I was seven or eight years old when my father started taking me to football matches.  We lived a short bus ride from both Highbury and White Hart Lane, so it should have been Arsenal or Spurs that won my loyalty and affection, but George Best had other ideas.  Almost single-handedly that absurdly talented and glamorous player was responsible for tying me for life to Manchester United.  One afternoon with my father at Highbury watching Best, Charlton, Law, and the others and I was swept into the community of Reds, part of the vast diaspora of fans living far from Old Trafford.  I went to the stadium a few times in 1977 when I lived near Manchester, but for most of my life I’ve followed my team through television and through the occasional away game.

An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so I guess it’s no big surprise that my two sons are loyal to United and join me on the sofa most Sundays between August and May to watch their team play.  They’ve seen some of the new generation of United stars play in a pre-season U.S. tour, but they haven’t experienced something an American stadium can never replicate, the unforgettable and uniquely tribal sound of 70,000 or more diehard United fans willing their heroes to victory at The Theatre of Dreams.  I’ve been planning for a long time to do something about that.  As the journalists used to say, watch this space …

Football in the late 1960s wasn’t the big business it is today.  No replica shirts, just woolen scarves and silly bobble hats.  No VIP seats, no seats at all, just terraces of chanting men and boys.  I don’t much like the bogus nostalgia for those times that you often hear.  The experience of watching football today is a lot more comfortable than it was fifty years ago and with the decline of fan violence it’s certainly a lot safer for kids.  My sons will never know what it was like to stand on terraces in the freezing cold for two hours, wearing a rosette and carrying a rattle, but maybe they’ll get something I have and all football-crazy boys should have: the precious memory of being with their Dad and in the company of their idols.