Glory Of The Football Manager System

In the fourteenth minute of the warm-up, Konaté pulled up.

He was running. A standard acceleration drill, the kind he had done a thousand times. He planted his left foot, drove off it, and felt something in his left hamstring. The same hamstring that had flagged amber in yesterday’s session.

The same hamstring that Tom Yates had worked on for forty minutes last night. The same hamstring that Rebecca had declared green this morning but that she had added a condition to: ”If he feels anything, anything at all, in the warm-up, I want the right to pull him.”

He felt something. And Rebecca was beside him in four seconds.

She didn’t ask a long list of questions. She had been watching him since the warm-up started. She had seen the fourteenth-minute sprint. She had seen the slight hitch in his stride on the twelfth.

She had been waiting for the thirteenth or the fourteenth or the fifteenth because her data from yesterday had told her the hamstring was a risk and her instinct this morning had told her the green reading was borderline and the warm-up was the test that would confirm it.

”Tightness or pain?” she said.

”Pain. Not bad. But it’s there.”

”Scale.”

”Four. Maybe five when I push off.”

She pressed her fingers into the back of his thigh. He winced. Not dramatically. A flicker.

”You can’t play,” she said. Not a question. Not a negotiation. The exercise of the right she had demanded yesterday in my office, the right to pull him if the hamstring spoke, was delivered now on the Wembley pitch with the clinical, absolute authority that defined Rebecca Lawson’s approach to every body she was responsible for.

I was standing five yards away. I had seen him pull up. I had seen Rebecca reach him. I had known, before she looked at me, what the verdict would be.

Because Rebecca had told me yesterday that the hamstring was amber and I had seen it in Konaté’s stride during the twelfth sprint and I had been preparing for this since last night, since the moment Rebecca had said ”if he feels anything,” since the moment I had looked at the bench and made sure that the bench contained the man who would replace him.

”He can’t play,” Rebecca said to me. Confirming. Not informing.

”I know,” I said.

Konaté stood on the Wembley pitch and tried very hard not to cry. He was eighteen years old. He had played like forty matches this season. He had been the best young defender in Europe.

He had headed the ball at the San Siro eight days ago. And now his hamstring, the hamstring that had been monitored and treated and checked and rechecked and declared green and questioned and tested, was telling him that the cup final was happening without him.

I walked to him. I put my hand on his shoulder. ”Ibrahima.”

He looked at me. His eyes were wet. The composed calm cracking at the edges. The boy beneath the defender visible for the first time since August.

”We knew this was possible,” I said. ”Rebecca flagged it yesterday. Tom treated it last night. We prepared for it. This is not a crisis. This is a precaution. And I would rather lose you for ninety minutes today than lose you for six weeks because we pushed a hamstring that wasn’t ready.”

”I wanted to play, gaffer.”

”I know. And you’ll play in a hundred more matches. But this one belongs to someone else.”

”I’m sorry.”

”Don’t be sorry. Be on the bench. Watch. Support your teammates. And when they lift that trophy, you lift it with them. Because you got them here.”

He nodded. He walked off the pitch slowly, Tom Yates meeting him at the touchline, guiding him towards the dressing room.

I turned. Dann was standing ten yards away. The captain had seen everything. He was already wearing his shin pads. He was already ready.

”Scott.”

”Gaffer.”

”You’re starting.”

Dann looked at me. The jaw set. The eyes clear. The armband on his left bicep. The man who had scored the goal that beat Arsenal in the semi-final, who had headed the equaliser at Anfield, who had defended for ninety minutes at the San Siro, who had been at this club for seven years and who had never, in all those years, played in a final.

”I know,” he said.

He didn’t ask about the tactics. He didn’t ask about his positioning. He didn’t ask about the system or the shape or the pressing triggers.

He said ”I know” and he walked to the centre circle and he began his warm-up, the warm-up of a thirty-year-old centre-back who had been given forty-five minutes’ notice that he was starting in the biggest match of his life and who treated the information the way he treated everything: with quiet, ferocious, absolute readiness.

[Starting XI: Carabao Cup Final. Pope; Wan-Bissaka, Sakho, Dann (C), Chilwell; Neves, Kovačić; Navas, Rodríguez, Zaha; Benteke. Subs: Hennessey, Tarkowski, Milivojević, Kirby, Eze, Pato, Blake.]

In the Sky Sports studio, positioned in the gantry above the Wembley pitch, five men sat behind a desk and discussed the match that was forty minutes from starting.

Gary Neville. Jamie Carragher. Roy Keane. Thierry Henry. Rio Ferdinand.

Five men who had won thirty-seven major trophies between them. Five men who knew what a cup final felt like from the inside. Five men arguing about a twenty-eight-year-old from Moss Side.

Neville: ”Right, let’s get into it. City are favourites. Obviously. Best squad in England, best manager in the world, going to win the league. Pep’s record in domestic cup finals is ridiculous. He wins them. That’s what he does.”

Carragher: ”Yeah but hang on. Hang on. There’s a stat here that I don’t think anyone’s really talked about.” He turned to the screen. ”Danny Walsh has faced Guardiola three times. Three. And he’s not lost any of them.”

The graphic appeared on screen.

2016/17, Premier League: Crystal Palace 1-0 Manchester City.

2017/18, Premier League (MD1): Manchester City 3-3 Crystal Palace.

2017/18, Premier League (Dec): Crystal Palace 2-1 Manchester City.

Played three. Won one. Drawn one. Lost zero.

Keane: ”I watched that first one. The one-nil.” He leaned forward. The lean that meant trouble. ”That was a robbery. That was daylight robbery. They defended for eighty-nine minutes, had one shot on target, and won. It was anti-football.”

He paused. ”And it was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The lad had five matches to save the club and he went to the Etihad and parked the bus and nicked it. I loved it.”

Neville: ”But Roy, that’s not what he does anymore. That’s the point.”

Keane: ”I know that’s not what he does anymore. I’m saying that’s where he started. He’ll do whatever the game needs. That’s what I’m saying. If this final needs a smash and grab, he’ll smash and grab. If it needs them to play football, they’ll play football. He doesn’t have an ego about it. He’s not precious. Pep is precious. Pep needs his football to look a certain way. Walsh doesn’t care how it looks. He cares whether it works.”

Henry shifted in his chair. ”Can I come in here? Because I think Roy’s touched on something important.” The Frenchman had a way of entering a conversation that made the other four stop talking. Not through volume. Through authority.

”The three-three at the Etihad on the opening week. That was not a smash and grab. That was Palace going to the Etihad and saying: we are going to play. They went three-one up. At the Etihad. On the first day of the season. Against Pep. That is courage. That is not a man who parks buses.”

Carragher: ”And the two-one in December. That was something else again. Walsh had broken. Properly broken. The schedule had almost destroyed him. I mean, when does that happen? When does a player stand up before a match and say we’re carrying the manager? And they go out and beat City two-one.”

Ferdinand: ”I’ll tell you what struck me when I sat with him on Wednesday. Forty-five minutes, face to face. He’s different in every match. That’s the thing. He hasn’t got one way of doing it. The one-nil was defensive because that’s what the crisis needed. The three-three was attacking because he wanted to make a statement. The two-one was adaptive because he was running on fumes and the team had to figure it out themselves.”

He looked around the desk. ”That’s why Pep hasn’t beaten him. You can’t prepare for someone who’s a different manager every time you play him.”