We are flying in again because this is what we do. Not because it is sensible, not because it is good for the blood pressure, not because any responsible adult would look at the cost of flights, the hotel, the match ticket, the pints, the greasy late night fish and chips, and say, yes, this is a wise allocation of resources. We are going because Manchester United is not a hobby, it is a condition; it rides around with you in the ribs like a second heart, beating too fast, and always at the worst possible time.
This weekend it is Arsenal away, the Emirates, the bright, clean cathedral of modern football where everything feels slightly too polished, as if the whole place was designed by someone who has never spilled beer on themselves while screaming at the fourth official. We will be in the away end, tucked into that little pocket of defiance, packed shoulder to shoulder with other Reds who have crossed oceans and paychecks to be here. The away end is its own country. It has its own weather, its own hymns, its own collective delusion that if you sing loud enough, the universe might briefly remember it still owes you something.
I have seen it go both ways, the holy and the horrific, sometimes in the same afternoon. There was that Crystal Palace trip, the one that still tastes like adrenaline and cheap lager. We were deep into the kind of game where you start bargaining with the football gods, promising to become a better person if they just give you one moment. Then Nemanja Matić, that huge, unhurried slab of steel, rose up late and smashed a winner that made the whole end detonate. People hugged strangers like long lost brothers. Phones went flying. Somebody’s scarf ended up two rows down and nobody cared. For a few minutes you could believe the world had order, that suffering had meaning, that love could be repaid with a single perfect strike.
And then there are the other days. The days you do not frame on the wall. The days that follow you home. Liverpool at Old Trafford, 5–0, the kind of scoreline that is not just a defeat, it is an indictment. You could feel the air turn sour in the stands, the anger, the embarrassment, the sense of something breaking in real time. That was the day the Ole era finally slipped under for good, and if you were there you remember the silence, not the chanting; the long, stunned stretches where the only sound was the away end enjoying itself. It was brutal, and it was honest, and it is part of the deal.
That is the point, really. The victories are the sugar hit, but the devotion is built in the long, miserable stretches, the hours on trains and planes, the cramped pubs, the stories traded over pints, the laughter that shows up even when the football does not. You go to remind yourself that this club lives in people, not in press releases; it lives in the guy next to you who has been going for thirty years, and the kid seeing it all for the first time, and the American who learned the songs off grainy clips and decided to make it real.
So we will walk into the Emirates, we will find our seats in that little red corner, we will sing until the throat goes raw. If Carrick’s boys nick something, we will dine out on it for years. If we get punched in the mouth, we will still wake up the next morning, find breakfast, and start talking about the next one. Because this is what being a Manchester United fan looks like when it is not a brand, when it is not content, when it is not a costume. It is travel, it is community, it is stubbornness, it is joy, it is pain; it is, for better and worse, through and through.
Be the first to comment