On a freezing Birmingham night in February 2006, I began an odyssey with my daughter that reaches its logical conclusion in Istanbul on Saturday night. From Villa Park to the Atatürk Stadium, it has been an epic journey that has seen us experience together the full gamut of life experiences – triumph and disaster, joy and misery, pleasure and despair – and, through it all, it has helped to make whole that potentially problematic relationship between divorced father and teenaged daughter.
Now married and in her early thirties, Phoebe will be sitting next to me in Block 202 on Saturday watching our beloved Manchester City take on Inter Milan in the final of the Champions League for the biggest prize in European football, and I hope we will both take a moment to reflect on how far we have come, as a football team – she is old enough to recall the darker days before the club was propelled to pre-eminence by the riches of the Emirates – but also as father and child.
From Leicester to Leipzig, from Liverpool to Lyon, from Bournemouth to Barcelona, we have followed City by road, rail and air. That’s an awful lot of miles. And a hell of a lot of cups of Bovril. She has seen all my character traits laid bare. She has seen me cry tears of joy and vent fervid anger. She has witnessed passion and fury. I have expressed undying love (for Jack Grealish) and irrational hatred (for Bruno Fernandes). Football has a way of stripping a supporter down to their core, and it’s sometimes not a pretty sight.
But she’s kept the faith, both with her dad and with City, because, I guess, the pain is subsidiary to the gain. Not that there’s much hardship in following our club these days. Whatever happens on Saturday night, few teams have ever played the beautiful game more beautifully than we do at the moment.
Nevertheless, we’re not universally loved (a cloud hangs over the club for alleged breaches of the sport’s financial regulations) and neither are we immune to outrageous refereeing decisions, unjust VAR (video assistant referee) verdicts or the basic quirks of fortune. Football, I feel, has taught Phoebe an important lesson: no matter how propitious the circumstances and how favourable the auguries, life can still deliver you a kick in the teeth when you least expect it.
So, notwithstanding that City are overwhelming favourites to win on Saturday, we have both prepared ourselves for the worst to happen. Which is another reason to take refuge in what these past 17 years of partisanship have meant to us. It has given our relationship a singularity, and a special character that no one can come in between. It has given us an almost inexhaustible bank of memories. And it means that, however much our life and our interests diverge, we will forever have something in common, something to discuss, a reason to make plans.
One way or another, I’m sure there will be tears by the Bosphorus on Saturday night. Those who don’t follow a football club may find it hard to understand, but the sport, because it matters so much to so many people in so many countries of the world, has a magical quality and is more than just a game.
It’s part of my identity as a Mancunian. I well up with tears when I see the city’s central library, the most beautiful civic building in Britain, bathed in sky blue light to celebrate a City triumph. Supporting City gives me a sense of belonging – to my home town, to my friends, and even to like-minded strangers – that is, in this atomised world, precious and important. But most of all, it has bonded me to my daughter, my only child, and has bestowed on our relationship a particular intimacy that blood alone can’t provide.
I wouldn’t say football has saved my life, but it has given me a reason to live. Istanbul, we are coming.
