23^rd August 2025

The drive from Charlotte to Nashville had nothing of the urgency that had defined so many of my earlier assignments. This one had begun with a promise rather than an email, made one evening after I’d returned from another weekend somewhere in the South with a notebook full of names and a camera full of stadiums. Emily had smiled and said that if football was going to occupy so much of my life, perhaps it ought to become part of theirs as well. Noah, now old enough to understand that his father disappeared for reasons involving maps and soccer, clapped his hands at the mention of a road trip without really knowing where Nashville was. Somewhere between packing his favourite toy dinosaur and deciding which snacks belonged in the back seat, the journey stopped feeling like work.

Travelling with a family alters the rhythm of the interstate. Alone, I had driven until fuel or fatigue demanded a break, but now every gas station became an opportunity to stretch small legs, refill oversized coffee cups and negotiate the purchase of candy that no child genuinely needs. Country stations faded into pop music chosen by Emily, while football podcasts gave way to singalongs that I pretended to dislike but quietly knew every word to by the time we crossed Tennessee. The miles seemed shorter because they were broken into smaller pieces. Somewhere west of Nashville I caught myself thinking that perhaps the best journeys were the ones interrupted most often.

Broadway still buzzed with the same energy I remembered from previous visits, but we left it to the bachelor parties and pedal taverns. Instead we wandered through The Gulch, where restored brick warehouses now housed coffee shops, vintage clothing stores and cafés full of people who looked as though they had nowhere more pressing to be. We found a breakfast restaurant devoted almost entirely to cereal, an idea so wonderfully ridiculous that Noah spent ten minutes trying to decide whether chocolate hoops or marshmallow stars counted as a proper meal while Emily laughed at my insistence that toast had served civilisation perfectly well for generations. Outside, a couple of familiar faces from television disappeared into boutiques without attracting much attention. Nashville had learned how to balance celebrity with everyday life, and perhaps that explained why it felt less like a tourist attraction than it had the first time I visited.

The afternoon drifted by in that pleasant way only family weekends seem able to manage before we eventually made our way towards the stadium. Noah fell asleep somewhere on the edge of downtown, his head resting against the car window while traffic crawled towards GEODIS Park, and for a moment I wondered whether we should simply turn around and let him sleep. Children, however, possess an extraordinary ability to wake precisely when excitement is required, and by the time we reached the gates he was fully alert, clutching a packet of fries almost as large as his forearm. The three of us shared them sitting on a low wall outside the stadium, watching supporters stream past in gold shirts while music drifted across the parking lots. It struck me that football had become another excuse to eat outdoors together.

The man sitting beside us noticed Noah staring at the crowds and smiled. He told me his family had held season tickets for the Titans for years, but lately this had become their tradition instead. “We’ve had Titans tickets for years,” he said, brushing salt from his hands, “but this is what we do together now.” His daughter, perhaps eight years old, rolled her eyes with the practised embarrassment reserved for fathers before running ahead to meet friends wearing the same colours. He shrugged apologetically, as though acknowledging that growing up is a process parents mostly observe from a distance. I watched the family disappear through the turnstiles and wondered whether, years from now, she would remember the football or simply the Saturdays spent beside her dad.

Atlanta had impressed me with its scale. Nashville charmed me with its proportions. The crowds were large enough to create anticipation without swallowing individuals whole, and there seemed to be as many strollers as scarves making their way through the concourse. Children kicked miniature footballs in open spaces while grandparents queued for barbecue beside students and young couples. The stadium hummed rather than roared before kick-off, and I found myself thinking that this was what a club looked like when it had woven itself into ordinary family life rather than simply becoming a spectacle.

By now the game unfolded differently in front of me than it had during those first bewildering months. I still lacked the vocabulary of coaches, but I had begun to recognise intentions before outcomes. Time and again Nashville found space behind Orlando’s defence, not because Sam Surridge seemed faster than everyone else, but because somebody else’s run quietly opened the lane for him to exploit. When he completed his hat-trick, the celebration felt almost inevitable, as though the match had been patiently building towards that moment all evening. Noah, more interested in joining the applause than understanding the goal, clapped enthusiastically anyway.

Long after the final whistle, children gathered patiently by the barriers with shirts, programmes and footballs tucked beneath their arms. The players took their time. One by one they signed autographs, posed for photographs and crouched to speak at eye level with youngsters whose excitement could not be measured by the scoreline. Noah watched in silence, gripping my hand as we waited at the edge of the crowd, content simply to see it happening. There are moments that television captures perfectly, and others that exist only for the people standing a few feet away.

The drive back to Charlotte was quieter than the one that had brought us west. Noah slept almost before we reached the interstate, still wearing the scarf he’d insisted on keeping around his neck despite the August warmth, while Emily rested her head against the passenger window and watched the lights disappear behind us. The road rolled on through the Tennessee darkness, familiar now in a way it had never been when this assignment first began. Somewhere between Kansas City and Charlotte, between lonely press boxes and shared cartons of fries, the South had stopped feeling like a region I was sent to cover. Without anybody ever announcing it, it had started to feel like somewhere my family and I might simply belong.