My name is Sarah Miles, and I am currently a university student at the University of Findlay in Ohio. I am a native of the Chicago suburbs that loves the beautiful game of football. Not American football, but what the rest of the world sees as football, the most popular sport in the world. It’s easy to have a love for at least one sport when you grew up in a household that revolved around sports. My dad has been a sports journalist for a few decades and both of my siblings and I have been/were competitive athletes.
However, I have never played a competitive game of football/soccer in my entire life, only in PE Class in my primary and secondary school years. In fact, there was a point where I hated it as a little kid. My story with football began back in 2012, when NBC Sports took over coverage of the Premier League. I remember my dad bought a full package to be able to watch all of the games, because he had become so fascinated with Manchester City after they had won the league in 2012 with Sergio Aguero’s 93:20 goal. It was not about what people considered to be “glory-hunting” but more about being amazed that the smaller team in Manchester was finding success and beating the bigger teams in the English Premier League, like Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool.
Every weekend, starting with the 2012/13 season, became a routine, I would wake up and see my parents have whatever game was on. I never cared those first three years, or so I thought I didn’t care. I must have cared a little bit if I paid attention to my parents talking about players such as Edin Dzeko, Yaya Toure, Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie, etc. and even took the time to watch Sir Alex Ferguson give a farewell address to the Manchester United fans after his last game as manager. I must have found some quality in the beautiful game at 13, 14, and 15 years old if I found the song about mocking Steven Gerrard for slipping in 2014 funny. I knew the words as a 15 year old to that song just because I found it funny. I must have cared a little bit if I remembered just how amazed both of my parents were when Wigan beat Manchester City in the FA Cup Final in 2013. I also found it so funny how angry the Manchester United supporters were the first two seasons after SAF’s departure. However, I did not consider myself a football fan for those first three seasons (12/13, 13/14, 14/15).
I consider my first season as a football fan to be the 2015/16 season, which is when I decided to pay attention to the games and how the players played the game. Everyone has the one player that makes them fall in love with the game, and the 15/16 season was when I discovered that player.
As I watched, the commentators kept talking about a new signing for Manchester City for that 15/16 season. The player was a record-breaking signing that City bought from Wolfsburg. Many people, of course, scoffed at City spending money on a player they believed was going to fail in England after being rejected at Chelsea a few seasons before. However, the midfielder that City bought that season caught my attention early. His name? Kevin De Bruyne.
The Belgian midfielder caught my eye, especially after how much the commentators spoke about him. I watched De Bruyne and admired the way he played. He was incredible to my 16 year old self, and I didn’t even know how good he was going to get. From then on, I paid more attention to City’s games and paid more and more attention to each of the players. I began to really learn the likes of Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Joe Hart, Pablo Zabaleta, Fernandinho, and other City stars I had mentioned before. Considering my little bit of knowledge about the Premier League, I felt like my first season as a football fan was a mess. City only made Champions League football on goal differential. Chelsea finished 10th, which my parents and I all laughed at. Liverpool didn’t even qualify for Europa League for the next season, despite being in the final that season. Teams like West Ham and Southampton were qualifying for Europe. The strangest part of it all was that Leicester had won the league after being in last place by Christmas the season before. The game is truly beautiful, strangely beautiful at times.
It was not the best season for City in 15/16 considering their recent history, but I fell in love with the team that year. Based on that, I would never really consider myself a City supporter because I’m a glory hunter. Sure, I never experienced City’s worst times, but I fell in love with the game for what the game is and the quality of the players. My love has only grown since.
There was so much hype around City winning the league in the 2016/17 season, because the famous Pep Guardiola had taken over as club manager to do better in European competitions. I didn’t know how to feel about this. I wasn’t pleased with Pep at first, because he decided to loan Joe Hart out and bring Claudio Bravo in as the number on goalkeeper. I watched so many games that season wondering if Pep Guardiola was the right choice for City, because we had lost to teams like Leicester and Everton and got knocked out of Champions League in the round of 16 by AS Monaco. We were not anywhere near winning the league, because Chelsea were running away with points and Tottenham Hotspur were failing to keep the title race close. I was disgusted, but I was falling more in love with the game. Kevin De Bruyne was even better that year and had the most amount of assists. I was getting ready for college in the middle of the season when I met a friend who would be going to the same university as me, a Chelsea supporter, and found myself diving deep more into the fan culture with the debates and arguing whether Kevin De Bruyne or Eden Hazard is the best Belgian player. I claimed at the end of that season (16/17) that City would win the league and that Chelsea fan just laughed and told me Chelsea would repeat. If only we both knew what was about to come the next season, I would be the one laughing.
I turned 18 a few weeks before the 17/18 season began, and my birthday present was a 16/17 Manchester City home kit with Kevin De Bruyne’s name and number on the back. Of course, nothing excited me more than to have the Kevin De Bruyne’s shirt. I was hoping to go flaunting it around my college campus in a month and being asked about being a City fan. I was so ready to be that girl and hopefully meet other supporters.
Although I did meet other football fans, it ended up not being my concern to be friends with them, because I had a rough first year mentally with college. Football was my escape and outlet from my academics and athletics, and it still is today. What an exciting season to experience during a time of stress an adjustment. I already had the anticipation of going to England after the school year ended, and seeing that I could see the aftermath of my favorite team’s league win excited me even more.
