The dilemma of Aaron Ramsey: My favourite Welsh footballer
Image by Lewis Mitchell
Rhys Thomas is a writer from west Wales, now residing in Glasgow. He's the author of The Future of Wales (2024) and a Tottenham Hotspur fan. He reached out to us following the news of Aaron Ramsey's retirement and asked to write about his dilemma of loving Aaron Ramsey as a Tottenham fan.
When I was 11 I made a choice that would steer the trajectory of my evenings and weekends for the rest of my life. It was August, hot. I was cooling off in the house having just finished a blue raspberry slush puppy I’d been bought in Spar because it was a Saturday and my parents were having a BBQ in the evening and I was allowed a treat, presumably a sort of bargain to keep me quiet while they enjoyed a bank holiday and tried to escape the woes of parenting. So a small slush puppy, but also and crucially, a Topps English Premier League 2008 - 2009 book and some stickers that smelled a little bit like bubblegum.
It was 2008, I was off to “big school” in the summer, and I had a choice to make. I had to commit to a football team. I grew up in a rugby house, west Wales, Scarlets. But in ysgol mawr there would be football fans, and so, I had to have a stake in the game. One of my uncles was Soul Crew, and another was Jack Army. I couldn’t choose either, it would have caused a bigger family unrest than The War of the Roses. Plus neither of them were in the Premier League, and I wanted a slice of the Barclays, because I was 11.
I dialled up the family computer in the study to read the Wikipedia page of each of the teams in the 2008-2009 league. I found out that Tottenham were founded on the same day as my birthday, and despite Roman Pavlyuchenko being their “Star Player” in the book, I knew that Gareth Bale, the Welshman, had been making a mark there – and that was that. I was a Spurs fan.
But there was a lingering sense of doubt in the back of mind. A dilemma. Aaron Ramsey. The dilemma of Aaron Ramsey.
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