The beautiful game?

No more.

I love football and have done for quite some time. Ever since I started taking a more vested interest in the success of my club, Manchester United and in the success of certain players, that love has grown.

The affection for this sport is not just fuelled by the success of these sports personalities and organisations but is also fuelled by what it means to people around the world.

The feeling of seeing your team score, the scoreline turn from zero to one, the ecstasy in that one moment, the uninhibited joy that you get from it is just indescribable.

People love the sport, they adore it. They live for it. They survive because of it. And they die for it.

Whenever I think about myself, about fifty years in the future or so, I imagine myself sitting in some futuristic rocking chair with the perfect cushioning and mechanisms to help my ageing body read with comfort.

I’d be scrolling through archives of football, as my grandkids ask me to tell them stories about players. And I, in turn, would gladly do so.

I’d tell them about the wonderful exploits of players and clubs that have come to define the modern era of football.

I’d tell them about the mesmeric skills and feats of the likes of Messi, Neymar, Mbappe, Lewandowski, and so forth.

And as I did recall those players, my heart would fill with joy for having been blessed to be part of a generation that has produced so much talent and has brought about so many special stories.

Leicester City won the Premier League title with Claudio Ranieri. That really happened.

Wow.

So much has happened.

In recent months, that dreamy vision of mine is turning greyer and greyer.

When kids would ask me to tell them tales, I would become grumpy and not say a word. Not because I don’t want to, but just because it wasn’t in my heart to tell them about how I fell out of the love with the game I once loved.

I couldn’t tell them about all the atrocities of organisations that are thinking of proposals that will change so much that was good about the game.

I couldn’t spoil the image of what they thought the beautiful game was. So, after seeing my grumpiness, they’d turn away and rush to watch old matches and goals on some futuristic form of YouTube.

While I dust away my old notebook of football memories and put it back in the shelf and get up from my rocking chair. I start losing myself in thought about how all this came to be.

Although I’m an ardent optimist and very much a believer in all the good things about people, it is very difficult for me to accept the state of football as it is now.

It is a bitter pill to swallow imagining a world cup hosted on the back of lives taken, blood bled and tears shed.

It is a bitter pill to swallow that the game is becoming lesser and lesser universal with each passing day.

It is a bitter pill to swallow that the football I once adored, the same sport that left me in tears upon hearing fan chants, watching player celebrations, managers breaking down, farewell speeches, goals, saves, passes, will never be the same.

People deserve better. Football clubs deserve better. The game doesn’t have to be like this.

Beautiful game?

No more.