Getting older is a peculiar experience, particularly hitting 40. There are highs—a new decade, the chance for over the top and extended celebrations—and then there are lows— your mortality suddenly hits you over the head and won’t leave you alone, you feel ‘past it’, angry that you’ve not done nearly enough in your life nor are the person you thought you would become.
Suddenly the cliche of a midlife crisis becomes clearer, more understandable, perhaps more desirable. After going through various phases in my 20s and 30s, I felt like I wanted to reclaim myself, to become more me, whatever that would end up meaning. It was football that helped me come back to myself.
I’ve always been into football. In 1986, aged 7, I wrote a match report of the FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Everton just for fun (you know the one, with the famous footage of fans climbing into Wembley). I clearly remember the 1989 title race which Arsenal won at Anfield. I’m from Swindon, an average town with an average football team, where I marched against their demotion for financial irregularities in 1990, went to Wembley in 1993 when they were in the play offs to get into the Premier League, and went to matches at the County Ground during that infamous top-flight season. I religiously read football magazines and had a teenage flirtation with Manchester United. I saw the famously fiery Cantona get sent off at one of those County Ground games, presumably for distracting me so much in the warm up that I got a ball kicked by Brian McClair square in the face. I even qualified as a referee when I was 12.
As soon as I got to university, however, my interest in the game took a dip, bar international tournaments. Every year I’d watch the opening day Match of the Day and every year that’d be enough to sate my interest. In 2012 there was the Euros, the Olympics (I went to Wembley and saw England women beat Brazil 1-0) and, of course, before both of those, the iconic battle for the title between Manchester United and Manchester City. That year I started seeing someone who was also into football. In 2013 we moved in together, started watching all the televised games, and haven’t stopped.