For reasons some of you will find hard to fathom, I stood in my living room last Sunday evening with tears brimming in my eyes.

A man I had never met was bidding farewell to a football club and a city he had fallen in love with, and was now leaving after a decade of unprecedented domination.

I blubbed when the departing Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola wished his 96-year-old dad in the stands happy birthday, and again when Noel Gallagher’s Live Forever played to video scenes of amazing triumphs.

Many fans in the stadium, proudly sporting its newly-opened ‘Pep Guardiola Stand’, were sobbing too.

It was the perfect sporting send-off, and they were tears of both happiness and sadness - the kind that tend to overwhelm you.

My teenage son, who really isn’t into sport, glanced up from his phone and asked me: “Did you cry when I was born?”

“Of course,” I lied. “But this is, er, different.”

Indeed it is. How so?

Sporting nuts like me may agree with this reasoning - because life, with its ups and downs, and births and deaths, is often too serious for tears. Life isn’t a Hollywood film where you get to squeeze one out on cue for your close-up. You can be overwhelmed by a whole range of emotions but not shed a tear.

However, sport provides the perfect outlet where the emotions tend to spill out........

© Evening Echo