Every Football Fan’s Dream-Come-True

Despite the past few weeks of babbling about the World Cup, I’m not a sports fanatic, and I don’t follow football (i.e., “soccer”) that much. Yesterday’s World Cup Final article was the last thing I planned to post about the game until 2018, but then my wife forwarded me this article. It originally appeared in the Howler magazine in the US, and was re-printed by The Guardian newspaper in the UK. It’s the story of how a West Ham fan got called out of the stands and given the opportunity to play with the team for part of a game. If you love football, this is a great story. But the reason I wanted to share it here is because it’s not only a good story, it’s very well written. So even if you don’t care much for sports, if you enjoy good writing, I think you’ll like it.

So here it is: “The Day Harry Redknapp Brought a Fan on to Play for West Ham,” by Jeff Maysh. Enjoy!

Note: The picture on the right is from the article and was taken by Steve Bacon, described by Maysh as “West Ham’s loyal photographer.”