was what Ali describes as the ‘peripheral bollocks’. The genuine joy of entering a pub you have been in a thousand times before and seeing people you saw just a week ago, even that bloke whose name you can’t quite remember who just has to tell me that I’ll never be as funny as real comedians like Jim Davidson.

So thank god it’s back now, sort of. I missed the transfer rumours, conspiracy theories and alarming injury news brought to you by a bloke whose cousin sometimes takes Martin Kelly to training. At the moment we are not allowed back yet so I still miss the optimistic walk to the ground, turning left out of the rail tunnel because we’ll lose otherwise. I missed cheering the team name announcements and belting out ‘Glad All Over’ at the top of my voice.

But that sense of loss was replaced by something else. Pride. Football clubs and football fans stepped up to the plate and became the focal point for so many official and unofficial support networks, helping the community that surrounds each club to get through those awful weeks and months.

It simply confirmed something I knew before I wrote this book; indeed, one of the reasons why I wrote this book. Despite our petty, childish, irrational, hilarious rivalries, much more unites us than divides us. Palace fans and Brighton fans play an annual charity match every year for a fund started in memory of a Brighton fan who died in the Twin Towers. When it looked like Palace were going bust in 2010, Brighton fans marched with us in protest.

Fans of every club will tell you a similar story. Football still has many problems, on and off the pitch, but I find a genuine magic in its capacity to bring people together.

I probably don’t like your club very much, but if you like football, let’s have a drink and talk nonsense about games gone by. Then we can talk about our families, about life, love and the universe. Then we’ll be mates. That’s how football works.

See you next season.