One of my earliest and fondest memories as a child, was on a late Summers day in 1995. I was five years old.

This day will always stand out for me, and carry a significance I will never truly be able to quantify. It was the day I first experienced a professional football match, and I don’t think I have had a more exciting or magical time in all of my 22 years on this planet, than I did on this sunny afternoon in West London.

3 o’clock on a Saturday in England means one thing: Football. Much like a Sunday afternoon is to fans of the NFL, Saturdays back home are a time of excitement and anticipation (and even mild nausea in some cases) for so many people all over the country. Soccer is a way of life where I’m from. It brings people together, and engages them in what I consider to be one of the highest art forms known to man. It may just be a game to some, but the experience of a live match, for me at least, is equivalent to any film, play, or piece of music I have ever heard, in terms of the drama, suspense and happiness it can evoke.

My love of football is something embedded in me, and the team that I support far more to me than a just club. As with any sport, you are free to pledge your allegiance to whatever organization you choose, but for most football fans around the world, your team represents a part of you, a connection to a place or time in your life that you hold just as close as the people you love.

For my father, who travelled a lot during his childhood and teenage years before settling in London, Queens Park Rangers was a club he began supporting after going to a few games with my godfather. The house in which I was born stands just a stones-throw away from the small, intimate stadium in which they play;  a small ground floor apartment tucked away in a vibrant and ethnically diverse corner of West London. I remember hearing the roaring cheers and shouts of frustration coming from inside the ground as I walked to the high-street with my mum, always hoping that one day a ball would fly high up over the walls and into my outstretched arms. I was too young to go with my dad, but my longing to get inside this mysterious yet wonderful place grew every day. I counted down the days, throwing a few tantrums here and there as I watched my older brother leave for his first game. I have experienced nothing more like a right of passage than this in my life, and shortly before I turned 6 my time finally arrived.

I understand now why I had to wait so long. Your typical English football ground is no place for a young child. My vocabulary of offensive words increased in a very short space of time, and although a lot of families attend games, the atmosphere is a hostile one to say the least, not necessarily towards one another, but certainly towards the opposing fans, the officials, and of course, the players themselves. I still remember the smell of cigarettes, alcohol and burgers that filled the stands around me, and to this day, as I climb the concrete steps and lay my eyes on the pitch, I get the very same butterflies in my stomach and chills up my spine as I did on that day in 1995.

We won the match 3-1, and so my love of the ‘beautiful game’ began.