Avalanche in the Snow: The Story of the First Division’s ‘Game of the Century’
From kick-off to half-time to the final whistle, it’s only 110-odd minutes, a tiny increment of time within an epochal English football campaign and yet it remains a pure and exhilarating testament to how the sport can, to paraphrase Piero Trellini when he venerated another mythical match: 1982 Italy-Brazil, ‘sediment inside you forever.’ Faces come into sharp focus when eyes are squeezed shut. Reciting the names comes as effortlessly as breathing. The memories mollify during seasons of mediocrity, the triumphs dance through the most lucid of dreams.
The significance of all this is precise and clear. During a supporter’s lifetime, there is an infinity of football moments, each infinitely divisible, each as singular as they are familiar, and yet on this Saturday afternoon, a clutch of moments was snatched from the oblivion of history, clasped forever close and made eternal.
If Manchester United-West Bromwich Albion is not the game of the century, it’s at least the match of a lifetime.
This is the story of the ‘avalanche in the snow.’