In an age of digital everything, I still buy the match programme. The paper one. The one that costs too much, contains information I could find on my phone in seconds, and will spend the rest of the match rolled up in my coat pocket.
I buy it because it is a physical artifact of a moment in time. Because in twenty years, when I pull it from a box, it will smell of that day — of rain, of coffee, of stadium food. Because it is proof that I was there, in a way that a screenshot never can be.
Football is ephemeral. Matches end, memories fade, stadiums are demolished. The programme endures. And in its endurance, it carries something precious: the texture of experience.