I got into football as a 7 year old and have always looked at the game as a simple sport, played and watched by down to earth people. A release at the weekend from the mundane routine. I remember a dark winters night in 1971, I lived in a shop at the time and it must have been a Friday night as my dad was delivering orders to people s houses and I was with him. Alan Ball had been sold from Everton and gone to Arsenal for £220,000 and my dad said to me can you imagine that 1,000 pounds 220 times and obviously I couldn t. Neither could he.
From that night onwards I did realise that if you had loads of money you could buy any footballer you wanted. If he had said they have sold him just in time to fit in with Profit and Sustainability rules, I would probably have glazed over, not bothered with football and never wondered why he played in white boots.
The game has gone, but it went quite a while ago.
