Glory Of The Football Manager System

Friday morning. Madrid. The BA charter to Heathrow was at half eight and we were on the apron at eight because Konaté’s cut had been re-stripped by Rebecca at the hotel and the airline had wanted documentation.

He had a butterfly stitch above his right eye and the white bandage that Rebecca had put on him in the dressing room at the Wanda was on the table next to his coffee in the BA business cabin, brown with dried blood. He had not thrown it away.

Sakho was opposite him. Rodríguez was three rows back on FaceTime to his agent. Bojan was asleep with his head against the window. Pato was reading a Catalan newspaper Bojan had given him. Sarah was at the front with three laptops open and the in-flight wifi on her phone as a hotspot.

I sat down next to her.

”Daniel.”

”Sarah.”

”The internet is broken.”

”Sorry?”

She turned the screen. Twitter open. The hashtag #PalaceInTheQF had been trending since the whistle at the Wanda and had not stopped trending. Henry Winter had filed a five-thousand-word piece for The Times that had gone live at three in the morning UK time.

Sam Wallace at the Telegraph had filed at half past three. Emma had filed at four. The Guardian’s chief football writer had a piece called The Walsh Project: How a Manchester Manager Took South London To Europe on the front page of the sports section.

Sarah scrolled. The BBC website had a graphic. Sky Sports News had a graphic. The Athletic had a graphic. All of them said roughly the same thing.

CRYSTAL PALACE: A SEASON UNLIKE ANY IN THE CLUB’S 112-YEAR HISTORY.

”Read it to me,” I said.

She read it to me.

”First major trophy in 112 years. Carabao Cup, February 25 at Wembley. Crystal Palace four, Manchester City two. Benteke brace either side of the Agüero and De Bruyne goals, Eze’s individual goal in the seventieth, Dann’s header off a Bray set piece in the eighty-seventh.

”First European campaign in 112 years. From Brøndby in the third qualifying round in July to the Wanda Metropolitano in March. Eleven matches. Eight wins. Two draws. One defeat at Lazio that didn’t matter.

”First European group stage win in 112 years. Group H. Won outright. Six wins, no defeats. The empty Marseille corner.”

I stopped her there.

”How many of the seven other teams have you got folders on.”

”Seven. One for each. Three of them I’ve had open for a month. Four of them I built this week as the R16 ties firmed up. I’ll open whichever folder we need at twelve oh one.”

”Right.”

”The draw is at noon. We’re going to be back at Beckenham by then. Let me finish.”

She finished.

”First European knockout round win. Round of 32, AC Milan, eight-one on aggregate. First European Round of 16 win. Atlético Madrid, four-one on aggregate. First European quarter-final ever.”

”Yeah.”

”That’s the Europe column. The other column.”

I closed my eyes. She read.

”Premier League. Seventy points from twenty-eight matches. Currently second, two points behind Manchester City. Nineteen matches unbeaten in the league. Eleven consecutive wins between Stoke away in December and Anfield in February. The Anfield draw ended the eleven. The unbeaten run continues. Palace have not lost a Premier League match since the Arsenal defeat at the Emirates on the twenty-first of October.”

”Almost five months.”

”Four months and twenty-five days. The most goals Palace have scored in a Premier League season since the league was renamed in 1992. The most wins in a Premier League season ever. The most away wins in a Premier League season ever. The fewest goals conceded in a Premier League season for Palace since 1979.”

”Sarah.”

”The third column.”

”What.”

”Steve Coppell. 1990-91. Third in the old First Division. Sixty-nine points across thirty-eight matches. Twenty-nine wins. Arsenal won the league with eighty-three. Liverpool second with seventy-six. Palace third with sixty-nine. That was the highest league finish in the club’s hundred and twelve year history. We have nine matches left. We’re on seventy points. Coppell’s record is sixty-nine points and his all-time-best win column is twenty-nine. The points record is already gone. The wins record is twenty-two against twenty-nine.”

I opened my eyes.

”We’ve already passed his points.”

”Yes.”

”The wins.”

”Twenty-two against twenty-nine. Seven of the next nine.”

