Preface

Football is the most honest game I know.

It gives you ninety minutes. It gives you a ball, a pitch, and eleven opponents who want exactly what you want. Everything else is up to you. There is nowhere to hide — not behind statistics, not behind teammates, not behind the slow accumulation of innings. You either play or you don't. The pitch shows everything.

I grew up watching football from the terraces of a small club in a town that no longer exists in the same form. The ground had a corrugated metal roof that turned rain into percussion. The pies were terrible. The football was often worse. But the feeling — that particular electricity of a crowd holding its breath before a corner is taken — I have never found that anywhere else.

This story is about that feeling. What it costs. What it gives back.