Unfortunately, being a collegiate athlete meant I could not watch everyday. September and October is always the height of competitions and team activities on Saturdays. Fortunately, I didn’t miss every game with some being on Sundays. I just remember being disappointed to miss the exciting 5-0 win against Liverpool, the only time during the 17/18 season that City beat Liverpool, and Raheem Sterling’s last minute winner against Southampton. Of course, it wasn’t fun missing some of the most exciting moments of the season due to swim competitions. I was fortunate enough to be able to watch Kevin De Bruyne’s beauty of a goal against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, the big Manchester Derby win at Old Trafford that allowed City to go into cruise control with the title race before the festive period even began, and the two 3-0 victories over Arsenal in one week in February. However, not every game I saw gave me the excitement that some did. I felt the pain from the 4-3 League loss against Liverpool and both of the Champions League quarterfinal losses, as well as Manchester United’s comeback to stop us from officially winning the title against us in April. However, I stuck by my team the whole time, and my love for football grew even more.
It was hard to imagine loving football more than I already did towards the end of that 17/18 season, but I was in for the best experience of my life in May of 2018. Shortly after that semester ended, as promised, my mum took me to England on holiday. Our first weekend on holiday consisted of a trip to Southampton to attend Manchester City’s last league game on Championship Sunday. I couldn’t have been any more excited, because I begged my mum to take me. Luckily, she was more than happy to see City again. As cliche as it sounds, 13th May 2018 has been one of the best days of my life so far. I remember going down to have breakfast with my mum in the little dining area of our B&B we stayed at and there were other City supporters that traveled. I pointed them out and we chatted with the men that were there. They were so thrilled to know that Americans had traveled to come see football and started asking us a bunch of questions and chatted about how they all hated how the Liverpool fans acted before the Champions League quaterfinals. At the time, I did not have my KDB jersey on, because we were sitting in the home section and not with the City fans, but the City supporters suggest I put it on and just wear my hoodie over it during the game. I went up and changed into it, and they all started singing the famous Kevin De Bruyne chant, to the tune of 7 Nation Army, and it was thrilling to hear. I never felt so happy about being invited to the pubs for early drinks and being able to meet more City finals. We had barely known these fans for a couple of hours, and one of them named Dave told us that if we were back in England and wanted to go to a City game, he would hook us up with tickets. People make fun of City for having no fans, but the truth is, City has a wonderful fanbase from my personal experience. The ones I met made my day even more wonderful and made me feel at home. Of course, the day got even better with the game. Despite being in the home section, we were right next to the City section and could quietly sing along with them doing the Championes Chant and the We’ve Got Guardiola chant. We were right by the corner too, and one of the best parts of my day was being able to see Kevin De Bruyne take corner kicks right in front of me during the second half. Towards the end of the game, I thought I was going to be slightly disappointed with the result. No goals had been scored and Claudio Bravo almost had some horrific mistakes that would have caused us to concede. However, once the game went into stoppage time, there was so much commotion going around my mum and I, because of the singing back and forth, that the only thing I remember seeing was Gabriel Jesus’s shot bounce into the back of the net. My mum and I were screaming and jumping up and down and I unzipped my hoodie. A City fan in the away supporters section pointed to me and had the largest smile on his face. There was so much adrenaline running through me and I had never felt so happy. If I had to pick out the best day of 2018, that would be that day. City fans I have met on Twitter have told me how lucky I was to see the famous Centurions goal live, and I would agree. It was the same exact month and day as the 93:20 goal which made it even more special. It makes me think that every 6 years, the 13th of May is going to be a special day for Manchester City.
That game was the highlight of my trip, even though I got to go on a tour of the Etihad Stadium a week later. At that point of the trip, I had not spent any money yet. That quickly changed once I went into the City store after the tour. My mum said she would buy one thing and I had to pay for everything else I wanted. For someone who is a student, I burnt a hole in my pocket, but I would do that all over again.
After that holiday, I didn’t think I could experience football like that again. The truth is that it’s not the same in the United States. It is nowhere close to the experience in England. On my 19th birthday, Manchester City was in my home city of Chicago to play Borussia Dortmund for the International Champions Cup, the tour of the biggest teams in Europe in the United States. Of course, I was excited, but at the end of the day, I was underwhelmed by the experienced. There was no pre-match pub fun and the atmosphere was for the most part dead. I was happy to see Phil Foden have a start for City along with seeing Joe Hart play live in a City shirt before leaving for Burnley. While it is cool to see your favorite team come to your country, nothing beats seeing them in their country with the natives.
As the 2018/19 season has progressed, there have been a lot of highs and lows. School has been really stressful, but City has been here for me. At times, I have been really stressed with City, specifically during that horrid stretch in December when we should not have lost as much as we did. It made our title race more stressful, especially when Liverpool got to 7 points ahead of us. Luckily, the one team to beat Liverpool in the league this season was City. The day the 2-1 victory occurred, I was on my third day of recovery from being really sick in the middle of my team’s winter training trip. I was better, but I wasn’t allowed to train yet. I had to rest. I wanted to train, but I was more than happy to watch the most important match of our season’s season. I put on my new John Stones 18/19 Away shirt I got for Christmas and watched the game in great distress. I don’t think I ever let out uglier screams than when Sergio Aguero and Leroy Sane scored. I felt more energy than I could imagine surge through me throughout that game and FaceTimed my mum in tears after that win.
There’s something about Man City and the beautiful game that are special to me and have filled my heart. I have had a strong yearn to go back to England and see City again. Luckily… that is the case. I have been accepted into my school’s London Scholars Program, a yearly three week program that takes place every May. My research project is about football, and this blog is the project. Once the project is finished, I plan to keep up with this blog. You can find more information on the project on the next tab.
The Beautiful Game's American Fanatic 