Glory Of The Football Manager System

The ball pinged round our box off Russian shins and foreheads, ping, ping, 50,000 lifting them with every touch. ”ДАВАЙ! ДАВАЙ!” Come on, come on. A whole country shoving at our backs, and Cherchesov up out of his seat on the far touchline, both fists pumping, driving them harder.

Benatia was organising, roaring over the din, ”Saïss, tighten up! Squeeze!” Bounou came and punched one off Dzyuba’s head, thump, and screamed at his four, ”Get out! Push out!”

And we were tight. I could see it from the line. The lads who’d played 3 weeks without a shred of fear were half a yard slow, a touch heavy, hearing the din.

Sofyan gave one away he would never give away. Saïss headed one behind under no pressure at all, thud, just to be safe, and the corner sailed in and my heart went into my mouth.

I roared at them to hold, hold, breathe, and I couldn’t hear my own voice, and neither could they. You cannot shout through a wall of 50,000.

So I stopped wasting my throat and managed the only way left to me. I sent Bray 20 yards down the line to get level with Boussoufa and bawl in his ear, drop in, sit on Dzyuba, kill the flick-on.

I caught Sofyan’s eye across the din and stabbed a finger at the grass in front of me, sit there, do not get dragged out of it. You coach a night like this with your hands.

And the gift did its usual work. The live numbers on my players dipping in front of me, heads going, legs going, showing me every yard of it and handing me nothing to mend it with. It shows you the fire. It never once passes you a bucket.

15 minutes of it. Corner after corner, paaarp of the air horns, the whole ground baying for a goal, and then it came, the one thing I would have paid folding money not to see.

Golovin swung it in from the right. Dzyuba climbed all over the back of Saïss at the far post, a great knot of arms and shirts, and the ball dropped off somebody and cannoned into Mendyl’s arm from a yard away.

The referee did not hesitate for a heartbeat. He was pointing at the spot before the ball had stopped rolling, sprinting in, pheep pheep, arm rigid, and Luzhniki came apart at the seams.

”PENALTY! YES!” screamed the Russia bench, up as one man, and 50,000 went up with them, pointing at the spot, a roar that came through my boots and into my chest.

A penalty. Here. On this pitch. Where a room of men in a bunker had already reached into our lives once and torn them to pieces.

A cold sweat went across the back of my neck.

Mendyl had both hands on his head. Benatia was in the referee’s face, pointing back at Dzyuba, at the shove, at Saïss still down holding his ribs, and the referee walked him off with one hand up, not remotely interested, and booked him for the mouth, pheep.

The Russia end whistled Benatia down every step he was marched back, 50,000 of them jeering him to shut it and get on with it.

I stood there waiting for the purple square. Waiting for the big screen. Because it is the same machine, and this time it was not coming to save us. The referee pressed his earpiece, listened a second, two, and waved it away. No review. Given. The spot.

The 50,000 knew exactly what they had. The noise doubled, a wall of red and white up on its feet.

Artem Dzyuba took his time. He looked down at Saïss, still on the deck holding his ribs, and there was nothing on his face but contempt, like the lad was something he’d stepped in.

Then he lifted the ball out of the referee’s hands, set it on the spot himself, slow, deliberate, all 6 foot 5 of him, and stared down the length of the box at Bounou like no save had been invented that could stop him.

And the gift did the one thing it does when it cannot help me. It lit the danger up and left me holding it, powerless, the loudest man’s game in the world about to get louder.

”ДЗЮ-БА! ДЗЮ-БА!” rolled off the Russia end, 50,000 of them booming their giant on to finish us.

And Yassine Bounou walked his line. He slapped his gloves together, clack clack, and stared back up the box at Dzyuba, giving the giant nothing.

I couldn’t do a thing. Managers never can, in that second. All I could do was look at my keeper, and at what the numbers had been telling me quietly for a week.

Bounou. Composure 17. Reflexes 18. Loves the big one.

Numbers don’t take penalties. Managers don’t either. But if it was going to come down to one man to keep us in it, I wanted it coming down to him.

Dzyuba blew his cheeks out. The referee checked the keeper was on his line, checked the box was clear of bodies, stepped away, pheep.

The whole ground held its breath at once.

Dzyuba ran up and battered it, crack, low and hard to Bounou’s right.

And Bounou went. Full stretch, one strong hand down on it, and turned it round the post.

THUCK.

I have never heard 78,000 people make two sounds in the same second like that. 50,000 of them screamed, and the scream strangled in their throats halfway out, and died. And 30,000 in red went off like a bomb under the roof. ”YASSINE! YASSINE! YASSINE!” screaming his name into the silence where a goal should have been.

Bounou was up off the turf before the ball reached the corner flag, both arms flung wide, beating his own chest and roaring into the teeth of the Russia end, ”COME ON! COME ON!”

Benatia had him, and Saïss up off his ribs, and the whole back four piling onto their keeper in his own six-yard box while the corner came to nothing.

Up in the red corner, 30,000 of them, my 40 from South London in the middle of it, a fella with his shirt already off and swinging it over his head, the old man on his feet with both fists jammed at the sky.

I turned to Bray and we didn’t say a word, we just grabbed hold of each other, because that was the whole night turning, right there in front of us, and you could feel it move under your feet.