Glory Of The Football Manager System

[The Five Bells, Eynsford. 13:10 GMT.]

He drove. Range Rover, fifteen years old, immaculate, a copy of the Racing Post on the back seat. He cut his pie into quarters before he ate it. I cut mine into quarters because he did. He ordered two pints of Spitfire.

He said, around the second forkful:

”Wright and Bright.”

”Yeah.”

”You know they did not speak for the last four months of 1990-91.”

”Heard about it.”

”I had to choose between them in October. I picked Wright. Brighty did not forgive me for nine years. He was at my fiftieth birthday and did not speak to me. He was at my sixtieth and he did. The two years in between were the worst football years of my life.”

He let it sit.

”You haven’t had to do that yet. You will. You’ve got Pato and Benteke and Blake, which is two and a half number nines. You’ve got Eze and Bojan and Rodríguez, which is three number tens. You’ve got Sakho a year off thirty. Dann a year off thirty-one. Konaté is eighteen and the best centre-half in the league in just a season. You can’t keep them all happy. One of them will feel betrayed by you. Pick the one who can handle it. Don’t pick the one who can’t.”

”How do you know which is which?”

”You watch them on the bus after they’ve been left out twice in a row. Watch which one talks to the kids. The one who talks to the kids is the one you can leave out. The one who sits alone with his headphones in is the one you have to play.”

He had a long pull of the pint.

”That is the only piece of advice I can give you that the books don’t already have.”

He told me about Anfield September 1990. The eight-nil. The team-talk he never repeated. The Aston Villa win the following Saturday. The chairman who did not ring him on the Sunday. The wife who got three anonymous phone calls and didn’t tell him until Christmas.

When he had finished telling me about his wife he said: ”You’ve got a partner.”

”Yeah.”

”Does she watch every match.”

”Every one.”

”Does she tell you what she thinks afterwards.”

”Yes.”

”Does she lie to you.”

”No.”

”Hold on to her. There will be twenty people round you in the next decade who will tell you what you want to hear. She is the one who won’t. That is the most valuable thing in this profession. Hold on to it like your life depends on it. Because it does.”

The plates were taken. The second pint was on the table. The rain had started outside the window. He drank it half down before he spoke again.

”I have been wondering for twenty-seven years whether anyone would break the record. I wanted it to be one of mine. Wright didn’t manage. Bright didn’t. Hopkins ran a pub. The closest I came to one of mine was Gareth, and Gareth is busy. So it isn’t one of mine. It’s one of yours. But you have made these Palace boys believe again. That’s close enough. That’s more than I had any right to ask for.”

I did not speak for a beat.

”Come to Wembley, Steve.”

”I’ll be at Wembley. Front row of the Palace end. I’ll buy you a pint after.”

Back at Beckenham at six. He signed a shirt for Mum. To Gillian, the best Crystal Palace fan in Manchester. Steve Coppell. He spoke to Mum on the phone for fifteen minutes while I stood in the corridor outside Sarah’s office and did not listen. He drove himself back to Reading.

I went home with one thing in my head and it was not the wife and it was not the record. It was the line about the Salzburgs of the world. Coppell had said Salzburgs in the analysis room at ten in the morning. He had not been guessing. He had been watching.

[Dulwich. Friday March 23. 19:45 GMT.]

France versus Colombia. Friendly. Stade de France.

Emma was in my hoodie on one end of the sofa with her feet in my lap and a glass of red wine in her left hand.

I had Sarah’s iPad on the arm of the chair with a blank note open. Sakho was wearing the armband for the third time in his France career. Lloris in goal. Pavard on the right. Hernández on the left. Pogba and Kanté in the middle. Griezmann central. Mbappé wide right. Giroud in the nine.

Mbappé.

I had watched a hundred clips of him in the last six months. I had not watched him for ninety minutes in the same match.

He picked the ball up forty yards from goal in the eleventh minute, took two touches forward, took a third with the outside of his right foot, beat one defender on the outside, beat a second on the inside, and laid it square to Griezmann who put it wide. The Colombian defender he had beaten on the inside got up and looked at the back of his shirt for two seconds before he started running again.

I wrote a single word on Sarah’s iPad. Mbappé.

Emma glanced at the screen.

”You’re not thinking about signing him.”

”I’m not thinking about signing him. He’s not for sale.”

”He’s on loan from Monaco. PSG has a mandatory buy clause at the end of the season. One hundred and eighty million euros. He is going to PSG permanently in July whether anyone likes it or not. He is not coming to Crystal Palace, ever, for any money. There is not a number you could write down.”

”I know.”

”You are still writing his name down.”

”Because he is the first nineteen-year-old I have watched in nine months where I have written anything down at all. That is the note. He is the only one.”