”Tomorrow is the FA Cup. Spurs at home. No points on the line for the league column. But the next Premier League weekend, the international break sits in between, then West Brom away on the second of April. Win that. Twenty-three. Six more from the eight that follow.”

”Win that, you’re one closer to twenty-nine.”

”Right.”

She turned the laptop round another quarter and showed me the Henry Winter piece. The headline was the only thing I read.

WALSH’S PALACE HAVE REWRITTEN THE BOOK. THE QUESTION NOW IS WHETHER THE BOOK CAN HOLD WHAT IS COMING.

[Heathrow. 10:18 GMT.]

The press were in the arrivals hall at Terminal 5. About forty of them. We had not been told. Sakho went through first with Konaté at his shoulder. Konaté with the butterfly stitch and the dried blood on the bandage in his hand. There was a flash storm. Someone shouted ”Mama!” and Sakho stopped and signed a kid’s shirt that had been pushed under the barrier. Konaté did not stop.

I walked through with Sarah. A journalist I half-recognised from the Telegraph was at the front of the press scrum.

”Daniel, congratulations.”

”Cheers.”

”What’s the goal now?”

”To beat Tottenham tomorrow.”

”FA Cup quarter-final at Selhurst, five thirty kick-off. Pochettino. How’s the squad?”

”Tired. They’ll be fine.”

”Salzburg rumours for the Europa quarter-final after they beat Dortmund.”

”There are eight teams in the draw. We’ll find out at twelve.”

”Daniel. Atlético. The pitch, the heating, the Costa elbow. What’s the club’s position this morning?”

I stopped walking.

”Crystal Palace Football Club will be lodging a formal complaint with UEFA at midday today. We have video evidence of the Wanda pitch being watered selectively at half-time, which is a UEFA breach. We have temperature logs showing the away dressing room at sixteen degrees on arrival and dropping to fourteen by half-time. We have eight separate angles of the second Costa challenge on Ibrahima Konaté. The referee saw the elbow once. He did not see it twice. The eight angles show it twice.”

”You did not lodge during the tie.”

”No. We did not lodge during the tie because if we had lodged during the tie the story would have been Crystal Palace moaning about a foreign pitch and a foreign dressing room and a foreign striker. We did not want that to be the story. The story is the football. The football is now finished. We won. We’re through. So now we can speak. And we want UEFA to act, because Crystal Palace will play four more European matches this season and somebody will play eight more or twelve more next season, and none of them should have to go through what an eighteen-year-old centre-back went through in the twelfth minute of a quarter-final at the Wanda Metropolitano with a butterfly stitch over his eye.”

”Konaté.”

”Konaté carried the bandage from last night’s dressing room off the plane this morning. He has not thrown it away. He will not throw it away. I would have understood if any one of my players had swung back at any point in those one hundred and eighty minutes across two legs. None of them did. They went two legs against the most cynical defensive side in European football and not a single one of them retaliated. Not one yellow card for retaliation. Konaté is eighteen years old. Sakho is twenty-eight and has played in this kind of football for ten years. Both of them turned the other cheek. I have never been prouder of a group of people in my life.”

”And UEFA?”

”UEFA need to do better. They have rules about pitch maintenance. Those rules were broken last night. They have rules about away dressing rooms. Those rules were broken last night. They have rules about violent conduct. Those rules were broken last night. Their match official saw one of the three breaches. The rest were captured by our camera operators, by their camera operators, and by sixty-seven thousand spectators with phones. We are not asking UEFA to take the win away from us. We won. We are asking them to enforce their own rules so that the next club through that tunnel does not have to send an eighteen-year-old back onto the pitch with three steri-strips over his eye.”

”One last one, Daniel. Coppell’s record. You’ve already passed his sixty-nine points. The wins record is twenty-nine. You’re on twenty-two. Are you breaking that one too?”

”We’ll have to win seven of the next nine. Ask me again in May.”

”You’re a yes-or-no man, Daniel.”

”That’s because I have a football match in twenty-eight hours.”

I kept walking. They followed for another twenty yards and then a club official got in the way and I got into the car park.