Glory Of The Football Manager System

Lazio 3–2 Crystal Palace. Immobile. 67 minutes.

We were losing. In Rome. Against a team that had found its fury. The Olimpico was deafening, the noise no longer vast and ambient but sharp and directed, Eighty thousand people screaming their team forward with a desperation that was almost physical.

I looked at my bench. Pato. Eze. Connor Blake. I had twenty-three minutes. I could protect bodies for Arsenal in forty-eight hours, or I could try to rescue a point in one of the most iconic stadiums in world football.

The competitor in me didn’t hesitate.

Pato for Abraham in the Seventy-first minute, the Brazilian’s movement against tiring Italian centre-backs who had already been running for almost eighty minutes. I put my hand on Abraham’s shoulder as he came off. ”Brilliant, Tammy. That header was special.” His face was a mixture of exhaustion and pride.

Eze for Bowen in the Seventy-fifth fresh creativity, a different angle of attack. Eze slotted into the number ten, Bojan shifting to the right, the formation morphing seamlessly.

The changes shifted the energy. Pato’s first involvement was a back-heel flick that sent Gnabry clear down the left the German’s cross was just too far ahead of McArthur arriving at the back post. Pato’s second was a shot from the edge of the box that the goalkeeper parried, the rebound falling to Eze, whose follow-up was blocked by a desperate Italian body. The third was the one that mattered.

In the eighty-third minute, we equalised. And it was beautiful.

Nya Kirby eighteen years old, in the Stadio Olimpico, Eighty thousand people, the biggest match of his life won the ball in midfield. Not a tackle. An interception. He read the pass before it was played, stepped across the line of the ball, and took it cleanly. One touch to set.

A pass forward to Eze, who turned that smooth, effortless half-turn that was becoming his signature and found Pato. The Brazilian laid it off first-time to Gnabry, who had continued his run on the overlap down the left. Gnabry’s cross was low and hard, driven across the six-yard box to the back post.

Pato had kept running. He had played the layoff, spun, and sprinted thirty yards to arrive at the far post as the cross came in. He met it first-time left foot, side-netting, the ball hitting the net with a crack that was drowned instantly by the four hundred Palace fans in the upper tier, who had been singing for eighty-three minutes without pause and now produced a sound that defied their numbers, a roar of delirious, life-affirming, impossible joy.

Lazio 3–3 Crystal Palace. Pato. 83 minutes.

[GOAL. Alexandre Pato. First-time finish, back post. Assist: Gnabry. Build-up: Kirby (interception), Eze (progression), Pato (layoff), Gnabry (cross), Pato (finish). Four players involved three aged 20 or under. The development pathway is not a slogan. It is a competitive weapon being deployed in the Stadio Olimpico.]

I stood in my technical area, hands in my pockets, and let the moment exist. Eighty thousand people, stunned into silence. Four hundred, delirious. The Roman night thick with smoke and noise, the floodlights blazing, the ancient city sprawling beyond the stadium walls.

Pato was lying on the grass where he had slid after the finish, his arms spread wide, staring up at the Italian sky. Gnabry piled on top of him. Then Kirby. Then Eze. A heap of young men, laughing and screaming, on the grass of the Stadio Olimpico.

The final seven minutes were chaos. Immobile hit the post in the eighty-ninth minute Mandanda beaten, the woodwork saving us. Dann headed a corner off the line in stoppage time, his body horizontal, the ball striking his forehead and deflecting wide. Then the whistle. Full-time.

3-3.

I shook Inzaghi’s hand. The young Italian held my grip and looked me in the eye, a faint smile on his lips. ”You have crazy players,” he said. ”I like them.”

”So do I,” I said. ”So do I.”

[FULL TIME: Lazio 3–3 Crystal Palace. Europa League Group H, Matchday 3.]

[Goals: Gnabry 26’, Abraham 38’, Pato 83’. Lazio: Immobile 11’, 67’, Luis Alberto 58’.]

[Manager Record: P20 W16 D3 L1. GF: 56. GA: 16.]

[Europa League Group H After Matchday 3:]

[1. Crystal Palace 7 pts (W2 D1)]

[2. Lazio 5 pts (W1 D2)]

[3. Marseille 3 pts (1 W L2)]

[4. Vitória SC 1 pt ( D1 L2)]

[Still top. Still in control. But the margins are paper-thin.]

The flight from Rome landed at two a.m. on Friday morning. Arsenal away was in thirty-eight hours.

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that goes beyond the physical. It lives in the space between your thoughts, in the half-second delay between hearing a question and forming an answer, in the heaviness of your eyelids at two in the afternoon when the rest of the world is awake and functioning.

I had felt it once before during the five-match miracle last season, when I was managing on caffeine and adrenaline and the borrowed time of a caretaker who wasn’t supposed to succeed. I was feeling it again now.

The squad that assembled at Beckenham on Friday afternoon for the pre-match meeting was the Everton eleven, rested since Saturday Hennessey, Wan-Bissaka, Tarkowski, Sakho, Chilwell, Neves, Milivojević, Navas, Zaha, Benteke. Rodríguez returned to the number ten, Eze dropping to the bench.

On paper, it was the strongest available eleven. In reality, Neves was still carrying the fatigue that had plagued him since the international break. Milivojević had covered more ground than anyone in the squad since August. Sakho’s knee was being managed day by day. The three-day rest from Everton had helped, but it hadn’t healed.

[Starting XI Arsenal (A), October 21st. Premier League, Matchday 9: Hennessey; Wan-Bissaka, Tarkowski, Sakho, Chilwell; Neves, Milivojević; Navas, Rodríguez, Zaha; Benteke. Bench: Mandanda, Dann, Digne, McArthur, Bojan, Townsend, Pato.]

The Emirates Stadium on a Saturday evening. Sixty thousand people in red and white. Arsène Wenger on the opposite touchline the great old man of English football, the philosopher-manager, the architect of the Invincibles.

The irony of facing the man who had built the most famous unbeaten run in English football history, five weeks after my own unbeaten run had ended, sat in the air like an unspoken question.

I was too tired for irony. And so were my players.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.