Glory Of The Football Manager System

The media position was a wall. Forty photographers two deep behind a barrier, long lenses, a noise coming off them like rain on a tin roof, brrrt of motordrives every time anyone so much as turned their head.

And in front of it, stepping straight into my path with a microphone and a sound man behind him, a fella in a gilet. I had his accent before he had two words out.

”Daniel! Daniel, quick word for the English feed. How does it feel landing in Russia as Morocco boss?”

I looked at the microphone with the flag on it. And I answered him in French.

I’ll give you what I said, since it’s no secret to you, only to him.

”A wonderful welcome,” I said, warm as anything. ”These people have come a very long way. Some of them sold a great deal to be here. How could a man not be moved.”

Not one word of it any use to a desk that runs live with no subtitles.

He blinked. ”Sorry, that’s, it’s for the English channel, mate, could you give us it in English?”

I tilted my head. Did the small frown of a man who has not understood one syllable and is heartbroken about it.

Behind him the sound man had already got it and was studying the tarmac very hard, shoulders going.

”In English, Daniel? Just, for the, it’s Sky?”

”Sky,” I repeated, like it was a lovely word in a tongue I’d never heard, and beamed, and gave him one more full sentence of nothing.

Then I leaned in an inch off the microphone and let the broadest Manchester I own out of me, just for him.

”Lovely to meet you, pal.”

And walked off before his face had finished going, the sound man finally barking a laugh he tried to swallow and couldn’t.

Hakimi had filmed all of it from six feet away.

”Coach,” he breathed, reverent. ”Coach. You are an evil man. I am putting this everywhere.”

”You are putting that nowhere, Achraf, give me the, ”

He was already gone into the crowd, untouchable, posting.

The fence got hold of me before Nadia could.

A Moroccan woman, sixty-odd, headscarf knotted under her chin, got both hands round my forearm and would not let go, talking fast and wet-eyed in Arabic, every word of it lost on me.

I looked round for a player to save me. All twenty yards off, drowning in their own.

”I’m sorry, love, I haven’t got the Arabic, I, ”

She gave up on me, patient as a saint, like I was a slow child, and reached for the one word she had been saving.

”Thank you.” Careful. The whole of her English, spent on me.

”You don’t want to thank me,” I said. ”We’ve not done owt yet.”

She patted my arm twice, hard, like I was being daft, and let go. Behind her two Russian women in sun hats were filming the lot of us on their phones and smiling at a thing that was nothing to do with them, and had come down to an airport on a Monday for it anyway.

Nadia got me to the coach the way a sheepdog gets a sheep to a gate, never once seeming to push. It was ours, properly ours. A great silver thing with the green star down the side and the name on it in two alphabets.

Hiss of the doors. Chunk. The roar going small and then gone behind the glass, brmm of the diesel.

A police bike pulled out in front of us, lights going, and stayed there. Two cars slotted in behind. Blip of the siren at every junction to wave us through.

I had never had a motorcade. I’d had a parking warden once.

Bray dropped into the seat beside me.

”Where is it we’re going, anyway.”

”Voronezh.”

”And what’s at Voronezh.”

”Us. For six weeks or for two.”

He looked out at it. The country just kept coming, flatter and greener and bigger than a country has any business being, birch trees and the odd onion dome miles off and every sign in letters I couldn’t get a grip on.

”You know where Voronezh is, do you,” Bray said.

”Not the foggiest, Bray.”

”Comforting. That. From the manager.”

Up the back, Hakimi was showing the Sky clip to the bus. I could hear it land row by row, a laugh travelling backward like a wave, and then Benatia’s voice, low, one sentence, and the laughing stop, and Hakimi’s wounded ”I was only, ” and Benatia’s one more word, and the phone going away.

Best captain I ever had and I’d known him a fortnight.

It was four hundred and fifty kilometres out of Moscow. The bike never left us once. We pulled up outside a Marriott in the early evening, tss of the brakes, in a city I could not have found on a map a month ago and couldn’t spell now if you held my wages.

”Where are we,” said En-Nesyri, nose to the glass, calmer now, a lad who’d survived his first airport.

”Voronezh,” Bray told him.

”Where is that.”

”Russia, son.” Bray was looking out at it himself. ”It’s all Russia.”

Next morning the bus rolled out to the training ground and there were kids on the pavement. Voronezh kids. Russian kids. In Morocco shirts.

”Where’ve they got Morocco shirts,” Marcus said, nose to the glass, back to himself and straight onto a logistics problem. ”We are four thousand miles from a Morocco shirt. There’s no, who’s selling them, there’s a supply chain, somebody’s, ”

”Marcus.”

”I’m just saying it’s interesting, gaffer.”

One of them, eight at most, ran a few yards alongside the bus, slap slap slap of trainers on the pavement, fist in the air, chin up, copying the men off the telly, dead serious about it.

Hakimi was at the glass before I could say owt, palm flat against it. The kid saw who it was, forgot how his legs worked, and just stood in the road with his hands on his head.

”One night,” Bray said. ”One night in this city and we’ve started a religion.”

At the gate there was an old woman. Fold-out stool. A flask. She tap-tapped the side of the bus with the flat of her hand as we slowed, twice, firm, the way you pat a horse you’ve decided you approve of.

”She will be there tomorrow,” the driver said, not turning round. ”And the day after.”

”How do you know,” said Marcus.

The driver shrugged. ”She has decided.”

That night I rang Emma, the city dark out the window and a whole World Cup sat somewhere in it.

Brrr. Picked up before the first one finished.

”I’ve seen the airport,” she said, no hello. ”About forty times. The captain and the little boy. I’ve cried at it four times and I edit emotional manipulation for a living.”

”It got me an’ all.”

”I know it did. You’ve a face in the clip.” The work voice went; the low one came in. ”And then your right-back walked into a box on the internet and bowed.”

”Twice. He walked into two.”

”I’ve seen that as well. I’ve seen everything, Daniel, you lot are all anyone’s looking at.” A pause. ”You answered the Sky man in French.”

”I did.”

”They told the whole country you couldn’t, and you stood on a runway and wouldn’t give them a syllable of English, on their own feed, live.” Quieter than laughing now. ”I had to put the laptop down.”

”You’re forever putting that laptop down lately.”

”You keep doing things to me on television and it’s becoming a problem and it is entirely your fault.” She shifted, the warmth coming all the way down the line. ”I’ll come for the knockouts.”

”If there’s knockouts.”

”There’ll be knockouts.” Flat. Certain. The way she says a thing she’s decided is true and won’t be moved off. ”Go and beat England. Ring me after. I don’t care what time.”

”I will.”

”You’d better. Bonne nuit, you ridiculous man.” Gone before I could answer, which is how she likes to win.

A week to England.