The Butterfly Effect 🦋
⚽️ How one match in 1934 changed the entire course of my family's history
May 13th, 1934 is a date that changed the course of my family’s history forever. For the first time, I’m telling this incredible story in full. While I’ve been working as a football writer and telling other stories from the game, I’ve had this in the back of my mind. Telling such a personal tale has required me to open my heart wide and, to be honest, it’s taken a while to find the courage to release something that’s so precious to me into the open.
But my story needs to be told… so here goes.
Just over 90 years ago, my great-grandad – Peter Percival – lined up with his Manchester City team-mates to face Fiorentina in a post-season friendly. Peter was a reserve in the team that had only just won the FA Cup and the Italian side were delighted to face an English club that had so much prestige when the game was still relatively new on the peninsula.
For context, Fiorentina were just eight years old at the time. They played in what was a brand new stadium called the Stadio Berta, since renamed the Stadio Artemio Franchi, where they still play today.
Peter’s team-mates that day included Sir Matt Busby who of course went on to become a Manchester United legend, and Frank Swift, who tragically lost his life in the 1958 Munich air disaster when working as a newspaper reporter post-retirement.
The match was so prestigious that the Italian national side – who were preparing for the 1934 World Cup at their nearby Coverciano base – turned up to watch.
Although Peter was largely a reserve, playing just two first-team league games in his entire Manchester City career, two of the team were called away on England duty that day, meaning that he was named in the starting XI in Florence.
The game finished as a 3-3 draw and – as we found out through later research – Peter actually scored in the game. There are pictures of Giuseppe Meazza and his Italy teammates sitting in deck chairs on the sidelines watching my great-grandad score a goal. They went on to win the World Cup on home soil less than a month later. I’ll never get used to that feeling.
And the thing is, that Peter had never spoken about this while he was alive. All the details have been discovered in the last 20 or so years through my parents’ extensive research.
There is so much more to unpack from this story, but let’s jump forward to 1994. At this time I was 10, and had never paid much attention to football, although it was always on TV in our house.
My Dad decided to take me to Maine Road to watch Manchester City. It was April 2nd and they faced Aston Villa. City won 3-0, but the match made very little impression on me. We were sitting up high in the stand and the action didn’t look very real. I wasn’t hooked at all.
Not long afterwards, we received a visit from our local team, Stockport County in our school assembly. They came with a man named Steve Bellis and a couple of the players. Bellis is an outgoing man with a huge passion for the club, and his talk made me ask my Dad if we could go to watch County with the free tickets that had been offered as part of the school visit.
It was a Tuesday night game against Bristol Rovers. Something about being close to the pitch, under the floodlights, with the sight of the big Cheadle End stand to our left gripped me that night. The memory of it even now feels multi-sensory. The smell of the liniment that the players used back then, the sound of the ball being kicked, the roar of the crowd.
Again, cutting a very long story short, that’s when my love for football, and Stockport County began. My Dad – who was also hooked – fielded endless questions from me as I learned everything there was to know about the game. We bought a season ticket and even travelled all over the country for away games on the Juniors bus.
I saved every single newspaper cutting I could find about the team, I recorded every goal shown on TV on VHS. I also started watching other football on TV. It was while watching Guillem Balague on ‘Revista de la Liga’ that a lightbulb went off in my head. I wanted to be a foreign football writer. I wanted to visit the stadiums that were shown on TV, the ones I had watched on Channel Four’s Football Italia.
That was my focus and aim as a teenager, but of course dreams rarely follow the course you expect them to. I dropped out of Manchester University after one year and in 2005 – at the age of 21 – I had a beautiful son.
Life was ‘normal’ for a while, a normal job, and a focus on being the best parent I could be.
In 2009, Stockport County were placed into administration, and after having risen up as far as the Championship, they eventually slid down to the National League North.
