Glory Of The Football Manager System

Friday, February 23rd. Two days before the cup final. The photograph arrived.

Not on my phone. On every phone. On every screen. On every sports page and every social media feed and every television studio in Europe. The photograph that would define the San Siro Chapter of the documentary. The photograph that Elena would later describe as ”the single image that changed the way the world saw Danny Walsh.”

A Reuters photographer took the photograph named Marco Luzzatto, who had been positioned at the edge of the pitch during the pre-match warm-up, his camera aimed at the Curva Sud, his finger on the shutter, his professional instinct telling him that the story of the evening was not on the pitch but in the stands.

The flares had started. The smoke was rising. Eighty thousand people were making a noise designed to terrify, to intimidate, to remind the visiting team that they were at San Siro and that San Siro did not forgive.

And in the foreground of the photograph, with his back to the camera and his face turned towards the Curva Sud, stood Danny Walsh.

Arms crossed. Feet apart. Suit jacket buttoned. The Palace tie visible above the collar. His body language not aggressive and not defensive but something in between, something that communicated a message that eighty thousand people could read without translation: I am here. I am not moving. And your noise does not change what is about to happen.

The photograph captured the smoke behind him, the red haze of the flares turning the floodlights into diffused halos, the banners and the flags and the eighty thousand faces, and in the centre of it all, a twenty-eight-year-old from Moss Side standing with his arms crossed in the technical area of the San Siro while the most hostile crowd in Italian football tried to break him.

He did not break. That was the photograph. That was the story.

By Friday morning, the image had been shared four hundred thousand times. Sky Sports used it as the backdrop for their Europa League coverage. BT Sport used it in the pre-match promo for the Ferdinand interview that would air tomorrow evening.

The Guardian’s football page ran it as their lead image with the caption: ”Walsh. San Siro. Unmoved.” The Italian sports press, who twenty-four hours earlier had been calling for a remontada, used the same photograph but with a different meaning: it was evidence.

Evidence that the young English manager had walked into their cathedral and had not been awed by it. Had not been diminished by it. Had stood in the smoke and the noise and the fury and had crossed his arms and waited for the match to begin.

Emma sent it to me at seven in the morning. No message. Just the photograph. I looked at it in bed, the duvet around my waist, the coffee she had made cooling on the bedside table, and I did not recognise the man in the image.

The man in the image was the villain. The mask. The performance. The man in bed was Danny Walsh from Moss Side, who had forgotten Valentine’s Day and who could not cook toast without burning it and who was thinking about a ring and a question and a woman who had made all of this possible.

”You look terrifying,” Emma said from the doorway. She was leaning against the frame, her mug in her hands, her reading glasses on, the Cambridge sweatshirt falling off one shoulder.

”I look like I’m standing in smoke.”

”You look like you own the place. Which you don’t. But the photograph doesn’t know that.” She sipped her coffee. ”What were you actually thinking? In that moment?”

”Bonucci’s positioning.”

She stared at me. ”Eighty thousand people are booing you. Flares going off. The whole stadium shaking. And you’re standing there thinking about where the centre-back is standing.”

”He was too high.”

”Danny. That is genuinely unhinged.”

”It worked, though.”

”It did work. And on Sunday, the unhinged thing is going to be an advantage. Pep Guardiola is a genius but I don’t think even Pep stands in the middle of the San Siro doing tactical analysis while people throw fireworks at him.”

The boos. The story of the boos was the story of the match, told in two acts.

The first act was the arrival. The bus. The flare corridor. The police escort. The eighty thousand people who had come to the San Siro to will a remontada into existence. The boos were directed at Palace. At the bus.

At the players warming up on the pitch. At Danny Walsh standing in the technical area with his arms crossed. The boos were hostile, organised, the collective fury of a fanbase that believed its team could score seven goals without reply and that treated the visitors as obstacles to be overwhelmed.

The second act began in the thirty-third minute, when Gnabry scored. The boos did not stop. They changed direction.

The fury that had been aimed at Palace rotated, slowly, inevitably, inward. Bonucci was booed when he touched the ball. Çalhanoğlu was booed when he missed a pass. André Silva was booed when he failed to convert a header.

The boos travelled from the Curva Sud through the Primo Anello and into the Secondo Anello, the sound rolling through the tiers like a wave that had started as hostility towards the visitors and had become something else entirely: hostility towards the home team.

Towards the men wearing the red and black stripes who had been given two hundred million pounds and a mandate to restore the legacy and who were, instead, losing eight-one on aggregate to a club from South London.

The transition from booing Palace to booing Milan was the moment that the match stopped being a football match and became a reckoning. The fans were not angry at Palace. Palace had done their job.

The fans were angry at Milan. At the ownership. At the transfers. At the manager. At the players who had been bought to rebuild a dynasty and who had, instead, presided over its collapse.

The manager.

Vincenzo Montella was sacked on Friday morning.

The news broke at nine o’clock, Italian time. AC Milan issued a statement through their official channels: ”AC Milan announce that Vincenzo Montella has been relieved of his duties as first-team manager, effective immediately. The club thanks Vincenzo for his service and wishes him well in his future career.”

The statement was forty-three words long. Forty-three words to end a tenure that had begun with hope and two hundred million pounds and had ended with an eight-one aggregate defeat to Crystal Palace.

Montella, who had been a sharp-dressed Italian who looked more like a Milanese fashion designer than a football manager, was gone. Replaced by Gennaro Gattuso, the former Milan midfielder, the man whose intensity and aggression and sheer, overwhelming physicality had defined Milan’s midfield during the Ancelotti era.

The appointment was announced thirty minutes after the sacking. The message was clear: Milan were going back to their roots. Back to the fight. Back to the grit. The era of elegant football and expensive signings and tactical experimentation was over. Gattuso was blood and thunder. Gattuso was cholismo without the tactics. Gattuso was desperation wearing a suit.

I read the news on my phone in the kitchen while Emma ate toast.

”Montella’s been sacked,” I said.

She looked up from her toast. ”Already?”

”Nine o’clock Italian time. Statement and everything. Forty-three words total.”

”Because of last night?”

”Last night finished it. But the whole thing was falling apart. The first leg started the fire. Last night was just...” I waved my hand.

”The petrol.” She bit into her toast. Chewed. Thought about it. ”So you’ve actually got a manager sacked.”

”Fired. They fired him.”

”Same thing. How does that feel?”

I thought about it. Montella in the tunnel after the first leg, his face grey, his suit crumpled, the body language of a man who knew that the result had shortened his career by months. Montella on the touchline at the San Siro, screaming instructions that his players had stopped hearing, making substitutions that his system could not support, the sharp-dressed man becoming a man in a suit that no longer fit the occasion.

”Honestly? Weird. I’ve never been the reason someone lost their job before. Not like this.”

”You’re not the reason. Milan being terrible is the reason.”

”We beat them eight-one.”

”And they spent two hundred million quid on players who can’t defend corners. That’s not on you, Danny.” She put her toast down.

”Look. Montella got handed a broken squad and told to rebuild a dynasty in one summer. You got handed a relegation battle and told to survive five matches. His expectations were mad. Yours were low. You smashed yours. He couldn’t meet his.” She picked the toast back up. ”Different jobs. Different outcomes. Don’t carry that.”

”You sound like you’ve been thinking about this.”

”I’m a journalist. I think about everything. It’s exhausting.”

She was right. She was always right about the things that the cameras didn’t see and that the pundits didn’t analyse and that the football world didn’t discuss because the football world was interested in results, not context.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the constant support.