Plaster’s away day in Manchester

Growing up I was football mad. Or more specifically, Tottenham mad, thanks to my dad. It was our religion; White Hart Lane the church. Every other Saturday until I was 18, I’d travel from west London to the depths of Seven Sisters to watch them play. I was consumed by it –  not just on Saturdays but all week. I’d study Shoot! Magazine and try to decode the above-my-head humour of When Saturday Comes, and tune in to TalkSport on the way to school. I’d run around the park commentating to myself, imagining that I was the centre forward for Spurs, receiving crosses from Darren ‘Shaggy’ Anderton, then putting them away in the back of the net to take Spurs to dizzy heights. In the playground, the talk was constant: transfer gossip, weekend scores, starting line ups. But I always felt like an outsider. In a world of Chelsea, Arsenal and United supporters, I was the only Spurs fan in my year. It felt isolating –  no one quite understood the quiet pain when Gary Doherty missed a chance and Wigan snatched a late winner… (against the run of play?) I was surrounded by a ‘blue-chip’ belief of winning. No mid-table scraps for my classmates, just glory. It was the dawn of the Abramovich era; money was starting to decide everything. Meanwhile, I clung to the impossible hope that next year might be different.

Somewhere in my late teens, art arrived. More specifically, contemporary art. Football became a little less all-consuming and was replaced by a new obsession – What drew me in? It felt cool and just out of reach. A mystery, a code I couldn’t quite crack. What did that painting mean? Why was that cow’s head floating in jelly? I’d stand there, staring, telling myself: When I get older, I’ll understand this. That thought, that one day it would all click, kept me coming back. If I just stayed with it long enough, maybe I’d get there. Like Tottenham, perhaps…

Years later, here I am. The love for art is still there but the code has never been cracked. And Tottenham? A handful of beautiful moments, but no true long lasting success (yet!). Both passions run alongside each other. You shout about football, but you feel it alone to your mates. You stand silent in a gallery, but it sits with you for days. The Venn diagram barely overlaps barring the odd moment you spot: Oof Magazine, Philipe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s Zidane, a 21st century portrait, a nod in a Rose Wylie painting (though when I asked her, she brushed it off –  it was only there because of her husband Roy Oxlade, as though football was an accident in the painting.).

So when the invite landed in my inbox for a new show in Manchester, ‘Football City, Art United’, involving Juan Mata, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Edgar Davids — it felt like the universe beckoning. Edgar Davids; the transfer that, for a moment, changed my life. A god in wraparound sunglasses, suddenly wearing Lilywhite. I didn’t even check my diary. Truthfully I didn’t really check the email because I was invited to see it as part of a press trip for the 2025 Manchester International Festival. So if I were to meet my favourite star and find reconciliation at last between football and art, I’d be joining a tour of other exhibitions on the way.

On the early morning train to Manchester, I flick through the press release. The show, held at Aviva Studios, is the brainchild of curator Josh Willdigg, who has brought together Mata and Obrist with eleven artist-footballer pairings. The idea is to blend football’s competitive edge with artistic experimentation. A unified vision. It sounds a little unconvincing… almost as shaky as my Philosophy A-level essay where I argued David Bentley’s halfway-line goal against Arsenal should count as art. I got a D, but I’m open to being proved wrong.

I drift into a fantasy. I’m not going to see art, I’m on my way up north to play against United. The journalists sitting around me become the squad. When we pull into Manchester, there’s a coach waiting. I sit at the back. Beats headphones on. I’m fully immersed. The organisers say hello. I nod along, pretending I’m getting last-minute tactics. I imagine I’ll cut inside Rio Ferdinand and curl it in the top corner.

We file inside the main hall of Aviva Studios. I spot HUO and snap back into the art world. Back to reality. There are introductions about the importance of this festival to Manchester. It feels genuinely big and worthwhile. I spot Juan Mata at the side, surprisingly well dressed. He takes the mic and introduces us to his obsession with art. How he followed HUO on Instagram. How Josh Willdigg clocked it and brought them together. It’s strangely moving, proof that there are others who hold these two worlds at once, quietly. Now, they’re sharing it, in a football-mad city.

