Peter Arndal

Why Blue?

Like many other postings my story is not rational at all. Let’s take a trip back in time to the beginning of the 1980’s. My mum worked as a teacher at the local school. Each year the school travelled to London on a 7 days trip. Being a son of one of the teachers I had the opportunity to join the rest of the travelling party and experience the capital of England. Great stuff.

On this particular trip was my older brother who for some unexplainable reason was a Manchester United fan at the time and still is. I remember he was talking a lot about a great team from Manchester called United when we were younger. I was sure he was talking rubbish, like he always did at the time. I decided to find my own team and off course it had to be Manchester City.

I remember my mum took my brother and me to at the sport store next to St. Paul’s Cathedral in which I bought my first home kit. I was so proud. Beautiful blue colours – much nicer than the red one my brother wore. I was in a Blue heaven.

In the years that followed I always paid the sport store at St. Paul’s a visit just to make sure that this holy shop was all right. I haven’t been there for ages but I will go there next time I go to London.

Since then I have been faithful to City. Everybody at my football team seemed to support Liverpool, Tottenham or United. People laughed at me and said rubbish like: You are the most predictable loser on the pools coupon. What they did not realise was that I enjoyed every victory that City had whereas my friends expected their teams to win and didn’t get excited when their team won. They only experienced disappointment. What a waste of life! For me it was a real surprise when City won and I was jumping up and down with sheer joy.

When we played Stoke and eventually got relegated to Division 2 I went down to the local sports bar for the first time. A couple of my friends had promised to come along to watch the game, thus I was not watching the game on my own. Believe me. I thought I was the only Man City fan in Denmark. To my pleasant surprise I met other City fans in the pub. Among them being Brian (President of the Danish Supporter branch), Morten (well-known from Blue View) and his girlfriend Tanja.

Since Disaster Day we have really developed a great friendship based on Manchester City and in March 1999 I went to Manchester for the first time together with Brian, Morten and Tanja to watch my team in action. We met with all the guys from Norway and Sweden and had a fantastic time in Manchester.

Only 2 years ago I thought I was alone, but now I know that many more people are “suffering” from City-itis. The world’s greatest disease 🙂

Still Blue after all these years

First printed in: MCIVTA Newsletter #530 on