Glory Of The Football Manager System

The dressing room was wet and loud as we had just won the first round of 16 match in Palace’s history. Sakho was on the bench with his head on Konaté’s shoulder.

Rodríguez was tying his bootlaces with the slow careful concentration of a man who had just left everything he had on a pitch and didn’t yet know how to be in his body again. Pato was singing in Portuguese. Bray was hugging Rebecca. Steele was hugging everyone.

I waited until they were looking at me. Took a second longer than usual.

”You should be proud of yourselves. Don’t think about that team in too many big nights of football. Won’t see one like that again for a while. Eleven goals in twenty-six and we got three in ninety.”

A cheer. Sakho thumped Konaté on the chest.

”But. Half a tie. They’ve got an away goal. Madrid will be a different match. They’ll do something to the pitch, they’ll come at us for ninety. We worry about that next week. Tonight you go home, you see your families, and you have a drink if you want one. Tomorrow morning, eleven o’clock, Beckenham. Recovery. Sunday is Huddersfield at Selhurst and Huddersfield is three points, and three points are what wins us the league.”

Rodríguez nodded.

Sakho put his hand on his chest.

Konaté smiled. First time all season.

”Recover. Sunday. Then Madrid. In that order. Now bugger off out my dressing room.”

They roared. Bray clapped me on the back as I went past. Steve Parish was waiting in my office with two glasses of whisky and a smile he wasn’t bothering to hide.

”Eleven in twenty-six,” he said.

”Three in ninety.”

He laughed. We drank. I sat down. He sat down. The whisky was good. The whisky was always good when you’d won. We didn’t say much.

I left at twenty past ten.

The streets round the ground were still loud. Pubs still pouring. Kids who should have been in bed were singing on a low wall outside the chip shop on Holmesdale. I pulled out onto Whitehorse Lane and the noise came with me for half a mile.

I went up through Croydon with the window cracked. Cold air. talkSPORT was on. The phone-in was already going. A caller from Belfast said ”That Walsh kid is the best young manager in Europe and I don’t care who I’m upsetting saying it.” I turned it down.

I was thinking about Emma.

She’d told me on Monday she wasn’t coming to the match. Her piece for The Athletic was up at midnight, and the next Terrace episode was in edit, and she couldn’t do both unless she did them at home.

”I’ll watch on the telly. I’ll write something on Sakho that’ll make him cry next time he reads it. Then you come home.” I’d argued for about two minutes. She’d won.

Somewhere around Streatham, past the common, I saw the lights.

A jewellers on a corner. Old Victorian building. Scaffolding up the front above the shop. The shop itself lit up. A man in a waistcoat moving about behind the counter.

I went past it. Drove another fifty yards. Stopped.

Sat for a moment with the engine running.

I’m not really sure why I turned round.

I parked across the road. Walked over. The bell over the door rang when I pushed it.

The man behind the counter looked up. He took a second to place me. Then he placed me and worked very hard not to show it.

”Evening.”

”Sorry. I thought you were closed.”

”Technically, I am. Renovating upstairs. Plumbers in at six tomorrow.” He gestured at the ceiling. ”I’m just clearing the cases. The till’s not on, mind. Couldn’t sell you anything properly tonight even if you wanted me to.”

”That’s fine. I won’t keep you.”

”No, take a look. While you’re here. Honestly, you’re the first person through that door this late in months. The night air’s nice for it.”

I walked over to the case. He went back to whatever he’d been doing, which was wrapping things in tissue paper and putting them in a green velvet tray. He didn’t hover. Didn’t try to sell anything. Didn’t ask the occasion.

I looked at the rings.

I didn’t know what I was looking at. Solitaires. Stones with smaller stones beside them. Yellow gold and the silver-coloured one whose name I couldn’t remember. There were a lot of them.

One of them was set near the back. A single oval stone. Low. Plain band. It wasn’t the biggest by a long way. It wasn’t trying to be anything.

I stood and looked at it.

”That one,” the man said, without coming over. ”Not the biggest. Some girls want a ring you can see from across a pub. Others want a ring that looks like it was always there. That’s the second kind.”

”How much is it?”

He told me.

It was less than I’d expected. Less than I’d spent on the DB11’s service last month, actually. I’d thought rings were thousands and thousands.

I looked at it for another minute.

”Not tonight,” I said.

He nodded. Didn’t try anything.

”Take a card. I’m Tuesday to Saturday. We’ll be done with the building work in three weeks.”

I took the card. I put it in my wallet. We shook hands. I left.

I sat in the car for a while before I started the engine. I’m not sure how long. Probably less time than it felt.

I drove the rest of the way to Dulwich with the radio off.

I’d expected the apartment to be dark. Article filed. Podcast done. Emma asleep on the sofa under a blanket the way she’d been on Monday night.

The lights were on.

I opened the door.

She was on the sofa. Laptop closed. One empty wine glass on the table. Another in her hand, half drunk. The oversized academy hoodie she’d nicked off me eighteen months ago and a pair of black leggings. Hair down.

”Hi.”

”You took your time.”

I closed the door. ”Sorry. Got held up.”

”Where?”

”Streatham, weirdly.”

”Streatham?”

”I’ll tell you tomorrow. Maybe.”

”Right.” She put the glass down. ”Come here.”

I went over. She stood up, put both hands flat on my chest, looked up at me.

”I filed ten minutes ago,” she said. ”Twelve hundred words about a man coming home. The headline is The Painting at Selhurst Park.”

”That was the line I gave them in the dressing room.”

”You said it to me on the phone on Monday. Twice. I had the headline before kick-off.” She tilted her head. ”Sakho cried, didn’t he.”

”In the corner flag. In French. Konaté was holding him.”

”I knew.”

”You watched the whole thing?”

”Every minute. Cried twice. Not saying which two.” Her hand went to the back of my neck. She smelled like wine and her shampoo. ”You smell like a football ground.”

”Sorry.”

”Don’t be sorry. Just shut up for a bit.”

I shut up.

The last thing I remember thinking, before I stopped thinking for a while, was that the card from the jeweller was in my wallet, and the wallet was in the jacket pocket, and the jacket was on the floor.

[23:51. Home.]

[Wanda Metropolitano. Seven days.]