The luxury coach hissed to a stop outside the glass-and-steel façade of The Lowry Hotel. It was Sunday evening, and the sky over Manchester was the colour of a bruised plum, a moody canvas that felt deeply, uncomfortably familiar. I was home. But I was an enemy now. A trespasser in my own city.
I was the first one off, stepping onto the pavement and taking a deep breath of the cool, damp air. It tasted of rain and ambition, the same taste I remembered from my youth, only now it was laced with the tang of rivalry.
The players disembarked in silence, a procession of tall, athletic men in dark blue club tracksuits. They moved with contained energy, their faces impassive. They were not here as tourists.
They were here as last season's victors, the only team to have beaten Manchester City at the Etihad in the league, and as of Thursday night, the team that had just silenced fifty thousand people in Istanbul. The weight of that history settled on us like a second skin.
