As usual my parents escaped England for Christmas, thus shirking any festive responsibilities, and saw them wintering in Rome. Taking up their kind offer to join them I deliberately arrived late in December with the aim of fulfilling the dream of every child who grew up watching James Richardson sip coffee and hold the Gazetta Dello Sport aloft outside the Pantheon, watching some live calcio.
With the winter break arriving I expected my options to be limited and would have been quite content to seeing one of the Roman teams play a basement dweller but luck was on my side and Roma had a home fixture against my childhood sweetheart, AC Milan.
Evidently a football hipster from a young age the first jerseys I owned had Kluivert and Baggio on the back and while everyone else my age was watching Dixon and Winterburn, I admired Maldini and Billy Costacurta. Why would I care for the drudgery of English hoofing when the elegant Italian game was so seductive? Despite my fears of an early sell out, purchasing tickets was a fairly straightforward affair and was done online over lunch in November with the occasional assistance of Google translate.
They did not offer a print-at-home service as has become the standard across Europe and instead a confirmation email arrived in my inbox with vague instructions as to where to collect them on the day of the match. Our flat was in the Trastevere region of Rome on the west bank of Tiber and four and a half miles down the river from the Stadio Olimpico.
Believing the game was commencing at my father and I departed the flat at in case of any eventualities and made our way up river. The Stadio Olimpico was the primary stadium at the Rome Olympic Games and the proximate area lent itself to all sorts of sporting arenas with a similar architectural style.
