For the past week or so Manchester City have hosted a championship winning side from 6,000 miles away at their Etihad Campus.

Bolivian champions Bolívar have been based at the Etihad Campus for a historic pre-season tour in England. It is the first time the South Americans have played in England, and it is also a special occasion for me as I’ve supported the team for 33 years and counting.

The tour is just the latest episode in strengthening ties between City and Bolívar, after the Bolivian side became a partner club of the City Football Group (CFG) in 2021. The visit is also part of events to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Bolivia’s most successful club in 1925.

During the tour the club were held 0-0 by Aston Villa reserves in Birmingham, lost a closely fought game 3-2 against Man City Elite Development Squad, and beat Crystal Palace Elite 4-0 on Saturday in London.

My connection with Bolívar goes back to 1992 when I moved to Bolivia’s capital La Paz aged nine.

And on Friday, I was welcomed to the Etihad Campus by CFG and Bolívar and met the manager Flavio Robatto and other members of the management team, including assistant manager and club legend Vladimir Soria.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to write about my passion for the club and watch the team train in Manchester. I now live in Cambridge, so I took the day off work to undertake a personally important assignment and to tell the story of why Bolívar’s visit matters.

This is also the story of how I fell in love with this incredible team, and why their pre-season tour is another milestone towards the one big achievement that has so far eluded the club.

I was born in Doncaster - my dad was a social worker and my mum a teacher. We moved to La Paz when my parents took a post with the Anglican Church, dad later trained to become a vicar and went on to become Bishop of Paraguay, but that’s another story.

My parents were resolved that we should fully throw ourselves into Bolivian life, having made the commitment to move to a distant continent; they weren’t going to do things by halves. So my sister, who was 7 at the time, and I were sent to San Patricio - a Bolivian school in our neighbourhood of Sopocachi - which was a short walk from downtown La Paz, the world’s highest capital.

Not speaking a word of Spanish it was literally sink or swim. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life, having to learn a new language quickly and make friends in a different culture. I soon became friends with a boy called Diego, whose dad got me and my family into supporting Bolívar.

They invited my dad and I to join them at a match one evening - under the lights at the national stadium the Hernando Siles for a match in the Copa Libertadores (the South American equivalent of the Champions League). For me it was an obsession at first sight when we walked up the stairs into the Siles in the thin and crisp, high altitude, autumn air that April night - seasons are the other way round in South America.

Built in the 1970s, the Hernando Siles is a monolithic concrete hulk of a stadium, with a capacity just over 41,000 now. And at an altitude of just under 12,000ft it is one of the highest professional stadiums in the world - something that was once extremely controversial - more on that later.

Paraguayan side Cerro Porteño were despatched 2-0, and that was it - I’ve supported Bolívar ever since. At matches the stadium comes alive with a chant that starts in one side of the ground with BO-BO-BO, followed by LI-LI-LI in another section, then VAR-VAR-VAR - and finally everyone joining in in VIVA BOLIVAR. There’s something special about night games anyway, but as a nine year that noise and passion was enthralling. We walked out of the stadium that night fully signed-up Bolivaristas.

Looking back on it I can see that supporting Bolívar gave me a sense of belonging. I think we went to most home games. My sister would become part of the match going tradition too. Apart from night games that we might have to rush to, we almost always walked. League matches were mostly on Sunday afternoons, and the mile or so walk to and from the ground meant we had ample time to predict what might happen or celebrate or lament what we’d seen on the pitch that day.

I can’t write about supporting La Academia (AKD) without mentioning The Strongest - our sworn rivals from the South end of the city. Bolívar’s latest thrashing of El Tigre (named after their tiger emblem) came in December, a 4-1 drubbing which added yet another win to a huge tally. One of my favourite Clasico memories is when a cardboard coffin was wrapped in Strongest yellow and black kit colours and passed around the Barra Brava in the North end of the ground. It is the most played fixture in Bolivian football, and surely one of the longest running derbies in the world. There have been 298 fixtures in the professional era since 1950, with AKD winning 126, vs Strongest’s 75, with 97 draws.

And while we’re discussing records, the AKD are far and away the most decorated team in the country - having won 31 titles. When they are described as the biggest club in Bolivia, it’s for good reason - no other team comes close.

Success however, has been elusive on the South American stage. The Copa Libertadores is dominated by Brazilian and Argentinian teams. The 1994 Libertadores sticks in my memory - the sweet taste of getting through the round of 16 beating The Strongest, turning to despair in the quarter finals against Olympia from Paraguay. An easily winnable match was thrown away in a 1-0 defeat, and a 2-0 loss in Asuncion sealed the exit. The year after it was Brazilian powerhouse Palmeiras that would knock us out.

The furthest Bolívar has gone in the competition is the semi-finals in 2014 losing to Argentina’s San Lorenzo 5-1 on aggregate. And in 2004 they lost the final of the Copa Superamerica, equivalent to the Europa League, to Boca Juniors, the famous Argentine team.

