There’s nothing like the start of a new football season. Blank pages waiting to be filled with the next chapter of history. Fresh turf ready to be studded and scuffed. Marquee signings primed to strut their stuff. If you’re not a fan of the beautiful game but you have a loved one who is, you might be dreading the next nine months, as once again football becomes your Saturday scourge. But for millions if not billions of supporters around the world, this weekend means normal service is resumed. And it’s more than that too. Even more than New Year’s Day, this is the most optimistic time of the whole year: when the hope-batteries have been recharged and anything feels possible. Like Leicester City in 2016, could the dream come true? The promise of a new season is sporting alchemy.
Speaking personally, I couldn’t live without it. In June 2015, my big brother Dan suddenly died. He was 43 and had been living with obesity, diabetes and neurodiversity (the latter pair undiagnosed), but he was thought to be in no imminent danger. Then he passed away and my life changed forever. He was a keystone in my Jenga tower and without him I could feel my whole edifice teeter. What saved me was the shared passion that united us: our love of sport. You name it: World’s Strongest Man, Junior Kick Start, the field gun competition at the Royal Tournament, we’d lap it all up. But football was his ultimate passion, and Crystal Palace FC was his club. As a result I inherited his Palace season ticket. I know what I’d have told him if he could hear me: that was a fate worse than death. (I’m a Spurs fan, for my sins.) I’d never imagined paying 19 trips to Selhurst Park in a year to watch the Eagles, let alone without Dan, but I couldn’t give up his seat. This was his prized possession, his Golden Fleece, his precious. So like a sporting version of Withnail and I, I became a Crystal Palace supporter by mistake. And the effect was extraordinary.
