The air was cool, the night alive with the distant hum of traffic, the occasional siren, the pulse of a city that never slept. In Manchester, I could hear the trams, the familiar sounds of Moss Side, the accents that felt like home. Here, everything was foreign.
The accents, the pace, the sheer scale of it all. I thought about the full journey, the impossible progression that had brought me here.
A year ago, I was stacking shelves at 3 am at a convenience store in Moss Side, going nowhere, no future, no hope. Just a lad with a dream and no path to reach it. Then The Railway Arms, a pub team playing on park pitches with jumpers for goalposts, dog walkers cutting through training, no facilities, no structure. But it was the start. The spark.
Then Moss Side Athletic, a proper County League club. A muddy, uneven pitch, but it was ours. Cramped changing rooms, but they were functional. We won a title. We developed players.
