Ambition: A Bit of Creative Writing on Football!

You dreamt of all this as a young boy.  Dreams were stunning yet simple things back then and it’s only as you grow older that you realise the full force and impact they have.  His dream came true, of course. When they do, you look through the world with new eyes, astonished at what you can see. Those special moments of clarity and acknowledgement of your desires unfolding. They may be short lived but are fated to be long retold.  Signing with the biggest football club in the world[1], the prestige is yours the moment you walk into the stadium. The breath-taking sense of history, victory and tragedy as your heart races walking through those gates leading to your heaven.  He must have felt it too, especially to be signed on the sweetest of all birthdays[2]. It became the new policy for football clubs to buy young players. Young potential was now desirable, although it was later infamously asserted that ‘you’ll never win anything with kids’[3].  The contract wages could be sky high or a pittance but you don’t care, you would sign for a cent if they let you, you just wanted to play. You just wanted to play at that club, the only club worth playing for.  You cherish your sporting nicknames that you teasingly get named in the changing rooms, like his titles ‘boom boom’[4] and ‘the tank’[5]. The names just seem to fit, just like the football shirt bearing the devil[6] that was simply made to be worn by you. With pride.  You dream of Wembley, the home and holy-grail of football. You dream of achieving the greatest honour: playing for England and taking on the role of a heroic lion. His school-teacher foretold that he had ‘just seen a boy of 11 who will one day play for England'[7], and as your team-mate, Tommy, said, ‘you can keep all your Bests, Pelés and Maradonas, [but you are] the greatest of them all!'[8]  You never imagine your local pub would be re-named after you, or a statue paying homage to your accomplishments will be erected in your home town centre, or your cemetery becoming a pilgrimage for sporting supporters[9]. You dream of doing great, great things for the family you love most, the club you love most and the game you love most.  Just like him, for he is your idol, a deity destined to embody your dreams.  The air of euphoria after battling through to a place in the semi-finals… transformed into devastation as it all happened.  You never thought it would happen to you. And neither did he. You know no-one will ever fill his football boots. You can imagine but it will never happen. The late, the great Duncan Edwards.  One of the eight Manchester United Players who died as result of the Munich Air Crash on February the 6^th in 1958.  “A Day of Memory, Sad to Recall, Without Farewell, He left us all”.