She watched him for the rest of the half. So did I. Three times he picked the ball up wide and beat his man without slowing down. Once he came inside and shot from twenty-two yards and Ospina just got to it. Once he held off a Colombian centre-back with his arm and let the ball roll across him to Pogba.

Half-time was Colombia one France one.

Mbappé walked off with his shirt still untucked and Deschamps put a hand on the back of his neck on the way down the tunnel and held it there for a five-yard walk.

I said: ”Deschamps wins two World Cups with him.”

”Two.”

”This summer. And 2022.”

”You’re projecting four years out from a nineteen year old in a friendly in March.”

”I’m projecting four years out from a nineteen year old who just made three Colombian internationals look like they were playing in slow motion. France have Pogba and Kanté and Varane and Griezmann. They’ve already got the spine. The piece they did not have until last year was the one who scores the match-winner you cannot defend. Now they have him. He doesn’t even need to be playing well. He needs to be on the pitch. They will probably win this summer. They will also have a chance to win in 2022. Two World Cups before he is twenty-four.”

”You sound like Frankie when he gets going.”

”I sound like a manager who has just watched Kylian Mbappé play a half of football in a France shirt.”

She looked at the iPad note. The one word.

”Add a note.”

”What note.”

”Add ’two World Cups’ under his name.”

I did. She watched me do it. She gave the iPad back.

He scored at sixty-three minutes. Wonder goal. Picked it up on the halfway line, three Colombian defenders between him and the keeper. None of them got within four feet of him. Buried it past Ospina with his weaker foot. France two, Colombia one.

Emma said, into her wine glass: ”Two World Cups.”

”Two World Cups.”

The other thing I wrote down before the match ended was about Sakho.

I wrote: Sakho thirteen yards deeper for Deschamps. Picking up Falcao with his back foot. Inviting the pressure to come and then stepping in front of it. Could we ask him to do that.

Emma read that one over my shoulder.

”What does that mean.”

”It means Sakho plays a different match for France than he plays for us. He drops thirteen yards. He picks up the centre-forward with his back to the goal instead of running at him. We have him doing the opposite. He runs at people for us. He drops for Deschamps.”

”And what.”

”And against Salzburg, which is a team that runs at our centre-backs in waves, we should ask Sakho to drop and pick them up rather than meet them at the halfway line. We’ve been doing it the other way for nine months.”

”You’ll change it.”

”Sarah and I will look at it on Wednesday.”

”Mbappé.”

”I’ll watch him in Russia in June.”

She smiled and put her wine glass down on the floor and lay sideways across the sofa with her head in my lap and her feet pulled up against the arm. The hoodie rode up. She did not pull it back down. France ran out two-three winners. Colombia got the winner in the eighty-eighth. Sakho was the last one off the pitch.

[Beckenham. Wednesday March 28. 10:00 GMT.]

Tactical room.

Sarah at the back wall with the Marco Rose folder open. Bray on the iPad with the Salzburg-Dortmund tie up on one half of the screen and the Salzburg-Lazio second leg from December on the other. Eze in the back row in a tracksuit because he had come in for training even though the senior boys were not in, and he had asked Sarah if he could sit in. Sarah had said yes.

I went up to the board.

”They press in waves. Four-four-two diamond. Haidara at the base. Schlager and Berisha as the eights. Wolf at the top. Hwang Hee-chan and Dabbur up front. They have not played in any other shape since June. Marco Rose has not changed the system in fifteen matches.”

Bray: ”We’ve been talking about matching them. Four-four-two diamond back. Mili at the base. Neves and Kovacic as the eights. Eze at the top.”

”We don’t match them.”

The room went still for a beat.

Sarah: ”What do we do.”

”Four-two-three-one. Mili and Kovačić at the base. Eze in the ten. Townsend right. Zaha left. Striker on top.”

Bray put the iPad down.

”You’re moving Eze into the 4-2-3-1 environment Coppell flagged on Monday.”

”I’m moving Eze into the 4-2-3-1 environment Coppell flagged on Monday.”

Sarah was already writing. ”Four-two-three-one means we keep our back four. Sakho and Konaté at the centre. Aaron right back. Ben at left. Mili sits in front of the back four. Kovačić carries.

He’s the one who breaks their press with the dribble. They have not got a midfielder who can stay with him for ten yards. He pulls their pressing line out of position every time he turns. That gives us the seven-yard gap we need to find Eze in the half-spaces. Eze plays in front of the diamond and behind their two eights.

The diamond’s base is Haidara. Eze versus Haidara is a mismatch we win every time he can turn. The wide players come inside off the touchline because their diamond doesn’t have wingers. That means Aaron and Ben have the entire flank when we break.”

”That’s the plan.”

Bray: ”Sakho drops deep when we have it. Picks up the second striker when they have it. That’s the Deschamps note.”

”That’s the Deschamps note.”

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.