I know, I know, one swallow doesn’t make a summer and all that.
But let me explain.
First I have supported United for more than sixty years, a decision made by my father the day and hour that Denis Law was signed from Torino. As a Scotsman himself with blonde hair and a whippet-like inside left instinct (10), I’m sure my dad thought he WAS Denis Law. And if you ever saw Law you’d know that would be something to see.
So I’ve followed many great United iterations and some not so great. I’ve been with Busby and Ferguson. I’ve been with, well, let’s not spoil the mood.
Of course my fellow Scot Sir Alex Ferguson gave me decades of joy and so when my own sons came along, I naturally decreed that they were reds. Obviously.
The problem was as my sons arrived Ferguson left. And everything turned to shit. Not entirely- there have been moments- but overwhelmingly I have never shaken the suspicion that my sons must hate that from childhood I had decked them out in the colours of a club that so regularly reduced them to tears, of disappointment or worse of boredom.
Until last night.
As I hugged my eldest in a Dive Bar in Hong Kong while United’s goals flew in his face was wet with tears of joy, as was the face of my youngest thousands of miles away. My youngest, by the way had just helped his side defeat the historic Third Lanark 3-1, with a goal and an assist, plus hitting the post and the crossbar!
It wasn’t that we’d slaughtered City 2-0. That we’d had the ball in the net SIX times and twice hit the woodwork. That Amad on a run thrills like Georgie Best. That Casemiro strolled like a King. Martinez so frustrated Haaland he got hooked. Or that Bruno Fernandes will one day have a statue outside Old Trafford. That Harry Maguire bloodied and bruised, defended like he was a VC winner at Rorke’s Drift. It was something deeper than these transitory things.
It was that this had been football played The United Way.
Fast, courageous, and flowing, filled with élan. This was football as a thing of joy. This was how Best Law and Charlton filled a United shirt. This was how Cantona made us ooh and aah. How Roy Keane made us unbeatable. How Giggs and Ronaldo twisted their opponents’ blood. This was our DNA. We thought it was extinct. But we are back.
George Galloway
Hong Kong
