Glory Of The Football Manager System

Three minutes of stoppage time. The longest three minutes in the history of Crystal Palace Football Club.

City kicked off. De Bruyne received. Played it wide to Sané. Sané crossed. Headed away by Tarkowski. Neves picked it up. Held it. Passed to Kovačić. Kovačić held it. Passed to Milivojević. The ball moved between them. Not fifty-three passes this time. Four. Five. Six. Enough. Enough to make City chase. Enough to make the clock move.

Eighty-nine minutes. Guardiola was standing on his touchline. His hands at his sides. Not shouting. Not gesturing. Standing. The fight was leaving him. Not because he had given up. Because the mathematics had left. Four-two with one minute of normal time remaining. The miracle that City needed was bigger than any miracle Guardiola had ever produced.

Ninety minutes. The fourth official held up the board. Three minutes added time.

I was on the white line. Both feet. The fourth official had stopped telling me to move back.

Sarah was beside me. Rebecca was beside Sarah. Bray was behind us. The entire Palace bench was standing on the touchline, a wall of suits and tracksuits and medical bags and water bottles, every single person who worked for Crystal Palace Football Club standing as close to the pitch as the rules allowed because nobody could sit down and nobody could stand still and the only option left was to stand together on the edge of the grass and wait.

Ninety-one minutes. City had a throw-in. Deep in Palace’s half. Laporte threw it long. Dann headed it. Again. Of course, Dann headed it. Dann had been heading everything for ninety-one minutes and he was going to head everything for the remaining two because that was what Dann did and that was who Dann was.

Ninety-two minutes. Kovačić had the ball in midfield. He ran with it. Nobody pressed him. City had stopped pressing. City had accepted what the scoreboard was telling them. Kovačić ran for ten yards, stopped, turned, and passed it back to Sakho. Sakho held it. The Palace fans were counting. Not passes this time. Seconds.

Tyler: ”The clock is ticking towards full time. Crystal Palace are moments away from the first major trophy in their history.”

Neville: ”I said at the start of the day that I’d never been less confident in a prediction. I picked City. I was wrong. Danny Walsh has done it.”

Ninety-three minutes.

The referee looked at his watch. Looked at the linesman. Whistle to his lips.

I grabbed Sarah’s hand. I don’t know why. I’d never done it before. But the whistle was coming and I needed to hold onto something real.

The whistle blew.

On the City side of the pitch, Sterling dropped. Straight down. Knees first, then hands, then his forehead on the Wembley grass, his body folding in on itself the way bodies fold when the adrenaline leaves and the reality arrives.

Sané was standing with his hands on his head, staring at nothing. Agüero was walking in a small circle, the tight, aimless circle of a man whose body didn’t know what to do because the thing it had been programmed to do for ninety-three minutes was over and the thing it was supposed to do next, which was celebrate, was not available.

De Bruyne sat down on the pitch. Just sat. His legs stretched out. His hands on the grass behind him. His face blank. The best player in the Premier League sitting on the Wembley turf like a man who had been told something he couldn’t process.

Kompany went to Sterling first. The captain pulling the young winger up by the arm, getting him to his feet, holding his face with both hands, saying something, the words lost in the noise but the meaning clear: get up, we go again, this is not the end.

Then Kompany went to Stones, who was standing near the centre circle with his shirt over his face, and put his arm around the young centre-back’s shoulders and walked him towards the tunnel.

The City coaching staff were on the pitch now, the assistant managers and the fitness coaches and the analysts, spreading out among the blue shirts, finding the ones who had fallen, getting them up, guiding them towards the dressing room, the quiet, unglamorous, deeply human work of looking after people who had just lost the match they were supposed to win.

Guardiola was the last to move. He stood by his technical area and watched his players fall and watched his staff pick them up and he did not go to any of them yet because he was still processing. His face confused. Not angry. Not disappointed. Confused.

And then I couldn’t hear anything. Forty-five thousand people releasing everything they’d been holding since 1905 and the sound hit me in the chest and my legs went and Sarah caught me and I was on my knees on the Wembley touchline with my hands on the grass, crying.