I felt like my heart had been ripped out. Many others continued to turn up to games regularly, but for me, going to Edgeley Park was like visiting a ghost. It simply wasn’t the same and the pain was too much to bear.
My Dad continued to research Peter’s story, and in 2013 he went on a trip to Florence with some friends to see where his grandad had played football. A chance meeting with some Ultras allowed Dad to explain why they were there. Our family story commanded the utmost respect.
The next October, a group of almost 30 of us flew out to Florence to meet up with the Ultras that had become friends. My Nanna joined the trip with my Grandad to see the stadium where her Dad had played.
For me personally, that trip brought me full circle. Not only had I seen a game in one of the venues that I grew up dreaming about, but it meant so much to be in that stadium. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up to think about it.
I was battling with health issues at the time, and in a way it all just snapped me awake. It was time to follow my dreams.
By sheer chance, I found that a Fiorentina fan blog was looking for volunteer writers. I jumped at the chance, but when I was handed my first assignment – a transfer piece on Mo Salah’s loan move from Chelsea – I soon realised that for all my extensive knowledge of the game, I didn’t know exactly how to put that on the page.
Slowly but surely, I grew in confidence. I reached out to other outlets and in October 2015, I wrote a piece on some Ultras that my Dad had befriended in Florence. They were part of CS Lebowski, the first fan-owned club in Italy. The article was picked up by the Guardian, and it went completely viral. All of a sudden, I had a presence on Twitter and was on a roll.
One of my following assignments was to write about the state of Italian stadiums, and as part of my research, I reached out to Adam Digby, who had written a book on the history of Juventus which included a chapter on their new ground.
Adam was helpful, kind, and made me laugh, and very quickly we struck up a friendship. We messaged each other more and more until it became clear that we needed to meet in person. The only problem was, Adam was living in Turin at the time.
I decided to take a chance. I got on a plane from Manchester Airport and flew to Turin via Germany. I had never flown by myself before. It was a risk, a big risk, but one that I needed to take at that time.
Adam moved to England to be with me. It was a turbulent time, but we knew that we needed to be together. We’ve made lots of trips and travelled all over Italy since, and of course spent quite a bit of time in Turin.
Just as my career was taking off, Adam was there to steady my confidence, to help me believe in myself, and always without ever trying to take over. He coached me through when I was afraid to speak on podcasts and every time I’ve wobbled.
I have blossomed into having a full-time career as a football writer. You’d never have believed back then that I would write and record over 150 episodes of a narrative-style podcast for a major media company.
In our personal lives, it’s now nine years and one cat later. We are still blissfully happy. And we never stop talking about football.
When Stockport County steadied the ship, it was Adam who decided he wanted to go and watch. He was there with Dad at Nuneaton when County were promoted back to the National League. Dad had never stopped going, and soon I decided I wanted to go back too. We’ve all had season tickets since the 2021/22 season.
If Peter had never played in that game 90 years ago, none of this would’ve happened. My dreams have been realised as a direct result.
There is so much more to unpack about this incredible story. From Peter’s incredible encounters with some of football history’s most famous stars, to my experiences as a football addict over the last 30 years.
I’ve stood on the wall in the Maine Road away end as Stockport County recorded a famous win back in 1997, I’ve been in the press box at San Siro, and I’ve watched George Weah play at Edgeley Park. We’ve been in and amongst the closed circle of Fiorentina Ultras, and at the age of 13, my son has had to pee in a sprite cup in the middle of the Curva Fiesole because we were so tightly packed in. I can safely say that none of his friends at school had done the same.
Football writing has become harder lately. I’ve hesitated to tell my full story because of the way Twitter – which was such a friendly place – had turned toxic. The rise of YouTubers, influencers and AI has made work harder to come by.
If you become a full subscriber, you’ll get a piece of this story every Sunday. Your support will mean everything, as I hope to build something that’s less precarious than being a freelance football writer in these current times.
I hope you’ll join me on this wild journey from 1934 to the present day.