On the drive in: A bump in the road of a life following Leicester City
In from the fields towards Kilby Bridge
Slalom past The Navigation
The rugby ground, the cemetery, the newsagents
Into Leicester
Into the city
You’ve been making this journey for 35 years. Why does this one feel different to all the others?
In that time you’ve travelled into Leicester for some of the greatest games in the club’s history. Some of them you knew would be special - Everton. Some of them you knew could be special - Sevilla. And most you had no real idea what to expect but occasionally ended up thankful for supporting this football club - Manchester United.
In some ways, this afternoon’s game is unremarkable. Bournemouth. Not a local rival. Not one of the game’s most famous names. And this isn’t a season-defining encounter.
But in others, all signs point to this being massive.
Crowd on the turn. International break ahead. A season in need of ignition.
You know there will be a point in the future when similar games crop up and you’ll feel like you always used to.
This is just a bump in the road.
Joseph Morris High Class Family Butchers
The Horse and Trumpet
The Esso garage, the fire station and the clothes bank
Aldi, Wacky Warehouse and Farm Foods
Get in the right lane at the roundabout, which is the left lane, shifting into the middle lane
Swing round past the McDonald’s
Bus lane, Holiday Inn
Welcome to Leicester
Historic city
Despite the game’s undoubted importance, what makes this journey different to all the others is the length of time it takes for the talk in the car to turn to football.
It’s normally the first order of the day. Excited chatter about the way the team is playing or the challenge ahead. Players you’re looking forward to seeing. What it means for the season.
But winding your way up the Welford Road, there’s talk of all sorts else. How are things? Watched anything good lately? What are you up to tomorrow?
It’s not a case of avoidance. It simply doesn’t occur to you to talk about the game, the team, the club.
It arrives eventually, of course.
El Khannouss was rubbish against Everton. Didn’t think he was that bad. He was garbage. Hopefully he’s better than he showed. It’s only one game. Maybe it was too early to chuck him in. The game didn’t suit him.
You look out the window.
A kickabout on Knighton Park
Left for cricket
Right for horse racing
Straight on for the Royal Infirmary
Vehicles merge from left
For King Richard III
Follow the city centre
This was inevitable after the highs of 2016 and 2021. It could never be that good forever.
And the concept of getting fed up with your club, with the Premier League, with modern football - none of it is new. People talk about this stuff all the time and very rarely does it then translate to cancelling season ticket renewals or Sky Sports subscriptions.
It’s still not easy to share how you feel because it’s so rarely written about.
This is just a lull.
It lacks both the all-encompassing passion and drive of someone whose feelings towards a football club never falter and the nostalgic feeling of leaving something you’ve loved behind for good.
It’s temporary. It’s just a way of letting off steam, venting about things that aren’t how they used to be back when things were supposedly better. Whether they were ever actually better is questionable and maybe it’s just that you were younger and fewer things had changed beyond your understanding.
Now it’s mobile tickets, fan cam and sustainability getting in the way of letting people know there’s help out there for them if they’re struggling.
And you can’t help feeling there are so many obstacles these days to what used to be a simple love of football.
Slow
Bus lane
End of bus lane
Right turners beware of oncoming traffic
Merge to left
Speed cameras
Bus lane
Traffic merging, moving, raking, snaking into the city
You look through the windscreen at the brake lights glowing ahead and think about why, for the first time in your life, when you’re standing among your fellow supporters, it feels like you’re on the outside looking in.
It’s like you’re going to the game and everyone else is watching it differently to you. You’re still involved. You stand. You sing. You celebrate. You wait desperately for the referee to blow the whistle as Leicester cling on for a first league victory of the season.
But it’s all a bit dialled down. Every feeling is slightly muffled.
Something changed over the summer, when the shirt was sold to the highest bidder regardless of the ethics of it and in an instant you knew this season was going to feel very different.
The man in the dugout, the players he puts on the pitch and the players he leaves out all contribute to a feeling that the good times are behind for now and what lays ahead is uncertain.
Because your heroes have been quick and young and thrilling to watch and those qualities don’t appear to be valued at the moment. They’re starved of action or frozen out completely.
It’s not just one or two players being out of favour. It’s not knowing the identity of this team and this club. It’s the way that the team is being built around a player who belongs to a club that’s overtaken yours. And nobody held responsible for things ending up this way and still the prices go up and still you’re expected by some fellow supporters to be endlessly happy about it all.
But you know others feel like you do.
And the more this feeling builds inside you, the less it’s about the game than about the day as a whole, new friends you’ve made and new traditions forming.
Others have long felt like this and it’s always sounded right when they talk about it. Catching up. Going for a drink. Getting something to eat before heading down to the ground.
It sounds healthy. Not the actual food and drink necessarily. But the experience.
Grimsby Fisheries, Heritage India, Spice Bazzar
American golf, pharmacy, car wash
The Donkey and the New Road Inn
Flats for students, a new term beginning
Cricket ongoing, a new over beginning
Victoria Park, once a home for the Fosse
A place for play in the heart of the city
You remind yourself that it could be far worse. Your football club could have been moved to an out-of-town retail park or taken completely from you.
This is just a phase.
Get through it and Leicester City will still be waiting there for you when this feeling fades. When the logo on the front of the shirt is different and the kind of players you like are valued again. Weeks. Months. Years. Whenever it all starts to feel more like you want it to feel.
When you’re parking up in years to come and walking down past all the places that have already gone.
The pub that was a boat with a roof that opened, the only place you’ve ever got sunburnt indoors.
The homeware supplier your mate once rang up to book a table for him and his girlfriend because someone told him it was an Italian restaurant.
The football stadium where you first saw a team run out of the tunnel in royal blue and had no idea how much they would come to mean to you.
That feeling will come again soon.
When you’ll be talking about that team long before Kilby Bridge.
