On 8 November 2007, the great Pelé visited Sheffield. The occasion was the 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield FC, which was celebrated with a match between the hometown team and Inter Milan at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane. Pelé, by then in his late 60s, walked on to the pitch to a rapturous ovation, but then he did something unexpected: he knelt on the turf, took out a tiny pair of scissors, carefully snipped a few blades of grass and popped them in a bag in his pocket. “Without Sheffield FC, there wouldn’t be me,” he declared.
Richard Hawley, the 57-year-old singer, songwriter and longsuffering Sheffield Wednesday season-ticket holder, relates this story with the care and wonder of someone charged with protecting a sacred memory. But his point is a bigger one: Sheffield and football should be synonymous. As, arguably, the birthplace of the world’s most popular sport, the city should be home to museums, statues and tourist walking tours. If Pelé wanted to make a pilgrimage to South Yorkshire, how many others who love the game would follow him?