Not dignified tears. Ugly, shaking, uncontrolled crying. A twenty-eight-year-old boy from Moss Side on his knees at Wembley.

Sarah was crying. Rebecca was crying. Bray had his hands on his head and his eyes closed. Barry was still on the ground. Steele was hugging Pope, who had come sprinting from the goal, sixty yards across the Wembley pitch, gloves off, arms pumping, the goalkeeper who had saved from Agüero running towards his manager because the manager was on his knees and the goalkeeper wanted to get him up.

Pope reached me. He grabbed my arm. He pulled me to my feet. ”Get up, gaffer. Get up. We did it. Get up.”

I got up.

The pitch was chaos. Palace players everywhere. Hugging, sliding, lying on the grass, staring at the sky. Sakho had found Dann and the two of them were holding each other, the two centre-backs who had kept City to two goals, their foreheads touching, their eyes closed, their arms around each other’s necks.

Neves was on his phone already, calling his wife, Lurdes’s face appearing on the screen, the toddler confused by why her father was crying and laughing at the same time on a very green surface.

Zaha was standing alone. Centre circle. Arms at his sides. Not celebrating. Just standing. Taking it in. The boy who had been at this club since he was twelve, standing in the centre circle of Wembley, and he was not going to rush this moment. Not this one.

Kovačić found Milivojević and the two of them shook hands. Not a hug. A handshake. The midfield handshake. The acknowledgement of two professionals who had done their job.

Eze was sitting on the pitch. Just sitting. Cross-legged. Like a boy in a school assembly. His hands on his knees. His face wet. The twenty-year-old who had scored the greatest goal in Wembley history sitting on the grass and processing the fact that his life had just changed and that nothing would ever be the same.

I walked across the pitch. Through the chaos. Through the confetti falling red and blue. Guardiola was still where he had been, by the bench, his players gone now, his staff gone, just the manager standing alone. He saw me coming. He walked to meet me. Took my hand.

He smiled. Small. Bewildered.

”Danny,” he said. Just my name. Held my hand. Nodded. Then he turned and walked into the tunnel alone. He did not look back.

Emma found me.

She had come down from the directors’ box. Through the crowd. Through the security. Through the barriers that the stewards had stopped enforcing because the barriers were suggestions now and the pitch was public property and the occasion had overwhelmed the protocol.

She was there. Green coat. Cream dress. Red hair catching the confetti. Press pass swinging. Danny’s mum behind her, smaller, slower, the Crystal Palace scarf around her neck, Elena guiding her by the elbow across the pitch.

Emma put her hands on my face. Palms on my cheeks. Thumbs wiping the tears.

”The boy from Moss Side did it,” she said.

I tried to speak. Couldn’t. The words were in my chest and wouldn’t come out.

She kissed me. On the pitch. At Wembley. With the confetti falling and the noise everywhere and my mum standing three feet away trying not to watch and failing. She kissed me and I kissed her back and I held her and I thought: I am going to marry you. Not today. Not here. But I am going to marry you.

My mum reached us. She didn’t say anything. Just put her arms around both of us. The three of them on the Wembley pitch. Arms and tears and confetti.

The mask was gone. The villain was gone. The boy from Moss Side was crying in front of ninety thousand people and did not care who saw it.

A hundred and twelve years. Over.

[Crystal Palace 4-2 Manchester City. Carabao Cup Winners.]

[Goals: Benteke 19’, Benteke 58’, Eze 70’, Dann 87’.]

[Tactical shift: 3-5-2 at 72’. Back five. Tarkowski on. ”I’m going to win.”]

[Pope: save of the match. Agüero, 74’. Right hand.]

[Sané: hit the bar, 79’. Sterling: goal disallowed, 82’. City threw everything.]

[Danny lost it. Punched the air for Eze’s goal. On his knees at the whistle. Pope pulled him up: ”Get up, gaffer. We did it.”]

[Sarah grabbed his hand at the 93rd minute. The whistle blew. The hundred and twelve years ended.]

[The stewards gave up. A man in a 1990 FA Cup final shirt was on the pitch crying. They let him.]

[Guardiola: confused. Smiled. Said ”Danny.” Walked away. Did not look back.]

[112 years. Over.]

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.