Oliver Sears

Squish, squish, squish.

Football has been part of my life since I was, well, a small boy in shorts.

I loved the game and had just enough ability to play for my school.

That said, the fitness level required to play as an adult meant that dipping in after many idle months or years was a foolhardy exercise.

I last played when I was 35, almost 20 years ago.

After about five minutes, a kid half my age clattered into me and I thought I'd been hit by a truck, begging to be allowed in goal for the rest of the game.

My older brother still knocks about with an interesting group of budding geriatrics.

A couple of years ago, he managed to simultaneously rupture both anterior and anterior knee ligaments while simply running along.

As he described to me at the time, football at our age is an extreme sport.

Growing up in North London meant that there were really only two local big teams to support, Arsenal or Tottenham Hotspur.

My grandfather was an Arsenal man, and it seemed that our family had followed his lead, although my brothers and cousins are more interested than our parents ever were.

Now, Arsenal are a team for whom the glory of winning a competition is rare enough for its supporters never to tire of such occasions.

More hope than expectation is the unofficial motto.

Think of Alfredo declaring his love for Violeta in Act I of La Traviata with the achingly beautiful line, Croce e delizia al cor, the torment and delight of the heart.

Welcome to the world of the Arsenal devotee.

At the age of 12, a school friend took me to my very first game at Highbury, the historic home of Arsenal.

It was 1980 and Arsenal were playing Southampton, a team that included the legendary English player Kevin Keegan at the end of his career.

The excitement of the occasion was somehow amplified by the constraints of my not-quite-teenage vocabulary.

Take any well-worn metaphor of choice, they're all true when you're 12.

You don't need to read Elias Canetti's 1955 Crowds and Power to understand that crowds do indeed have a power of their own.