It’s no surprise that I and many fans I know are hesitant — a little bit scared, even. When you care so much about a place, as we do with Old Trafford, when so many of your most special memories are attached to a place, then it’s hard to imagine something different and new.
I remember talking to my barber once. He’s from Kurdistan and spoke about the town he grew up in at the base of a snowy mountain in northern Iraq. I asked him if one day he’d want to move back there, and he said yes, because there’s nothing like home. And to him, that mountain represented home, with life in his town revolving around it. The sight of it made him feel at ease.
I tried to think of places similar to this in my own life but, having grown up in a city, it’s harder. You’ve got houses, buildings, skyscrapers, shops, parks… but it’s all ever-changing and updating. There’s often no landscape that really roots you to a place in a city. No mountain, you could say. But Old Trafford is my equivalent. Something permanent. With the same streets, smells and emotions. And that’s why it means so much.
