Glory Of The Football Manager System

A dressing room 1-0 up is a stranger place than one 1-0 down. Nobody knew whether to celebrate the lead or hide from it. Bounou sat with a towel over his head. Hakimi grinned at his phone until Benatia took it off him and dropped it in a boot. THUNK.

CLAP. CLAP. I brought my hands together and got them quiet.

”They have to come now. Cherchesov has no choice. He will throw another striker on before you have had a sip of water, put Dzyuba right up Mehdi’s back, and send the whole ground with him. The first 15 minutes of this half will be the worst of your lives.”

”So we do not chase it. And we do not drop deep and pray, because that is how teams die on this pitch. We keep 2 up. Every time they give it away, and they will, we go, fast, into the grass behind them.”

I dragged a finger the length of their half of the board.

”They send 50,000 forward, there is a prairie in behind. That is not where we hang on. That is where we finish them.”

I stopped at Bounou and lifted the towel off his head.

”Whatever comes at you in the next 20 minutes, son, you have already done the hardest thing anybody will ask of you tonight. The rest of it is just goalkeeping.”

He looked up and nodded, once. ”Ready, Boss. We don’t die today.”

And I gave them the last thing, the one I had held back.

”This country has never won a knockout game at a World Cup. Not once. 32 years ago a Moroccan side stood exactly where you are standing, one win from the quarters, and they lost it. And this country has waited 32 years for another night like this one.”

I looked round every face in the room.

”Nobody who has ever pulled on this shirt has gone further than the 45 minutes in front of you. You can be the first. So you give Russia nothing, and you go and put this country somewhere it has never been.”

Benatia stood up, slow, and looked at them. ”For the ones who waited,” he said.

And the room came up off the benches roaring. ”TO THE QUARTERS!”

Cherchesov did what I had told them he would, to the letter. Smolov came off the bench before the second half had kicked off, a striker for a midfielder. Dzyuba climbed straight onto Benatia’s back, and the ground came up off its seat like the first half had never happened.

”РОССИЯ! РОССИЯ!”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The noise came up out of the floor, all of it, the fortress remembering what it was built for. And they came. God, they came.

For 20 minutes it was men against the sea. Golovin dropping and driving, dragging us one way and slinging it the other. Cheryshev flying at Hakimi. Dzyuba bullying Benatia in the air, roaring for it every time it went wide.

”Сюда! Сюда!” Here, here, give it to me!

PAAAARP went the horns. THUD, THUD, THUD went 50,000 pairs of boots on the concrete, and I felt every one of them come up through my studs.

Benatia bawled his line into shape. ”On your feet! Do not dive in! Hold the line!”

Bounou screamed it dead straight behind them. ”With me! With me! You do not pass!” He was a keeper conducting a back four that would not crack.

And up in the red the answer went from the fans. ”HOLD, LIONS! HOLD!” 30,000 Moroccans refusing to be sung out of the building.

52 minutes in, Golovin found half a yard on the edge and hit one with everything he had, and the gift lit it up before it left his boot, screamed the danger at me and gave me nothing to do with it but watch.

Bottom corner. Dead.

THUCK.

Bounou got down to it full length and shovelled it round the post with a hand he had no right to reach it with.

50,000 people screamed a goal and swallowed it half born, a groan out of one wounded animal that I felt come up through my ribs.

The corner came in and Dzyuba rose over Saïss and met it clean. A header like a punch. WHACK. But Bounou was somewhere no keeper had any business being, up and across and clawing it over his own bar. SMACK.

And now it was the Russia end with both hands on their heads, and 30,000 in red chanting a goalkeeper’s name like a number 9.

”YASSINE! YASSINE! HE’S A BRICK WALL!”

I was reading Cherchesov across the technical area like a chess clock, and every move he made I had an answer down before he had finished making it. He went for the throat, so I choked the middle.

Boussoufa dropped in beside Sofyan, two banks in front of the back four. Nordin tucked under. Hakimi and En-Nesyri left high and lonely, the whole point of us. Do not chase. Hold. And when it breaks loose, go.

They threw everything at that shape for 20 minutes and the sheet stayed clean, and every wave that broke on Bounou and did not go in took a little more out of their legs and out of their crowd.

At the 65th minute, I made the call I had been building to all half. Nordin was on empty, chasing their overlaps back 60 yards a time. I wanted fresh legs to punish that prairie the instant we won it back. Boutaïb came on at a sprint, and I caught him by the collar before he could go.

”When we win it, you do not check and you do not look. You run in behind them. They have left the door hanging open. Go through it and end their tournament.”

At 71 minutes, Golovin overhit one trying to force the game, and Sofyan Amrabat was there, an hour and 11 minutes into the hardest running of his life and still first to the ball. He did not hook it clear. He put his head up, and he drove.

40 yards with it, three red shirts backpedalling off him, straight into the space they had emptied, and I read the one number that made me want to laugh out loud in the middle of a war.

S. Amrabat. Stamina 18. Form 15 to 16. Not tiring.

He rolled it wide to Boutaïb, who had gone the instant the ball broke, and Boutaïb stood it up first time, hung it at the back post. Ziyech had ghosted in off the blind side the way only he does, and he did not let it drop. He met it on the half-volley, a whip of the boot.

CRACK.

I watched the ball come off his laces and climb, and for the length of that flight the whole of Luzhniki went with it, 78,000 pairs of eyes on one white ball.

Top corner. Akinfeev threw a glove at it and got a fistful of Moscow air.

SMACK.

And the celebration died in every throat before it left. The assistant on the far side had his flag down but a hand pressed to his own ear.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.