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People always say football brings people together. Countries unite. Strangers become friends.
For me, football did something even more important. It helped build a home.
About sixteen years ago, I walked out of my marital home with my two children and started over. There were boxes to unpack, furniture to buy, bills to worry about. But none of those felt as difficult as one simple question.
How do you make a new house feel like home?
My eldest, Sabrina, was thirteen. She handled the move with a maturity that no thirteen-year-old should have needed. She understood why we left. She never complained. In many ways, she became my partner in making the transition easier.
My youngest, Arshad, was ten.
He was old enough to understand what he had lost, but too young to understand why he had to lose it.
He missed his room. He missed the familiarity. Most of all, he missed the feeling that life used to make sense.
From that day on, Sabrina and I shared one mission - to make the new place feel like home for Arshad.
Luckily, children have an incredible ability to heal, especially when other children are involved.
Our new neighbourhood had a group of boys around his age who gathered every evening for football. Before long, Arshad was out there with them every afternoon. Slowly, unfamiliar streets became familiar. Faces became friends. Laughter started replacing silence.
Then one day he made a request.
"Ma... can we get Astro Sports?"
He didn't want cartoons. He didn't ask for Hot Wheels or toys. He just didn't want to miss his football matches.
I subscribed immediately.
Looking back, it probably wasn't the wisest financial decision for a newly single mother trying to rebuild her life.
But if a sports channel could make my son smile again, then Astro Sports became one of the best investments I ever made.
That same year came the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Most matches kicked off in the middle of the night. Normal families were asleep.
But we were at the mamak.
There is something magical about Malaysian mamaks during a World Cup. Plastic chairs filled with sleepy football fans. Waiters shouting orders. Television screens glowing through the night. Plates of roti canai arriving one after another.
Those nights slowly became our tradition.
It wasn't just about football anymore. It was about having something to look forward to.
Somewhere between the first whistle and the final score, my son slowly stopped looking back at the life he had lost and started embracing the life we were building together.
Football became our language.
It gave us something to celebrate, something to argue about, something to laugh over.
It gave us new memories.
Because Arshad was born with haemophilia, football had always been complicated.
Like every mother, all I ever asked of his school was for the teachers to be a little more careful if he got injured. Instead, they decided it was safer not to let him play at all.
Imagine being a little boy who loved football more than anything, but being told to watch from the sidelines.
Thankfully, outside school, things were different.
He joined a neighbourhood youth football team. He even had the chance to meet a former Malaysian national football coach.
To many people, these may have been ordinary moments. To him, they meant everything.
Slowly, our new house started changing too.
Cristiano Ronaldo posters appeared on the walls. Manchester United scarves found their way onto shelves. His room slowly became less like a bedroom and more like a tiny football museum.
At one point, a producer from an RTM children's programme even came to interview him because of his obsession with football.
As parents, we spend so much time worrying whether we're giving our children enough. Sometimes we don't realise that the smallest things become the biggest memories.
Years passed. The children grew up. And life settled into something that finally felt normal.
Then, in 2024, Sabrina, Arshad and I travelled to the United Kingdom.
One stop mattered more than every other attraction.
Old Trafford.
I don't think I spent much time looking at the stadium.
I spent most of the time looking at my son.
There he was, standing inside the stadium he had dreamed about since he was a little boy who once asked me for Astro Sports.
Football.
Cristiano Ronaldo.
Manchester United.
Still in that exact order.
Watching him take it all in was one of those moments every parent treasures. Not because of the stadium itself, but because I remembered the journey that brought us there.
The frightened ten-year-old who didn't want to leave his old home.
The teenager whose bedroom walls were covered with Cristiano Ronaldo.
The young man standing inside Old Trafford.
It all somehow made sense.
Today, football still plays a huge part in Arshad's life.
And because it does, it still plays a huge part in mine too.
He now lives in Kuala Lumpur while I'm back in Penang. But some traditions survive distance.
Whenever there's a World Cup match, especially if Cristiano is playing, we're still awake at ridiculous hours. Only now, instead of sitting across from each other at the mamak, we're on video calls, watching the same match from different cities.
Technology changed.
The tradition didn't.
Looking back, I realise football didn't just entertain us.
It gave my son something to look forward to when life had suddenly changed.
It gave us reasons to spend time together.
It gave us memories that outlasted childhood.
And somewhere between roti canai, late-night kick-offs, Cristiano Ronaldo and Old Trafford, our bond as a family became stronger than ever.
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Fa Abdul (fa.abdul.penang@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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