Why it's so great supporting Leicester - even for an Aston Villa fan

Comment: Leicester City have brought the excitement back

(Getty Images)

I can remember the aftermath of an Aston Villa victory far more vividly than defeat, though traipsing through Aston with the solemn calm of the broken hearted was a considerably more common occurrence. Through wind and rain we would walk under the streetlights in hurried conversation, the grey industrial towers and harsh red-brick estates more vivid, more alluring, than they had been on the ascent to Villa Park.

The air shimmered on those nights, and in my mind a purple blur distorts the pathway home - though this may be an addition of nostalgia, or perhaps a side-effect of fading recollection. I can, at least, remember with clarity that the euphoria felt complete, holistic, self-sustained with an energy immune to the intrusions that dampen adult fascination. Back then, optimism and unbridled joy sank through my skull with a conviction that is unique to the naivety of a child’s psyche; free from the cluster of knots that deny an adult mind belief in the permanence of a joyful moment. Aston Villa’s potential seemed boundless and, by proxy, so did my own.

In Philip Roth’s American Pastoral the protagonist Nathan Zukermann attempts to capture the haunting emotions of his 45th high school reunion, and the feeling that accompanies reflecting on a lost childhood: “what is astonishing is that we, who had no idea of how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened. That the results are in[...] the unanswerable questions answered, the future revealed – is that not astonishing?”

What Zuckermann frets over is the chilling realisation that adulthood is permanently tinged with the knowledge of each moment’s transience, and that the wide-eyed optimism of youth is over: “Destiny had become perfectly understandable”.

The secret that unfurls for us all is that the adult experience of stress is never fully forgotten even during a simple moment of happiness. Most of us strive to be reunited with the placid calm of such unadulterated joy (in fact, it governs our devotion to art and to sport) but the search for escape is more weary, and more humble, than it was when the world was bursting with possibility.

This is as true in football as it is anywhere else. When Dion Dublin rifled a volley past David Seaman at Villa Park in December 1998, completing a comeback from 2-0 down to send Villa back to the summit of the Premier League, the walk back to Shakespeare Avenue was one of those special nights. Villa could do anything, and so could I.

I am truly grateful that I was a child at the time of Villa’s last flirtation with success, because I know that if this happened today I would feel only a muffled emotion, a shadow of that old feeling flickering dimly amongst the weight of the wider, more worldly knowledge that defines existential realisations of loss, of pain, and of life’s peculiar vacuity.

It is undoubtedly the feeling I still chase, desperately, in my love for Villa and for football: a nostalgic longing for the simplicity mostly lost as my youth slipped away. But when I find these moments they have lost their colour, and I can see behind the goals and games – the cardboard set, the puppet strings - that reveal true Meaning is found in nothing concrete, despite my strained efforts to maintain a drugged absorption in verisimilitude.

But last weekend, for the briefest of moments, this feeling came back to me. It tickled a part of my subconscious for a fraction of a second and caught me off-guard with the raw, rushing sense of wonder that had once accompanied me in the back alleys of Aston. I was slumped on the coach in my London flat when Shinji Okozaki drilled a shot past Tim Howard to light up a clunky, mud-soaked game at Goodison Park. Out of nowhere, yet another three points were all but secured. I literally punched the air.

Cultural circles are quick to dismiss sport as an artistic pursuit, but its relationship with the highbrow is less distant than most assume. The beauty of art is in the subversion of perceived norms, of defying assumed convention and denying the mundane; it is to restore childlike wonder, to fill the soul with a feeling beyond the weight and toil of life’s daily tragedies, and to reject Zuckerman’s assertion that the limits of our achievement are already laid out. It is to be Leicester City and be top of the table, refusing to submit to the logic of English football’s homogeneity; watching Mahrez and Vardy is life-affirming, and seems to capture – in its implausibility – that youthful buzz I assumed had vanished forever.

We cling to football because it shone the brightest in our childhood, the portion of life that is wild, colourful, and endlessly free: free to imagine an infinite future and free to feel joy without the weight of adult knowledge. Football promised the opportunity - for my team, which was myself – to be the most celebrated, to exist in a world that is constantly creating the new. And though the secret has been revealed and the mystery explained, I still immerse myself in football and its promise to let me escape. This season, Leicester City are recapturing that spirit. I can only imagine the feelings it is inspiring in the children who gather at Filbert Way, who skip home through the streets of Leicester replaying in their heads the moments of magic - Vardy’s goals, Mahrez’s dribbles, Ranieri’s outstretched arms.

Jamie Vardy celebrates a goal (GETTY IMAGES)

The descent has not yet begun for these children who, in the purest and the simplest portion of their lives, are lucky enough to witness their team steamroller the footballing giants whose merchandise litter the school playing fields. Leicester’s impossible triumphs will fuel a lifelong obsession that will no doubt feature the pain of defeat more steadily than its antithesis, and, like ourselves, will evolve into an addiction tarnished slightly by adulthood.

But the memories made in 2015 will be cherished in future years as something intangibly profound that, without them even noticing, dissolved - slipped through their fingers. I don’t get to walk through Aston as often as I used to, but the residue still remains of that time when football was religion, and when the possibilities for a vibrant life seemed endless. For giving a generation of East Midlands children that feeling - Claudio Ranieri, Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy, and the rest - we are all grateful.