National Football Museum: It's all about to kick off in Manchester As it happens, the focus of our derision doesn't look much. Just a royal blue, short-sleeved number, slightly scuffed around the collar (presumably where it was obliged to stretch to fit over the wearer's voluminous, oversized head). As with so many of the exhibits in this wonderful collection, it is the story behind it that makes it such a compelling draw. Every display cabinet, every interactive screen, each audio-visual unit in the place, similarly resonates. From the first football programmes to the seats from the old Wembley, from L S Lowry's painting Going to the Match (on loan from the Professional Footballers' Association) to a First World War recruitment poster ("Play the greater game, join the Football Battalion"), it is not just sporting history being mapped out here. It is our collective cultural memory. "One lady came in and was absolutely blown away that we had the full set of those petrol station coins that were given away for the 1970 World Cup," says Comstive. For her, that unlocked a fantastic recollection of childhood. For me, too. I always wondered what the image on the Ray Wilson coin - the one gap in my collection at the time - looked like. Now I know: nothing like Ray Wilson. "This is not just the history of the game," says Comstive. It's really telling the history of modern Britain through the vehicle of football. And there is no better place to tell it than in Manchester, the current epicentre of our shared obsession. Home to both the domestic champions and the world's most famous club, this city thrums with football every weekend during the season. Such is its association with the game that local universities print pictures of Old Trafford and the Etihad Stadium on the front of their brochures, the implied invitation to putative students being that they should come to study in the home of football. "Last season there were 6,000 fans from Bilbao wandering around town ahead of their team's game with United," remembers Comstive. They would all have loved to come here had we been open. What we can help do is to turn Manchester into a place you visit not just for the 90 minutes of the match but for a whole football weekend. I think this will be a central experience for anyone visiting the city. The collection used to be housed in Deepdale, Preston North End's stadium, 30 miles up the M6. But its move to the Urbis Centre, the blade-like glass building just off Market Street in Manchester's city centre, has enabled it to grow substantially. Across four floors, many more objects are on show than were displayed previously. The place reverberates with sound and movement. Walking through the displays, you constantly catch snippets of commentary, every step soundtracked by John Motson ("Oh, my word!") or the incomparable Peter Jones who, on radio, made the most mundane match hum with drama. Everywhere there is something to touch or watch or, in the case of a display charting the development in changing rooms through the years, smell. From hooliganism through the grass-roots to football toys, everything is explored. Uniquely for a museum, though appropriately enough for this place, you can even kick a ball around. In the penalty shootout room, you can attempt to beat a virtual goalkeeper and put the ball between the very posts that used to be at Wembley. Following his ignominy in Ukraine last Sunday, perhaps Ashley Young should pop down the road from Old Trafford and give it a go. Though having tried it for myself, I have new sympathy for anyone, like Young, who misses on England duty: from 12 yards, that goal shrinks horribly. "We're hoping that even those who think they are not particularly interested in the game can come here, find something to enjoy and realise quite how central football is to all our experience," says Comstive. Nothing makes that quite so plain as the exhibition that will fill the museum's top floor for its first four months. Stuart Clarke's Homes of Football is a collection of photographs charting our utter absorption in the game. They are quirky, evocative, lovingly framed: immersion in his work must be the best way to bring a smile to the most forlorn face. Well, almost the best way. If, in the trophy room, which now houses a collection lent by Uefa, the new museum could have shown us the European Championship trophy as won by England in Ukraine this weekend, that would have really put a spring in the collective step. Though, in truth, that was never likely to happen. As anyone who has attempted to score in the Football Museum's penalty shootout room will appreciate. Essential details The National Football Museum (0161 605 8200; nationalfootballmuseum.com) will open at the Urbis Centre, Manchester, next Friday, July 6, and will be open daily. Admission is free, though there is a charge (from £2.50 a time) to use some of the interactive exhibits.