Tottenham Hotspur 2 - Manchester United 1
I certainly believed that one day I would get to White Hart Lane to watch my beloved Tottenham Hotspur play. They'd played at White Hart Lane since forever (1899, to be exact), so clearly they would play there until forever as well.
Except not. There had been talk for several years about building a new stadium, so surely I should have understood that it was only a matter of time. Then last year, plans fully came together, and they actually broke ground. They said the plan was to play one last year in the Lane while the initial work on the new stadium began next door, then spend a year playing their home matches at Wembley while the old stadium was torn down and the new one completed. So it's not like I didn't know, but there is that way that far-away things seem far away, so I still didn't fully internalize that if I wanted to actually see a match there, I better get my ass to London this year. Then things happened the way life does, and whatever remaining dream I had of getting across the pond got shelved, and so it became clear that I would never set foot in White Hart Lane.
I watched yesterday's final-ever White Hart Lane match because of course I would watch, and it was no roll-over-for-the-home-team testimonial match. ManU still had an outside chance of qualifying directly for the Champions League, and so both teams played an actual soccer match with actual stakes. I can't tell you how many times I've watched Spurs lose to Manchester United, but right now Tottenham are clearly the better team, and they took a 2-0 lead early in the second half and held on well enough to earn the win. In a team's final-ever match at a beloved old stadium, it's only proper that they win, but having been a Spurs fan for many years now, I still kind of expected they would find a way to fuck it up, because they're Spurs. But not this time.
And so they and the rest of their fans and I said goodbye to White Hart Lane in style, beating a tough team, finishing the season unbeaten at home, winning the last 14 of those matches. For one season--this final season--we saw Fortress White Hart Lane. That's cool.
Change had to come some day, because change always comes. Still, it's a little disconcerting that something that seemed always is now no more. But then, given the reality of the other shifts in my life, and given that White Hart Lane was for me always more idea than reality (never having set foot in the place), how surprised am I supposed to be? How nostalgic am I supposed to be? Things change, because things always change. In my own life, I am facing the change and saying, "This is for the best." Surely I can do the same thing for my favorite soccer team, right?