Glory Of The Football Manager System

The PA system crackled. The announcement that changed everything from an event into a ceremony: ”Ladies and gentlemen, the presentation of the Carabao Cup will take place in the Royal Box in approximately ten minutes. Could both teams please make their way to the tunnel.”

I let go of Emma. I let go of my mum. The three of us separating on the Wembley pitch, the confetti still falling, Emma wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, my mum being guided back towards the directors’ box by Elena, who had one hand on her elbow and the other hand gesturing to Tomás, who was filming everything because Elena had told him to film everything and Elena’s instructions were not suggestions.

”Go,” Emma said. ”Go get the trophy. I’ll be watching.”

”Where?”

”Where I always am, Danny. Right here.”

I walked to the squad. They were gathered near the tunnel entrance, a loose circle of red and blue shirts, some muddy, some clean, the starters and the substitutes and the ones who hadn’t played mixing together the way they always did after matches, the hierarchy of the starting eleven dissolving into the democracy of the squad.

I looked at them. Twenty-eight faces. The senior players in their match kits, sweat-soaked, grass-stained, the evidence of ninety-three minutes on their bodies. The academy players in their suits, the ones who had travelled with the squad but hadn’t been in the matchday eighteen: Olise, Morrison, Bowen, Townsend, Gnabry.

They were here. All of them. Every player who had contributed to the season was here because I had told Parish three days ago that the entire squad travelled to Wembley, not just the eighteen, and Parish had said yes because Parish had stopped saying no to Danny Walsh in approximately November.

”Listen,” I said. The circle tightened. ”What you did today will be remembered for the rest of this football club’s history. Every single one of you. The ones who played. The ones who didn’t. The ones who were on the bench willing it. The ones in suits who should be in kits. You are all part of this.”

I looked at Konaté, who was standing at the edge of the circle in his tracksuit, his left hamstring wrapped, his eyes red. ”Ibrahima. You played forty-three matches to get us here. Your hamstring doesn’t change that. You climb those steps with us. You lift that trophy with us. Understood?”

He nodded. He couldn’t speak. The eighteen-year-old who saw the game in spaces was seeing something else now: the space between the boy he was and the man he was becoming.

”Now. Before we go up there.” I paused. ”I need you to hear me. We have Atlético Madrid in ten days. Ten. The Europa League Round of 16. The season is not over. It is not close to over. So tonight, you celebrate. You deserve it. You have earned it. But you celebrate smart. No injuries. No stupidity. No falling off tables. No drinking until you can’t walk. Rebecca is watching.”

Rebecca, standing behind me, raised her tablet. The squad laughed. The laugh of men who knew she meant it.

”Sparkling water for the under-twenties,” I said. ”And I’m not joking. Blake, Kirby, Olise, Morrison, you’re on sparkling water tonight. You can have champagne when you’re old enough to handle the hangover. Which, based on Kirby’s recovery data, will be approximately 2025.”

Kirby grinned. Blake shook his head. Olise, who was sixteen, looked at Kovačić, who handed him a bottle of sparkling water he had apparently been carrying for this exact moment. The Croatian winked. The sixteen-year-old took the bottle and tried not to laugh and failed.

”Right. Let’s go get the trophy.”

The walk to the Royal Box.

Wembley’s tradition. No podium on the pitch. No table with medals laid out on velvet. The walk. The climb. The thirty-nine steps from the pitch to the Royal Box, the red carpet laid over the concrete, the silver medals waiting in their boxes, the trophy waiting on its plinth, the three-handled silver urn that Danny Walsh had seen in the tunnel before the match and had not touched because you do not touch trophies before you have won them.

He had won it. They had won it. And now the captain was going to climb the steps and touch it.

City went first. That was the tradition. The losers climbing first, receiving their runners-up medals, the walk that every losing finalist described as the longest walk in football. De Bruyne climbed the steps with his head down.

Agüero climbed with his medal in his hand, not around his neck. Sterling climbed and took his medal off before he reached the bottom. Kompany climbed last, shook the hand of the EFL chairman, received his medal, and walked down the steps with the posture of a man who would be back.

Then Palace.

The roar began before the first player reached the first step. Forty-five thousand people in the Palace end, on their feet, arms reaching over the barriers, hands outstretched, fingers grabbing at sleeves and shoulders and anything they could reach.

Every single one of them was singing; you could see the happiness in their voices, in their eyes.

The steps to the Royal Box ran alongside the Palace section, close enough to touch, and the fans were touching. Grabbing. Pulling. Not aggressively. Desperately. The desperate need to make physical contact with the men who had just ended a hundred and twelve years.

Wan-Bissaka went first. A hand from the crowd found his arm. He clasped it. Held it for two seconds. The boy from Croydon and a man he had never met, connected by a grip and a football club. Then Chilwell.

Then Sakho, who stopped on the fourth step and leaned into the crowd and let the hands reach him, twenty hands, thirty hands, grabbing his shirt, his shoulders, his face, and Sakho let them because Sakho understood that this was not about him. This was about them. He received his medal and held it up with both hands above his head.

Neves. Kovačić. Navas. Rodríguez, who received his medal with a small nod and then did something nobody expected: he turned to the Palace fans and applauded them.

James Rodríguez, who had played at the Bernabéu and the Maracanã, was applauding the fans of Crystal Palace. The gesture was so sincere, so unexpected, that the section nearest him went quiet for one second before erupting.

Zaha climbed and the noise doubled. He reached over the barrier and grabbed a kid, maybe ten years old, who was crying and reaching for him, and he pulled the kid’s Palace shirt towards him and signed it with a pen that a steward handed him and the kid’s father, behind the kid, was crying harder than the kid was. Zaha pointed at the Palace end. This is for you.

Eze climbed slowly. Still processing. The medal was placed around his neck and he looked at it and touched it, so quietly, so privately, that the cameras lingered on his face for five seconds and the commentators said nothing.

Benteke. Milivojević. Tarkowski. Pato, who received his medal and kissed it and held it against his chest.

The substitutes. The squad players. The academy boys in their suits. Kirby with his sparkling water! Blake with a grin that split his face. Olise, sixteen, climbing the Wembley steps in a suit that was slightly too big for him, receiving a winner’s medal, turning it over in his hands like a boy examining a coin he’s found on the ground and slowly realising it’s gold.

Konaté climbed in his tracksuit. The hamstring. The wrap.

The ice pack was discarded somewhere on the bench. He climbed and the Palace end sang his name and he received his medal and he did not cry because Konaté did not cry but his jaw was so tight that Tom Yates, watching from the pitch, said afterwards: ”I thought he was going to crack a tooth.”

Then Dann.

The captain climbed the steps alone. The last player. The tradition. The ten seconds of solitude.

He climbed slowly. Each step deliberate. The armband on his bicep. The mud on his shirt. And on the seventh step, he stopped. A hand had reached out from the crowd. An old man’s hand. Weathered. Shaking.

The hand of someone who had been waiting a very long time. Dann took it. He held it. He looked at the old man and the old man looked at him and the old man said something that Dann couldn’t hear over the noise but that Dann understood anyway because the hand and the face and the tears were the words.

Dann let go. He climbed the remaining steps. The medal was placed around his neck by the EFL chairman, who shook his hand and said something that Dann didn’t hear because forty-five thousand people were making conversation impossible.

The trophy was on the plinth. The three-handled silver urn. Green and gold ribbons. Four feet away from the captain who had scored the goal that won it.

Dann picked it up, his first-ever trophy. Both hands on the handles, trembling a bit with excitement. He lifted it above his head!

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the constant support.