I didn’t cry at my mother’s funeral – but I did at Pep Guardiola leaving

Prince William knows it. I know it. Every football fan knows it. There is a moment when the game ceases to be a game. At some point, without your even realising it, football skews your priorities, heightens your emotions, deepens your mood swings, and helps you understand things about life that you might feel foolish explaining to non-believers.

Look, for instance, at the clips of William celebrating his beloved Aston Villa’s second goal in their Europa League victory last week. Essentially, never in the history of the British monarchy has a senior member of the Royal Family acted in such a way in public. The explosion of sheer, unbridled ecstasy in that defining moment, the clenched fist salute, the hugging and the jumping for joy – you can’t tell me that’s normal behaviour for a 43-year-old man, never mind the heir to the throne.

Such is the lot of every committed football fan. We are not bound by normal codes of behaviour. And so it was that I found myself, a man who found tears hard to come by at the death of his own mother, blubbing openly at the departure from my life of someone I have never met. But when Pep Guardiola said on Sunday that “deep inside, I know it’s my time. Nothing is eternal”, there cannot have been many among the 60,000 present at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium for whom that didn’t stir emotions which had nothing to do with football.

It was about life and loss, grief and passion, loyalty and devotion, a shared memory of times past. And plenty more besides. So what is it about football that permits people – mostly men, it has to be said – to express their feelings in an open, unabashed and uninhibited way? Why is it that some men, fathers and grandfathers maybe, will sob uncontrollably at Arsenal winning the Premier League, but will not have cried at their daughter’s wedding or the birth of a child?

There is the obvious answer: the pull of tribal belonging, communal ritual, and the quasi-religious attachment to a faith. And there is a more psychological reason – you are among friends, so to speak and the football stadium is a safe place for the expression of emotion. But I think there is something even deeper than that. It is more to do with surrendering your happiness to a higher force, allowing your most basic, polar feelings (pleasure and sorrow) to be held hostage by the vagaries of fortune. There is something gloriously liberating in that, particularly in a world where we feel our lives are being curated, our senses manipulated, and the term “follower” has been debased by social media.

We City fans entrusted our hearts to Pep. For a decade, he has been a constant, a bonding agent, for my daughter and me. We have travelled many thousands of miles together in that time, supporting City, and have experienced intense highs and depressing lows. We believed somehow that Pep would always be at our side, and vice versa. And now, just like that, he’s gone, and, while we know we cannot mourn his departure like it’s a death in the family, we also can, at least a little bit.

We are not shedding tears for Pep. He’ll be just fine, luxuriating in his achievements, living the life of an emperor. We are thinking of ourselves, of how the pain of Pep’s departure relates to the rhythm of our own lives, of the losses we have suffered and grieved, and, indeed, of a more profound sense of the transient nature of life. As the man himself said, nothing is eternal.

This is what being a football fan means. Even for you, William. You give over control of your finer feelings to people you don’t know, and who, despite the badge-kissing, are mainly doing it for the money. And, naturally, you feel emotionally invested in them. But what to do when they’re gone? Yes, the world will still spin on its axis, but there have been attachments made, experiences shared and emotions awakened that are very, very real indeed.

That’s what we can’t really explain to those who are not fans. Football is not, of course, a matter of life and death. But, do you know what? As my eyes filled with tears in the sunlit Manchester evening on Sunday, I couldn’t help feeling that it almost is.