It is almost 2am in an elegant old bar tucked away in a back street off Gran Via in Madrid. A group of Arsenal fans who have been around enough blocks to remember games from decades past are comparing Bernabeu experiences. What was better? How did they feel different? What a conversation to be having. Ultimately, it feels interesting that the 2006 vintage was a team past their peak, on the downward curve, while the 2025 crop seem to be a team on the up, hopefully with more growth in front of them.

The friends begin to toast the players responsible for a night that will live long in the memory, one by one. To David Raya! To Jurrien Timber! To William Saliba! On it goes. Glasses clink. Eyes get misty. They know they will forever hold Bukayo Saka in their hearts as they do Thierry Henry. They understand they will one day reminisce about Jakub Kiwior’s extraordinary efforts as they did Mathieu Flamini’s. They are wide-eyed in wonder at Myles Lewis-Skelly’s maturity as they once were with Cesc Fabregas. Appreciating the spectacle, and all its nuances, demands that every contribution is savoured long into the night.

I look around the table. Quite a lot of these folks are local to Highbury, people who live a short stroll from Arsenal’s stadium, in the heartlands. There is JD, always effervescent and never, ever, without an item of Arsenal clothing on his person. The first time I got to know him, and his worldly pal Kim, was on a Europa League jaunt to BATE Borisov, in Belarus. That was a hoot from what feels like a very different Arsenal world. Another familiar face is Mark, who sits not far from our group in Block 7 of the North Bank and was always looking out for a spare ticket if you needed to find one to help someone out.

It occurs to me how much these football memories are about friendships, about being part of something outside of our everyday lives which links us. You choose your club, or your club chooses you, and once those roots are established kinships grow.

Some of the people you catch up with or spend time alongside during the ebb and flow of each season you know only in a very specific way. You might not even know their name, or what they do, or where they live. But for those match days you live together, you are connected. You share feelings. Most of the time, they are fairly routine feelings — bog standard enthusiasm or frustration or apathy or bleak humour. But once in a while, as it was for Arsenal souls at the Bernabeu, those feelings go stratospheric.

I wonder for a moment about how the players handle this strange responsibility they carry. They are not just playing for themselves, their team-mates, their families. They bear the capacity to deliver life-enhancing memories to thousands of people they do not know at all. It’s a strange concept, that so many bitten by the football bug find that some of the best moments of their lifetime are delivered by a bunch of anointed strangers who happen to be very talented at their chosen sport.

Players have traditionally regarded their own friends made during their career as ships that pass in the night. Team-mates move clubs, say their goodbyes, and drift along different tides. But if they are lucky they share these extreme moments along the way, the ones that elevate them from the routine of train-prepare-travel-play-rest, season after season.

Plaza Mayor is the meeting spot for most of the Arsenal fans. The pre-match beers and sing-songs were continuous from Monday through to Wednesday, even though it was cooler and damper than they might have hoped for April in Madrid. Bumping into old faces, and having a giggle with new ones, sets the tone for a match that felt massive, despite the three-goal advantage Arsenal took to the Spanish capital. Talking score predictions, a friend of a friend confesses that he had a dream the previous night in which Arsenal lost 4-0. What on earth?

On the metro to the Bernabeu, a lady sees all the Arsenal colours passing by and cheers. “Win!” she yells, shaking her fists. “Win!” Turns out she is a fan of Barcelona. For all the Real Madrid supporters who are swept along with the myth of the ‘remontada’ – the comeback – the sizeable proportion of Atleti or Barca sympathisers are firmly behind the visitors from London.

We meet up with Adam and his family, who seem to spend several hours figuring out how to buy metro tickets and then whoop to the applause of the locals as they each take a run up to finally, gloriously, make it through the turnstiles. Up the escalators and who should we see but Lee and Roy from the row behind us at the Emirates. Lee is a big bear of a man who has been known to get up to mischief but we love him to pieces. To my kids, ‘Uncle Lee’ is a legend and they know that if they are ever in trouble, he will be there. Outside the stadium are Donal and Robert, family friends who we’d had lunch with and then lost en route to the stadium. They reappear with a fresh round of hugs.

Everywhere we look are Arsenal mates, sharing commentary of the trip and the game. The phone starts to ping with messages, from America, Finland, and one from my old friend Bill, who decades ago used to work in the Arsenal box office at Highbury while I did shifts in the club shop. Our third amigo back then was Steve the famed groundsman. We miss him still. His spirit lives on at a memorial garden at London Colney planted in his eternal honour. I can’t help thinking of how Steve would have come out with a super-dry turn of phrase about the remontada that would have had us in stitches.

Arsenal fans at the Bernabeu (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Friendships come in all sorts of ways nowadays. Some over social media. Some in person. Some regulars. Some you touch base with only at big occasions that brings someone to mind. Some live on as memories. Our football friendships are the family we choose.

All over Madrid, people are convening in various hostelries to take it all in together. Word soon spreads about an Irish place near Sol where one fan walked in and stuck £10,000 behind the bar to fund free drinks all night. Probably just as well it was 19 years since Arsenal last won here, because surely that kind of largesse can’t come around too often.

The morning after the night before, time for a much-needed caffeine hit. Casto came with the reputation for fantastic coffee and pastries, and had the slogan “Mucho Bollo y Poco Drama” which apparently translates roughly as “much sweetness and no drama”. It seemed a suitable message for Arsenal’s adventures in the face of the remontada. Mikel Arteta’s players looked squarely at the challenge, put the noise to one side, and decided to play their own game.

There is a theory in modern fandom that special moments matter only if they end up with a trophy. But special moments for their own sake are the bonds that bind supporters to their club, their players, and each other. And that’s beautiful enough.

(Top photo: Manu Reino /DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images)