My Soccer Fandom Is Out of Shape

Here we go, here we go, here we rather clankingly and disconnectedly go. And you can’t say there isn’t a bit of an atmosphere. The rain—Manchester rain, Industrial Revolution rain—is lashing down, fuming down, making a bodiless, roaring sound as it hits the empty bowl of the stadium. The players strut, scowl, looking nervous and thespian. Some of them, in this gleaming, gushing emptiness, appear quite altered: heavier, more sorrowful, years older. And stretched desolately across the banks of redundant seats, immense sky-blue—a stalwart Manchester City chant, once upon a time, but now, in the absence of anyone to chant it, a piece of flickering poetry.