The line-up graphic goes out seventy-five minutes before kick-off.

Thousands of people will scroll past it in less than a minute. Some will tap the like button. Others will complain about the left-back, wonder why Miguel Pajaro is straight back into the side after injury or insist we’d already lost the match because someone they’d never heard of wasn’t on the bench. By tomorrow morning it’ll have disappeared beneath goals, interviews and final scores. It exists for such a short amount of time that you’d think nobody inside the club would care very much about it.

The opposite is true.

For me, the day starts hours before that graphic ever appears online. By mid-morning I’m already checking squad numbers against the latest team sheet, making sure player photographs are up to date, confirming nobody has quietly changed boots or shirt sleeves in a way that’ll look strange when supporters zoom in far closer than you ever imagine they will. Then there’s the photography itself. Warm-ups. Stretching. Goalkeepers laughing with the goalkeeper coach. Players walking through the tunnel one at a time with headphones on, each disappearing into his own little world before kick-off. I’m not looking for the biggest moment anymore. I’m trying to collect hundreds of small ones before they disappear.

Standing pitchside is a strange place to discover football. For years I’d watched from somewhere above the game, notebook balanced on my knee, trying to understand what the place around the match was telling me. Now I’m crouched behind an advertising board waiting for the right expression as a player ties his boots, checking light rather than league tables, listening for the click of a camera shutter instead of the whistle. It isn’t better. It isn’t worse. It’s simply closer.

The dressing room surprised me most.

Not because of what happened inside it, but because of how ordinary it felt. Shirts hanging neatly in identical spaces. Athletic tape scattered across benches. Boots lined up with almost military precision. Somebody quietly asking for another bottle of water. Somebody else searching for a shin pad that had somehow vanished in the previous five minutes. Outside, supporters are already debating tactics and predicting scorelines. Inside, football still feels wonderfully practical. Put your socks on. Lace your boots. Remember your job.

When Miguel Pajaro walked back into the room after completing his warm-up, a few teammates patted him on the shoulder almost absent-mindedly. There was no speech, no applause, no dramatic return from injury. Just quiet acknowledgement that one of their own was back where he belonged. I’d never met him before that afternoon. I couldn’t have told you what sort of player he was. But even I understood that football clubs mark these moments differently from everyone else. The biggest stories are often celebrated in the smallest ways.

At exactly seventy-five minutes before kick-off I pressed “Publish.”

The graphic appeared on Facebook, then Instagram, then X. Within seconds the comments began arriving. Approval. Complaints. Predictions. Optimism. Doubt. The conversation I’d helped start now belonged entirely to other people.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket, picked up my camera and walked back towards the touchline.

For years I’d spent matchdays trying to explain football after it had happened.

Now, somehow, I was helping introduce it before it began.

Photographing Benja’s unveiling turned out to be one of those assignments that reminded me why football can surprise you when you stop expecting it to. On paper it was straightforward enough. Big signing. Local media. A free transfer from Inter Miami that almost nobody had seen coming. Get the photographs, write the accompanying copy, schedule the posts, move on to the next item on the running order. I’d covered enough football by now to know how these things usually worked.

He arrived with the seriousness of someone who understood exactly what the moment meant. Before we’d even started, he asked where the light was best, turned slightly towards it without being told and laughed that every picture lived forever now, so it might as well be a good one. There was something strangely funny about watching a twenty-three-year-old already so conscious of his public image, but it wasn’t vanity. It was professionalism. He knew that for thousands of supporters, this photograph would become their first impression of him as a Miami FC player.

The funny thing about club media is that the official photograph only takes a few seconds. It’s everything afterwards that stays with you. Once the cameras disappeared and everyone relaxed, Benja became a completely different person. He wanted to know where I’d come from, how long I’d been in Miami, whether my family had settled in yet, and when he realised I’d spent years driving around the South following lower-league football, he started asking questions rather than answering them. We ended up talking less about contracts and expectations than about pitches in Tennessee, long drives through Alabama and why American football supporters were finally beginning to believe this game belonged to them too.

He spoke about football the way I’d hoped he would. Not in rehearsed slogans, not in carefully managed soundbites, but with genuine affection for the game itself. You could tell he’d grown up around it. Every answer drifted naturally back towards the ball, teammates, movement, learning, responsibility. There wasn’t an ounce of entitlement despite everything he’d already achieved. If anything, he seemed relieved to escape the spotlight for ten minutes and simply talk about playing.

When I finally sat down to choose the photographs, the obvious one was still the right choice. Shirt held high. Serious expression. Miami colours for the first time. It was exactly what supporters expected to see, and exactly what we published. But somewhere on the memory card there’s another image that never made it onto Facebook. Benja had just lowered the shirt, someone off-camera had said something ridiculous, and he’d burst into laughter. It’s probably the better photograph. Just not the right one.

That’s something I’ve begun to understand about this job. Social media isn’t dishonest. It’s selective. Every official post tells the truth, but never the whole truth. Sometimes the real story isn’t the photograph everybody sees. It’s the one that stays on the camera after everyone else has gone home.