Commentary on To Football, With Love – A fan's ode to Messi's beautiful game, Lusail, and the closing of a personal chapter

Between the despair of defeats and the exaltation when we see a mazy dribble, football is captivating, and takes us to emotional heights. It's a beautiful game indeed.

Art by Revant Dasgupta.

On a beautiful day in early May 2018, I found myself repeating "football, fucking hell" on repeat, in a stadium in southwestern Germany. Surrounded by blurs of noise, blue and white, I was gripped by a pure joy surprising not only in its intensity, but also in its very existence. I closed my eyes for a second, so I could take a sunny part with me, tidied up for the days when I desperately needed it.

That day, TSG Hoffenheim qualified for the Champions League for the very first time, and there I was, one of 30,000 others. Still, that day will go down as one of my best fan experiences, regardless of witnessing a historic moment. I will cherish it because of the electric atmosphere that resonates in the smallest stadium I have been to, because of the friend I went to the game with and the people I met, because I remembered what it was like to watch football for the sake of the game. After the toughest season of my 16 years as an Arsenal fan, that win over Dortmund at the Rhine-Neckar Arena was something I couldn't remember. never thought I needed. He answered the why. Why I let a sport overwhelm me, my heart, my life - and why I do it with joy and gratitude.

But, only a day later, as I sat on the train, shrouded in rain, gray and rushing darkness, I felt a weight settle in my stomach. He refused to move. Yes, I missed Arsene Wenger's last game in charge, but I had already said goodbye when I wrote his tribute, then to the Lir with the Boston Gooners for his last home game by a glorious after- London noon. But I was suddenly, inexplicably emotionally drained and even the thought of the upcoming World Cup couldn't lift the veil.

April 16, 2003 was my first game against Arsenal. It was a 2-2 draw against Ferguson's Manchester Utd and, like most of this season, I was watching with a Man Utd fan, a friend. He tried so hard to shift my budding loyalty to the sport towards Old Trafford, but couldn't stop the pull of the Highbury lads - and their bespectacled teacher-style manager. /p>

Wenger, the only manager I ever knew, became responsible for showing a 12-year-old girl just how much beauty there was in the game and, eventually, in life. Now I struggled to justify its importance and my own purpose as a football writer; as a writer, period, and I couldn't muster the resilience that comes with being an Arsenal fan, or just a football fan.

In his fabulous article on the importance of football, Joel Slagle tells...