And then… Edgar Davids appears. A hero. The man himself. The Powerpodz version of him still sits on my windowsill. (Thank you Davey Brett for reminding me what those weird plastic collectibles are called.) Childlike fandom bubbles under my skin, I’m almost ready to sing a chant. All this time watching him as a kid, I knew he was different. Now I know: I wasn’t just watching a footballer, I was watching an artist.

I head over to the press trip coordinator and ask whether Davids is available for an interview. I’m told he’ll be happy to answer any questions inside the show. To dare is to do, I suppose.  The first piece we see is a work by Davids and Paul Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer’s Four Horsemen is still one of the best art/sport crossovers ever made. I am buzzing to see what he has done with Davids.

We’re led through double doors. Single file. I feel oddly nervous. Why the line? My heart thumps a little faster. We stop outside what looks like a fire exit. The doors swing open. A security guard gestures us into a dimly lit corridor. Raw concrete. Strips of blue incandescent light hum above us, pulsing like a heartbeat. From somewhere, I hear the roar of a crowd, that unmistakable noise of thousands of voices melting into one. The tribal sound of a European football night under the floodlights.

I follow the person ahead. Here I am, in Manchester, stepping out to play for Spurs. Calm. Focused. Ready for what’s next. I have no idea where I’m going but I know I’m supposed to be here. We reach the end of the tunnel. Another set of doors swing open. For a second I expect a pitch. The sound makes it feel so real. But instead: a gallery space. To my left a placard, an artwork by Paul Pfeiffer and Edgar Davids.

I grin. Ear to ear. Davids, my childhood hero, has created a phenomenal artwork. He’s done what I always thought impossible: he’s fused the rawness of football with the quiet pull of contemporary art. He’s turned the tunnel walk, that sacred rite for only the players, into something everyone can feel. I stand there, letting it wash over me.

Another journalist clocks me in this state of wonder. I straighten up. They ask if I’ve tried the interactive piece yet, the big one in the middle. It’s a sprawling jungle-gym sculpture, if Niki de Saint Phalle built a five-a-side pitch. They explain: you climb in, line up a volley, try to score through one of the pods. An artistic twist on the Soccer AM ‘top bins challenge’. It’s The Playmaker by architect Stefano Boeri, Sandro Mazzola (a footballing legend) and artist Eduardo Terrazas.

I ask them to film me in it, just for posterity. Part of me fancies a Serge from Kasabian moment (YouTube it if you’ve no idea what I am going on about). The fictional stadium roar still rings in my ears, I step up. I swing. I miss. Again. And again. After five minutes, it’s clear my shooting boots are still in London. I spare my new friend any more embarrassment and call it a day.

As I’m leaving the pitch, I’m ambushed by a mascot, Brody, a psychedelic cockerel wearing football boots. It’s been designed by Bárbara Sánchez-Kane and Jorge Campos, inspired by Campos’s wild 90s goalie shirts. I’m instantly a kid again. On the sofa watching France ‘98 – a dayglo fever dream. I look around, this whole gallery feels like that same swirl of playground fantasy and grown-up concept. Playful and serious all at once.

Nearby, I spot Jill Mulleady’s piece — La Mano de Dios and Diego, a flickering hologram of Maradona signing. I first saw Mulleady’s work in Venice, her paintings are haunting and cinematic. Here, Maradona feels half-saint, half-ghost singing songs recognisable but unknown to me. It shouldn’t work. But it does. I feel genuinely moved.

My time’s up. The organisers herd us back to the coach. There are more exhibitions lined up, more polite conversations to be had, and much more incredible art to see, but my head’s somewhere else. Still hearing the crowd roar, I slip away instead. I am not ready to process more art. I wander Manchester’s streets alone for a post-match debrief.