Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Groupama Stadium. Full Time. Crystal Palace 3-2 Arsenal.]

I went looking for the loser first.

The pitch was chaos, bodies everywhere, Pato cartwheeling in his bib, Wilf on his knees at the centre circle with his shirt over his face, twenty thousand people behind the goal making a noise you could lean on. And then the noise found words, up at the top of the away end somewhere, and came down the cliff gathering voices as it fell.

DUM. DUM. DUM. ”CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE! CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE!”

A hundred and thirteen years old, this football club. Five points off relegation thirteen months ago, on a losing streak, with an under-eighteens coach in a borrowed tracksuit. Champions of Europe by the time the song reached the front row.

Every lad I had was sprinting towards that end.

And I walked the other way, the long way, across to the far technical area, because there was a sixty-eight-year-old man standing alone in it and some things get done in the right order or not at all.

Wenger watched me come. He did not move to meet me halfway. Men who have lost four European finals have earned the right to make the winner walk.

I offered my hand. He took it in both of his.

”Monsieur Walsh.”

”Mr. Wenger. I enjoyed it. Like I promised.”

”I know.” Something almost smiled in his face and then thought better of it. ”I watched you enjoy it. It is the worst part of losing, watching a man keep his promise.” He looked past me at the pile of red and blue in the centre circle. ”Four finals. I thought tonight, perhaps, the game would...” He stopped himself. Straightened his coat. ”The game owes nobody anything. Where is the boy?”

”Which boy. I’ve got eleven of them.”

”You know which boy.”

Eze was thirty yards away with his arms round Olise’s neck, and Wenger walked to him through the chaos, and I let him go and watched it from where I stood.

I couldn’t hear a word of it. I saw the old man take Eze’s hand in both of his, the same way he’d taken mine. I saw him talk, and Eze go very still, all the lighthouse calm of him just stopping, and I saw Wenger reach up and touch the back of Eze’s head the way a grandfather does it, twice, and then button his coat and walk away.

Behind the far goal the Arsenal end had not moved. Not one of them had left. The fifty feet of bedsheet still hung off the tier, MERCI ARSÈNE, and they sang his name through their own broken hearts, all of them, beaten 3-2 in a final and singing, and Wenger stopped at the mouth of the tunnel and raised one hand to them, just one, and held it there for three seconds.

Then twenty-two years went down a tunnel in Lyon and did not look back.

Eze found me two minutes later. His eyes were wrong. Shining wrong.

”Gaffer.”

”What did he say, lad?”

”He said they were wrong about me.” Eze swallowed. ”He said he argued for me when I was fourteen and he lost the argument, and that he is glad. He said he is glad he lived long enough in football to be punished for it properly.”

”Bloody hell.”

”Yeah.” Eze wiped his face with his palm, quick, like it was sweat and we’d both agree it was sweat. ”Yeah.”

”Go on then, lad. Your people are waiting.”

He went. I followed him.

[The Away End. 22:56 CEST.]

The whole squad was strung along the hoarding under the cliff of red and blue, and the end was in full voice, and the stewards had stopped stewarding because there are nights when stewarding is decorative.

Wilf was ON the fence.

Up on the hoarding, both boots, one fist wrapped in the netting, the other arm out wide. A Croydon boy stood on a fence in France with twenty thousand of his own screaming his song back at him. He lost a final in this badge in 2016 and carried it round Croydon for two years, and now he stood above his people with his head back and his eyes shut, soaking in it.

FSSSSH. A flare went up, pink smoke sideways across the floodlights. A flag the size of a five-a-side pitch went hand over hand across the lower tier, SOUTH LONDON AND PROUD, the drum somewhere under it holding the whole thing together.

You cannot take a moment like that in. Your eyes grab two or three things and lose the rest, and I lost the rest. What I kept was an old fella three rows up, on his own patch of step, stood dead still in the middle of all the madness, crying into a white ladies’ sun hat older than most of my squad. Putting it back on. Taking it off. Crying into it again.

Then Wilf spotted me at the edge of it.

”GAFFER!” He came off the fence in one jump. ”No. No, no, no. Get HERE.”

”Wilf...”

”GET HERE!” He got a fist in my collar, laughing, hauling, and Christopher had my other arm, and they marched me to the middle of the hoarding and planted me in front of twenty thousand people and stepped back and pointed at me with twenty hands.

The song changed. The whole end, all at once.

RAAAAAAAH. ”WALSH IS ONE OF OUR OWN! WALSH IS ONE OF OUR OWN!”

Every instinct I own said wave once and step back. Deflect. Point at the lads, point at the badge, get out of the light. Thirteen months of waving once and stepping back.

Sarah’s voice in my head. Mama’s. Take it.

So I stood still, hands at my sides, in front of twenty thousand South Londoners singing my name into a French night, and I took it. All of it. The under-eighteens canteen and the cheap pasta.

The five matches Steve gave me. The convenience store on Princess Road at eight pounds fifteen an hour. The lad nobody had heard of thirteen months ago, stood in front of a club that had waited a hundred and thirteen years, champions of Europe, and it was mine, ours, real.

Wilf’s arm landed round my neck, his mouth at my ear, screaming over the song.

”YOU DID THIS! YOU HEAR ME, GAFFER? YOU DID THIS!”

I heard him.

For once in my life, I let myself hear him.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.