Harbinger Of Glory

Darren Fletcher was still grinning when he climbed back over the advertising boards.

His teammates came with him in a rush of wet shirts and wild faces, some still shouting, all of them dragged back toward the pitch by the match officials who had allowed the celebration to breathe for only so long.

Fletcher’s chest was heaving by the time he crossed the touchline again, and though he already knew what was coming, he took it well enough.

The referee reached into his pocket with the expression of a man doing a job he did not enjoy.

Fletcher held out a hand as if to say, ” Fair enough.”

And after that, the yellow card went up.

He accepted it with a crooked smile and a small nod before jogging back toward the centre circle, still riding the buzz of the equaliser.

On the touchline, Dawson had already let the emotion pass through him.

Nolan was beside him, both of them still flushed from the goal, but the manager’s mind had moved on.

”Calm down now!” he shouted, clapping sharply toward the pitch before his eyes flicked to the bench.

”And you,” he added, pointing at Leo, who had risen in the chaos and was still craning forward like he might somehow enter the match by force of will alone.

”Sit yourself down before you make that leg worse.”

Leo gave a sheepish little bow of the head and dropped back into his seat beside Thelo Aasgaard, though the restless energy stayed in him, alive in the way his injured leg with the braces kept tapping against the ground.

Dawson turned back to the field, and once he saw it, he couldn’t help but smile.

Brighton were rattled.

The crowd was rattled.

And the match, which had looked settled only a minute earlier, now had cracked open.

Cupping his mouth with his hands to amplify his voice, he called for Max Power.

The captain turned in midfield, rain running down his face, and Dawson gave him a string of gestures with both hands, quick and deliberate.

The signal had not been meant for everyone, but players all across the pitch looked toward the sideline anyway, reading the urgency if not the exact instruction.

On the other side, De Zerbi’s assistant leaned toward him.

”What’s that?”

He asked, not really expecting an answer, and De Zerbi, true to his character, offered no input.

As both teams settled in their respective halves, Danny Welbeck stood over the ball at the centre spot.

The clock crept into the eighty-eighth minute, and his frustration could be seen in the way he kept itching to restart.

They could have been on to the next round had they stayed switched on and held on for a little longer, but now they had momentum against them.

A moment later, the shrill sound of the referee’s whistle pierced the night’s air, and immediately, Welbeck touched the ball to Undav to restart the game.

Up in the gantry, the commentator could hear it in the ground.

”Wigan have come alive since the penalty,” he said, voice tightening with excitement. ”There is belief in them now, real belief, and Brighton suddenly look like a side trying to remember how this was supposed to end.”

Immediately, Undav touched the ball, it was like sharks in bloodwaters.

Ezra, leading the change, instantly went after the nearest player with reckless energy, sprinting not like a substitute preserving himself for extra time, but like a man with only one burst to spend and no interest in saving it.

That effort dragged the others with him.

Wigan were still being outplayed in the flow of possession, but they were no longer passive.

They had teeth now.

And Brighton were beginning to feel it.

The next two minutes were frantic as both teams played without qualms because you were either going to lose or win, and as it stood, it seemed no one had the intention of sending the game to extra time.

Every touch was followed by noise.

Every loose ball became an event, and every run was met by the nervous cheers of the waving crowd and their flags in the stands.

Then, just four seconds after the ninety-minute mark had passed, the fourth official raised his board high for all to see the five minutes that had been added on.

”Five more to find a winner,” the commentator said. ”And after what we’ve just seen, nobody here is breathing normally.”

Brighton surged down the right.

Lamptey, who had not stopped asking questions and wanting to sort of atone, got at Joe Bennett again and skipped past him with that familiar blur of feet and shoulders before hanging a wicked cross toward the far side of the six-yard box.

The scream from the gantry came a split second later.

While Charlie Hughes, stretching to cut it out, almost turned it into his own net, redirecting the ball sharply toward the inside of the post.

Ben Amos, somehow still alert to every cruel bounce, flung out a hand and pushed it away at the last second.

The stadium gasped simultaneously, with the Brighton fans cursing how it hadn’t gone in while the Wigan fans thanked their stars.

The ball went out for a corner, and Solly March wandered over to take it while the home crowd tried to pull the noise back together.

This time, Brighton were more careful.

The lesson from Wigan’s equaliser had been learned, and they did not flood forward with the same reckless abandon.

The co-commentator pointed it out at once, noting how the home side had left themselves a little cover, enough bodies behind the ball to avoid another break if the delivery failed.

But without numbers in the box, Wigan overwhelmed, meeting the corner as it came in and cleared it, but within a few touches Brighton recovered it again.

Lamptey once again found himself on the ball once more and whipped another cross into the box, but this one had too much on it, sailing over everyone and skimming the top of the crossbar on its way out.

A groan rolled around the Amex as the Ghanaian right back slipped his hands onto his head before he began to jog back into his place.

Feeling the sudden switch again, Ben Amos moved for the restart with no hurry in him now.

A ball boy tossed him the ball, and he caught it with both gloves, but he showed no urgency the game required of him, like intentionally taking small steps before taking almost 5 seconds to set the ball down, before looking back up and then glancing at the scoreboard.

94:37.