Supporting La Academia in the 1990s was an incredible privilege, as was seeing some of the best South American footballers. Going to matches at the Siles remains one of my happiest childhood memories. We supported two teams - Bolívar and Bolivia. Going to any Bolivia home game we could in World Cup qualifiers or when the country hosted the Copa America in 1997. Sadly losing 3-1 to Brazil in the final.

In many ways it was a golden era in Bolivian football, with many Bolívar players also making up the national squad. Generational talent Marco Echeverry up front, with club legends like Vladimir Soria in midfield and Marcos Sandy in defence.

I can remember like it was yesterday when Bolivia beat Brazil 2-0 in 1993 during the country’s only successful World Cup qualifying campaign. It was the first Bolivia match we went to. My dad and I, sat eight rows (yes, I remember that detail) up in the main stand near the half way line when Brazilian goalkeeper Tarafel fumbled the ball into his own net after Echeverry crossed the ball. It was just a few minutes after Bolivia had missed a penalty. And then just moments later Alvaro Peña would seal the win with a well placed ball into the far right hand corner. It was the first time in decades Brazil had lost a qualifying game. Such was the shock and outrage in Brazil that it brought a case to FIFA asking for high altitude games to be banned.

My match going days ended in earnest around the millennium after I moved back to England to study, my parents would stay until the mid-2000s. I think the last time I went to a match was in 2002. It’s harder to follow a team when the games are played in a time zone that is four to five hours behind depending on the time of the year.

Now I follow the team mainly via the club’s social media accounts and watching highlights online. I still feel a great sense of attachment to the club that was such a big part of growing up in a different place. I sometimes wonder what Diego is up to, we fell out of touch after I moved to the American school - I’m ever grateful that his family invited us to that game that kicked off this football journey.

In recent years huge investment has poured into the via its billionaire owner Marcelo Claure - Bolivia’s richest person. Under Claure state of the art training facilities have been developed. A new stadium is being built in the club’s home in the Tembladerani neighbourhood. Investment has gone into further professionalising the set up across the board. He is also a loud advocate for improving football in Bolivia.

Being a partner club in CFG means Bolívar has been able to lean on expertise and advice for the infrastructure developments, which also includes an academy in the low-land city of Santa Cruz De La Sierra. Day-to-day it also means the club is supported with data and analytics tools.

In total there are 13 clubs associated with CFG. Claure is a massive football fan and also has interests in New York City FC and Spanish club Girona, both also part of CFG.

Claure, like all Bolivaristas, dreams of lifting the Copa Libertadores. Bolívar playing games in England as part of its pre-season would have once seemed like a pipe dream to me. So this is just another step on that journey.

Someone who also shares our deep passion for Bolívar is assistant coach Vladimir Soria. He played almost 17 full seasons for the club after joining in 1985. He has appeared in the third highest number of matches in the Copa Libertadores of any player, with almost 100 matches to his name. Soria was also a key member of the 1994 World Cup team.

I ask him which were his favourite matches when we speak at the Etihad Campus.

“There are so many matches, the titles that I had to define with Strongest, with Oriente (Petrolero), which were many. We won most of them, I think those were the most important in my career," he says.

“And in the Copa Libertadores there were also important matches that we had to win - important teams like Flamengo, Gremio, and River, Boca, so they were very nice and important years for me.

“We have won everything in Bolivia, many tournaments, getting to the Copa Sudamericana final and what remains pending is to be able to win a Copa Libertadores de America. I think we are on the right path, we can reach that goal with everything that is being done in the club, everything that Marcelo is doing. I think that in not such a long time we can win a Copa Libertadores de America.”

I bring up Bolivia’s qualification to the 1994 World Cup.

“When we got to the World Cup it was something nice and important and nobody believed in the national team. Now there is a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of optimism in the fans, in the leadership to get to the end of the Libertadores one day and be able to win it. We were close, we got to a semi-final, we were knocked out but I think it can be achieved."

In last season's Libertadores round of 16, Bolívar beat Brazilian team Flamengo 1-0 in La Paz, but went out after losing 2-0 in the famous Maracana stadium in Rio de Janiero.

“We have a good squad, I think that we can achieve that goal," he adds. "It is difficult because there are teams that invest a lot, especially the Brazilian teams. It is difficult to compete even for the Argentines, it is difficult to beat the Brazilians in the Copa Libertadores. But I think that it can be done with a little more work, enthusiasm, and having a good squad, it can be done.”

Interviewing Soria, and reconnecting with Bolívar in these most unlikely of circumstances was a somewhat surreal experience - but further proof of the way football brings people together. We all share the dream of winning the Copa Libertadores. I wouldn’t have believed that I’d see the AKD in England, so I know that dreams can come true.

David Bartlett is a former editor-in-chief of the Cambridge News, and before that was a journalist at the Liverpool ECHO for almost a decade. He is currently Affiliates Director for Reach Plc, the MEN’s parent company.