the desert winds will wear all of this to nothing

What is the game of football to you? Is it about making that same journey you've been making for decades? Getting off at the same bus stop, the same train station, the same tube station and zigzagging through those same streets of terraced houses? Is it about sitting on a plastic seat on much the same spot where your grandfather used to stand? Is the smell of greasy meat and dark, slimy onions? Is it about your dad saying "when this was a wooden stand, you could smell the embrocation fumes coming up from the players' dressing room"? Is it about your dad getting a tear in his eye when he suddenly realises that today's match is being played on the anniversary of his father's death? Is it about your dad recalling the things his old man used to shout out? ("I've seen better on the Scrubs", "get a squib up your arse", "get 'im, George", "the greyhounds are at the White City")...

Is it about the triumph of vague hope over hard-won experience? Is it about going up to Chesterfield to see your lot ship a load of second-half goals as hard Derbyshire rain stings your face and churns your meat pie to mud? Is it about celebrating a 1-0 win over Grimsby Town as if you'd won a cup? Is it about getting excited by the club signing someone else's cast-off on a season-long loan?

Is it about seeing the same old faces year after year? Is it about the club being the last trace of your family's roots in a neighbourhood from which every last one of your relatives scattered many, many years ago?

Or it is about a horribly dystopian vision of global consumer culture like this?



See how the badge and the words "EMOTIONAL BRAND" are formed only briefly from grains of desert sand that quickly mix back into the gritty Arabian wind. This is quite right. None of this will last. Long after Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Ras al Khaimah have disappeared under the shifting desert dunes; long after Emiratisation has proven to be a pipe dream; long after the last drops of oil and water have been consumed - people will gather at ordinary little football clubs to watch below-average players kick a bag of wind. All this other stuff will pass.