On Saturday I will wake up in Madrid. A few hours later when Spurs walk out to play Liverpool in the Champions League final in the Spanish capital, I will be in my living room watching the game on TV, possibly the only football fan getting on a plane back to England from Spain that day.

I’ve had a ticket for months – not deserved, it’s who you know – but I don’t need to be there. I need to watch Tottenham’s first ever European Cup final with my dad.

In the minutes, hours and days after Lucas Moura squeezed that winner inside the post at Ajax, I’ve wrestled with what my love of Spurs actually means, how it fits with my love of Cambridge United, and why I’m a football fan at all.

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My stock line is that I’m a Cambridge fan, but Spurs are “my big team who win things” – it’s not particularly clever, but it marks a definite gap between my two footballing loves. Perhaps it was some sort of way to maintain some sort of credibility as a lower-league fan without having to hide my support for someone else. Years ago, when I got a job presenting Soccer AM on Sky Sports, I was told in no uncertain terms not to mention Spurs. At the time, I was so nervous I just did what I was told. It took me years to have the confidence to just say how I felt, and realise that it wasn’t for anyone else to judge.

My dad took me to watch Cambridge United when I was five or six, but he also put me in a Spurs kit when I was the same age. To this day, a minute after every Spurs game, regardless of the result, he calls me to tell me how good Jimmy Greaves was: “He would have passed it in.” If I can’t cut the conversation short, he’ll move on to Alan Gilzean, or Cliff Jones. And eventually we’ll reach the common ground of Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle, players I can actually remember seeing play.

Already the comments section below will be full of people saying “you can only support one team, otherwise you’re not a proper football fan”, and/or “but what if they played each other”. Well, I’d want Cambridge to win. But it’s pretty hypothetical. “But you can’t support two teams” – OK that’s fine, but when I’m watching Spurs, I want them to win. It’s not a conscious thing, it just is. And I enjoy it. Unless I’m hypnotised against my will, it isn’t going to change.

At a time when journalists and fans are spending increasing amounts of time navigating the moral maze of ownership, human rights, Baku and FFP, I’ve found this personal analysis quite refreshing, going back to football in its purest sense – booting a Shoot size 5 around Lloyds bank car park on St Barnabas Road, watching Elton Welsby on the Big Match, or gazing around the then huge Abbey Stadium hearing swear words and passively inhaling cigarette smoke for the first time.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A fan holding a sign out side Tottenham’s stadium before the final league game of the season. Photograph: Paul Simpson/Frozen in Motion/Rex/Shutterstock

My relationship with football, as it is for many others, is entirely bound by my relationship with my dad, who taught me to kick with my left foot, whose genes mean I have for 20 years been one of the slowest players in the Southern Amateur League, whose love of a Hoddle control and pass define what I look for in a game of football. We liked Teddy Sheringham before he was popular.

At the same time we spent the late 80s and early 90s watching John Beck get Cambridge players to hoof it into the channels at every opportunity. So I had no qualms with Spurs sticking it in the mixer to Llorente for much of the semi-final. You can like both opera and thrash metal – or neither.

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There are Tottenham fans who need to be at the Wanda Metropolitano, those who go to their games week in week out. I’ve given my tickets to one of them. Their love of Spurs is a matchgoing one – it’s the pre-game routine, the same pub, the same person on the coach, the same four in the same seats in the same car for every away game. My dad and I don’t really like big crowds, or being out after 9pm. I guarantee if we’d gone, we’d both be looking at the clock at 80 minutes and wondering if we should beat the rush.

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I went to the first leg of Spurs’ semi-final with Ajax - too many people! Do I have another pint? Will I need the loo after 25 minutes? Do I walk to Seven Sisters or queue at White Hart Lane? No. My Spurs love is a TV love. I’m happy to concede to some that makes it less authentic, but it’s my authentic. That’s how I like to watch it, I’d rather see the replays and not queue for the toilet.

I don’t need to be at that final. In fact, I don’t really want to be. I’ve been to Champions League finals before – great experiences that they are, I haven’t felt comfortable taking a ticket from a real fan. I don’t deserve credit – I’ve still taken them, but I won’t again. It’s taken watching the anguish of Spurs fans who don’t have tickets, who’ve just missed out despite trailing up and down the country for years, to really crystallise something I probably should have realised years ago.

Spurs fans aren’t likely to get this opportunity again. Maybe this analysis comes from the fact my Dad’s just turned 80 and I’ve just turned 40, awaiting my mid-life crisis. I’ve always been soft – get a YouTube video of a racoon eating grapes and I well up – but I’ve found considering this whole thing to be quite emotional. Goodness knows how I’ll feel on my sofa when Sissoko is clean through with Son on his right and Virgil van Dijk has to stick or twist. COYS.