MY PASSION FOR FOOTBALL CAME relatively late in life. As a child, I was a Chelsea fan, God help me, but rarely went to games and lost interest in my teens. The first time I got properly into it was in my late twenties when England did surprisingly well in Italia 90. On holiday in France, I watched the games on a portable black-and-white television and as the national side progressed the players seemed to grow in size until, by the time we reached the quarter-finals, it was like watching a team of giants. I remember talking to my late father about this and he told me he’d had the same sensation about Churchill during the Second World War.
That made me an England fan, but I didn’t develop an…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2024