I’ve never really been sure whether I fell in love with football first or with Manchester United. The more I think about it, the more I realise I never really had a choice in the matter.
It was around 2004 or 2005, when I was in middle school. I don’t remember comparing clubs or trying to decide who to support. I don’t remember making a decision at all. Looking back, football and Manchester United simply arrived together, and from that day on, I never really knew one without the other.
Around the same time, my cousin gifted me my first Manchester United jersey. It was a little too big for me then, and it definitely doesn’t fit me now, but I still have it. Somehow, I never found a reason to let it go.
Supporting a football club felt wonderfully simple back then. Every weekend mattered, every new season began with excitement, and every match felt important. Football wasn’t just something I watched. It became part of my week. I’d stay up late for matches, think about them the next day, and carry those conversations into school.
A few of my friends supported Manchester United too, so Monday mornings usually began with us talking about the weekend’s game. We’d celebrate the wins, complain about the losses, replay goals we’d already watched more times than we needed to, and somehow convince ourselves that next weekend would be different. At the time, they were just ordinary conversations between friends. Looking back now, they’re some of the memories I treasure most from school.
Life eventually became busier, as it does for everyone. School turned into college, college turned into medicine, and free time slowly became something I had to make rather than something I simply had. But one habit never changed. Whenever the fixtures for a new season came out, there was only one club I looked for first.
Players came and went over the years. I followed Cristiano Ronaldo to Madrid and later to Juventus because I loved watching him play, but it never felt like I had left Manchester United behind. I was following a player, not looking for another club. No matter where football took me, it always seemed to lead me back to United.
Then came the years that made supporting Manchester United a very different experience. There was a time when I expected us to win almost every week. These days, if we put together a really good performance, I sometimes catch myself smiling because I genuinely wasn’t expecting it. Somewhere along the way, supporting United became less about expecting trophies and more about surviving one weekend at a time.
What surprised me most, though, was that I never stopped watching. Results stopped being the reason I came back every weekend. Watching Manchester United had simply become part of my life. Whether we won, lost or drew, I still wanted to be there when the whistle blew.
That’s probably the biggest lesson football has taught me. It’s easy to support a club when everything is going well. The ordinary years are different, the ones with very little to celebrate, where loyalty isn’t measured by the trophies you lift but by the weekends you keep showing up anyway.
People sometimes ask why fans stay loyal through years that offer so little in return. I don’t think there’s a logical answer. After a while, it stops feeling like a decision. It simply becomes part of who you are.
Manchester United was the first club I ever supported, and the only club I’ve ever loved.
I don’t expect every season to end with silverware anymore, and I certainly don’t expect every weekend to end with a smile. But I still believe our time will come again. Football has always moved in cycles, and so have football clubs.
Maybe that’s why, even after all these years, I still can’t tell you where football ends and Manchester United begins. They arrived together, and they’ve stayed together ever since.