After three decades reporting on the game for the Observer and Guardian, I’m bowing out. Here’s a parting shot, along with a few cherished memories
When I joined the Observer in 1990 the country was just rediscovering its love of the national game, thanks to Gazza’s tears and the BBC’s cultured coverage of Italia 90 drawing a line under the careless 1980s, a decade when one horrific disaster after another followed from the general assumption that football supporters were a troublesome subspecies barely worth anyone’s care and attention.
In a couple more years the advent of the Premier League would massively increase the game’s prosperity and visibility, allowing grounds to be made safer and more attractive to a wider section of society. Yet encouraging as it was to see female fans and families returning to games, not every subsequent change has been for the better.
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