Next Year in Fandom: Da Resolutions

Every (ahem) week, I write my nephew letters about sports that he mostly doesn’t read. They centre on my support for the Knicks, Yanks, 49ers, and Tottenham Hotspur – and his love of Chelsea, LeBron James, and prop bets.

You know that great Yogi Berra quote, the one I’m literally about to make up right now? “Nothing bonds you to a sports organization like winning and losing.” That one?

If you write down literally anything I say during our legendary 3-hour phone calls, you’ll agree that one of my all-timers this year was about how you go places in this world looking to feel one thing and then end up feeling something else … Granted I didn’t say it quite like that, but surely the one place you get to rewrite history any way you want is your own damn blog.

You go to New York to die at Yankee Stadium like you always said you would, and then yield inexplicable tears during a last-minute or last last-decision trip to Citi Field. You visit White Hart Lane fully expecting to drop 3 points, but don’t expect the vibes in the stands to be quite so pedestrian … You say you’re done with it all, the terrible football, the derby day embarrassments, the sporadic press, and Richarlison’s first touch, and then a Chelsea supporter (of all the demons) talks you off the ledge near Euston.

Sports aren’t what we make of them on TV, and neither are athletes; and the degree to which we mythologise both has enabled me to finally come full-circle. To accept myself, and my particular handful of flawed, greedy sports organisations, for what we truly are: representatives – accidentally or inherently – of the cities that we love.

Here’re my resolutions, kid, for sports in 2026.

*

1: I will accept Tottenham Hotspur for who they are, in all their unabashed and mostly unrealised glory.

This team, more than any other on my ‘stack’, has reminded me of the bonding power of suffering. How you remember devastating losses at the hands of sworn rivals, just as much as you remember the sparkling victories, for the spiritual wounds that remind you you can’t, and probably shouldn’t, have everything you want in this world.

I will remember that fiend Eberechi Eze’s hat-trick in the North London derby just as much as I will remember Micky Van De Ven’s goalline clearance in the Europa League final, and it will remind me of my life’s guiding principle: Better Dead than Red.

*Unless … it’s San Francisco red.

2: I will thank the good Lord, every ball game, for making me a Yankee.

I have returned in a daze, from a vacation around baseball history. I would still very much like to visit Wrigley Field in the summer, and thereby communicate to Cubs fans somehow that I understand. I have dipped my finger in the Mets experience, and their shiny stadium, and their hot dogs, and I have revelled in their bright colour palette – but gawddamnit I’m a New York Yankee.

I have watched Aaron Judge evolve into the greatest hitter in the game. I have decorated my chambers at odd hours with the nostalgic sound of the YES network jingle, every time I’ve been awake to catch an evening game. I have walked among the pinstripe army in the house that Ruth built. I have enjoyed George Costanza receiving one verbal shellacking after another from the late Mr. Steinbrenner, and I have mourned the loosening of the facial hair policy. I will be spending my next Opening Day as I’ve spent all my Opening Days, rooting for the Evil Empire, and cursing once the season is up and running at any banana-peel fielding.

3: I will be New York as hell – in all things but (sigh) American football.

My sports goals, for the most part, acknowledge that the point of fandom moving forward shall be suffering. But the universe has spoken for the San Francisco 49ers.

There is already a Christian McCaffrey jersey hanging on my coat rack, the throwback number the Niners wore Sunday night against Da Bears. It is a garment of silver age beauty, football personified and classic; it comes out of the washing machine waving dismissively, but regally, at the idea of being pressed and folded. If this were a LinkedIn post, this is where I’d say: “…And this is what this jersey tells me about McCaffrey bursting through the seams …”

I love this 49ers team, top to bottom (pause). Brock Purdy reminds me what a delight it was to watch Drew Brees airmail passes in the Saints’ unstoppable march towards a Super Bowl and but a moment of modern-day dominance. I look for Frank Warner on the socials screaming “Dub Cityyyyy!” every time the Faithful register a win. Mike Shanahan is such an offensive mensch I have zero doubts he could manage Bayern Munich, or Barcelona, or yes, please, Tottenham Hotspur if he so pleased.

I choose the city, for sure – but I also choose the Niner Gang.

4: I will visit Madison Square Garden, and ascend towards my home planet from there.

Now that I’ve resolved my whole baseball situation, perhaps a return visit to Da City is on the cards. To catch a healthy Aaron Judge this time, spend more time in Harlem, and actually visit the primary reason I’ve never once fallen out of love with the New York Knickerbockers: the gilded castle that is Madison Square Garden. (Try not to look up the history, etc.)

Thank you Jalen Brunson for making us a basketball force again. Thank you Karl Anthony Towns for embracing the trip back home, and for possessing maybe the cleanest shooting form in the modern history of NBA big men. Thank you, Josh Hart, for leaving it all out on the floor, every single time. Thank you Mikhail Bridges and OG Anunoby and Miles McBride, for that dogged defense and those timely buckets. Thank you, Tyler Kolek, for having more than just a little motion. Thank you Walt Frazier, for the sideline dimes, and thank you Mike Breen, for all the bangs.

5: I will visit Tyneside and inform the locals my old man was one of them – and that I, in some small, irrelevant fashion, always will be as well.

Maybe the smartest thing I’ve done in the last couple of years – through the Mourinho, Conte and Postecoglu horror theme park rides – is allow myself to check in on my dad’s team, Newcastle United, whenever things turn irreversible in North London. One day, if London ever calls, I should like to just randomly hop on trains headed North, stroll around St. James Park for inadvertent ages, and return home (to Camden) with poems about a different England. That would be mint, I reckon.

Happy New Year, lad :):):)

This piece was originally published on the 31st of December, 2025, before the author survived the fireworks of Berlin on New Year’s Eve.