What’s the point of football? (Apart from everything)

Southampton beat Leeds 1-0 on Sunday to win the Championship play-off and return to the Premier League at the first time of asking. A 1,000-mile round trip drive was worth it

I’m writing this at almost midnight on Monday night. I’ve only just got back home from Wembley, a few hours ago, by which I mean from Sunday’s Championship play-off final between Southampton and Leeds.

I’ve only just got back because I live 450 miles from Wembley, on the west coast of Scotland, and I drove there and back. Because I didn’t even know I was going to go to the match until late last week. And so I hadn’t arranged a dog-sitter, or train tickets or plane tickets. And so I went via my mum’s in Nottingham, by car, with the dog, because my mum would have the dog for 24 hours while I went to the football.

Also my mum’s been poorly. She’s recovering from chemo and radiotherapy so I’ve been going up and down more often anyway in recent months. She loves my dog, and vice versa. If I went to the game, they’d get to spend quality time together. It was a win-win-win. (Me-mum-dog).

It was also a literal win. 1-0. Or rather 0-1.

I’m a Southampton fan, by the way, in case you didn’t know. Although if you follow me on X, the artist formerly known as Twitter, you will know. It’s not as if I don’t tweet about it often enough, and I’ve written before about how this came to pass, as someone who grew up in Nottingham in the heyday of Brian Clough’s two-times European champions, Forest. As a Saints fan.

Cutting to the chase, I was sitting in the Bobby Moore room at Wembley on Sunday, an hour or so after Saints had beaten Leeds 1-0.

I hadn’t intended to be there. In fact I turned down the chance of a ticket early last week only to change my mind later. More of which in a moment.

I was feeling like a 10-year-old again, starstruck. I’ve interviewed and / or spent time around some of the greatest sportspeople in history as a journalist, and rarely been starstruck. But not that long after the final whistle, Ché Adams walks in, still in his kit, and starts hugging family and friends.

Then I notice Taylor Harwood-Bellis is over there, and Adam Armstrong is over there, and so is James Bree with his family, and Jack Stephens, and Shea Charles and Samuel Edozie and Joe Lumley and pretty much all the squad.

All the Saints players were milling around the room, still in their kits, chugging a few beers and celebrating with friends and families, because many of the players’ families, from both clubs, had based themselves in this hospitality area for the day. 

You get a meal before kick-off, a soft drink at half-time and there’s a pay bar for 90 minutes after the final whistle. It’s posh by football standards but it’s really not glitzy. Yet the buzz was amazing.

Saints had returned to the Premier League at the first time of asking. The atmosphere in the stadium, before, during and after the match was absolutely crackling. Fizzing, optimistic, energetic. The Leeds fans were an equal part of that. 

I was sitting next to a Stoke fan (a friend of the friend who’d invited me) at our table afterwards, having a drink, and he said, and I paraphrase: “Today’s been great for Southampton. But what do you actually think about next season?”

I said an approximation of: “Well, we’ll be second favourites to go down, after Ipswich. If we start the season with this squad of players, we’ll get trounced most weeks. 

“If we don’t start the season with this group then we’ll need to spend gazillions to upgrade many of them.”

When we were relegated a year ago from the Premier League, we sold no fewer than 14 players, including all the best ones.

We sold James Ward-Prowse and Romeo Lavia and Tino Livramento and Nathan Tella, who went off to join Bundesliga upstarts Leverkusen, who were never going to offer him the opportunities for glory that Saints in the Championship were going to offer. Ahem.

I really like and admire Russell Martin. What’s not to like about a vegan, Buddhist, Green Party-voting, charismatic, handsome football coach who plays attacking possession football?

But I said: “There’s no way we can play Russell Martin’s brand of possession football in the Prem, whatever he’s just said in his post-match. We’ll get destroyed. So he needs an entire rethink of his philosophy. But apart from that, it might be fun.”

And the Stoke fan sighed and said: “Yeah.” He paused. “What’s the point of football?”

And I said: “This. Today.”

“This. Today”

Early last week I got a WhatsApp from a friend and fellow Saints fan, Ben, who also lives in Scotland, saying he had a spare for Wembley and did I want it?

I replied along the lines: “I’ve been thinking about going but what with dog-sitting issues and the notion of a 1,000-mile round trip over two or three days, costing many hundreds of pounds, with the prospect that we lose to Leeds, is potentially awful enough to say thanks but no thanks.”

Then late last week I got a call from another friend, Will, who is a Birmingham fan, but who was working at Wembley at the play-off final, hosting the half-time show on the pitch. As part of his work, he had a ticket for the Bobby Moore suite plus a spare, and we’ve done various projects together over the years and he offered me his spare. 

I rang my mum. She’s been struggling a bit and sounded like she’d be absolutely be up for visitors (me and Lottie the dog). And would be fine with Lottie while I dipped down to London for 24 hours. Deal sealed.

So my itinerary became:

Saturday: Drive from Scotland to Nottingham, cook mum dinner (beef stroganoff).

Sunday: Drive to London, check into hotel, go to match, go out and (commiserate or celebrate).

Monday: Drive London to Nottingham, pick up dog, drive to Scotland.

And here we are.

Sunday was magnificent. The two-hour drive from Nottingham to London was almost entirely filled with two hours of Radio 5 Live and Colin Murray’s brilliant show that included a Championship play-off preview with Saints legend Frannie Benali.

When I got to Wembley and met Will and we got to the Bobby Moore lounge, one of the star guests who took part in a pre-match Q&A was … Frannie Benali.

The atmosphere inside the stadium immediately before kick-off was hair-raising, as in spine-tingling, hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck raising. I’m sure both sets of fans would agree.

The game itself was largely crap, technically. Few chances, and less actually taken. It was tense with sporadic patches of fluidity. 

When Saints scored our fans went understandably crazy and the Leeds half of the stadium were pretty much silenced.

The second half was tense and there was sooooo much added time. And then the final whistle blew.

The Saints players went to get their medals from the Royal Box and on their way down they walked within two feet of me.

I was at a loss what to feel. At first anyway.

For me, like for many other people I know, football is the most important thing in my life of all the unimportant things.

We’ve all had a few rough years: a pandemic, a war in Europe, a cost-of-living crisis. 

I’ve had a few rough years for reasons well documented and did I ever mention I nearly died not that long ago?!

At the final whistle on Sunday, I drank in the celebrations around me. I noticed Frannie Benali perhaps six rows behind me, gazing at the pitch as the Saints players ran to their fans, hand on his heart, tears rolling down his face. 

There’s a lump in my throat. 

I turn to Will and I say I’m going to give Frannie a hug. Can you take a photo? 

We did. He did.

What’s the point of football? With moments like this? Everything.

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