About 15 years ago, I made a little film about a day in the life of a postman. It was an early start. As I helped him sort out his bag, we chatted about football. He was a Chelsea fan. I asked whether he had a season ticket at Stamford Bridge. I will never forget the look he shot me. It was like I had asked what kind of Ferrari he drove. “I can’t afford to go and see Chelsea,” he said. “I’m a postman.”
So here we had a football club owned by a fantastically wealthy Russian, which was pricing out a normal working man. Here, before dawn in a sorting office, somewhere in the generous sprawl of south London, this anomaly felt stark. In football, we always have a lexicon of cliches ready to go; I reached for one now as I said to myself: dear God, the game’s gone.
