What has it meant to me, personally?
A £600 hole in my Betfair account (worth every penny).
A text message from one son effectively saying he has now forgiven me for taking him to Spurs matches as a youngster and turning him into a THFC fan, and a report from the wife that my youngest son forgot his mental health issues for an evening and was happy.
I should explain that I was on holiday with some friends when the final took place, so I was not able to be with my sons to watch it. When I booked the week away, I never imagined we'd get through to the final but then watching the European Championship defeat to Liverpool with the family was such a depressing experience I probably would've skipped it anyway.
When I was very young, my Dad booked a holiday in Spain while the World Cup was on in England. I never understood that decision, but maybe he was unaware when he booked, or maybe he was a pessimist who just assumed England would rooster it up. So, I got to watch the final in a Spanish cafe with some Spaniards, a handful of English people and a slightly larger handful of German tourists. It was ... er ... interesting.
(Do watch the 1966 final some time if you can, and take note of Alan Ball's mind-blowing performance; he was 21 at the time)
So, I missed all the celebrations back home in Blighty in 1966, although I gather that they were briefer and more perfunctory than what we are used to these days. I vaguely remember reading one report that on the evening of the World Cup win, Alf Ramsey watched the England under-21s play; Ramsey was a Dagenham lad, but a less "Essex boy" person it is hard to imagine - and yes, Dagenham is in Essex, whatever the county boundaries say.
I'm getting a bit off-topic here, so let's try to steer it back.
The match itself was 98 minutes of pain and suffering, but then watching live football usually is for me these days for some reason. The difference this time was when I watched the match, I already knew the result!
This time it was the pain of not sharing it with my loved ones, except via WhatsApp.
They say, "once a Catholic, always a Catholic" and (usually) it is the same way with supporting a football club; you just can't get it out of your system. For me, supporting Spurs has been a bit too much like being a Catholic, with guilt, suffering, guilt, angst, guilt and sacrifice, all for a better existence somewhere over the horizon in a different place that might not even exist.
What I'd prefer is a bit more of "once a Buddhist, always a Buddhist" in my Spurs-supporting life.
By now, you are probably thinking old Roland is still Brahms eight days after the final but I am not. I can't top the ill health stories of some on this thread, which were genuinely moving, but I am off the booze these days thanks to fatty liver disease. Fortunately, zero-alcohol beers have come on a bundle in the last few years.
So, I'll raise a glass of Guinness Zero to the heroes of Bilbao, my sons, my long-departed Dad (an Arsenal fan, as it happens) and his obsession with going on foreign holidays when all I wanted to do was go to Butlin's, my fellow Glory-Glory lurkers and my wife (who has bugger-all interest in football but who knows enough to recognise when I do and don't want to talk about it).
So, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think, and in a couple of months, the suffering recommences.
