Glory Of The Football Manager System

The screen threw it up 40 feet high. His boot. The line. That boot and that line, in slow motion, over and over.

40,000 people who had been mid-roar were now making a noise I have never heard from a crowd before or since. A low, ugly, rolling sound with no shape to it, part groan and part growl, the sound of a stadium being told to hold something in that it physically cannot hold.

Up in the green they had their hands over their faces. Rows of them, arms still through each other’s arms. Men with their heads down and men with their palms open and their eyes shut.

”Ya Rabbi. Ya Rabbi.”

I have never in my life been so cold.

If he is off it, it is a retake. Rakitić does not miss twice. And the whole night falls over.

Steeley’s hand was crushing my arm.

”That’s a foot,” Bray said. ”Danny. That’s a foot off.”

”Shut up.”

”It’s a foot.”

”Shut up, Michael.”

@KenitraKid I AM GOING TO BE SICK. LIVE ON THE INTERNET. IN FRONT OF EVERYONE

@VatreniForever 2 feet off the line. TWO FEET. retake it

@notsteveparish the Palace lad is going to give me a coronary and I don’t even support Morocco

@rachidcasa my father has got off the chair. he is on the FLOOR. he is praying on the FLOOR

40 seconds. 80,000 people held one breath for every one of them.

Then he dropped his hand, pointed at halfway, and blew.

It stood.

And what came out of that green wall was not joy. It was rawer than that. Relief has a sound, and it is uglier than joy, and it goes on a great deal longer.

Boussoufa took an age to get up the pitch. 33 years old, legs gone somewhere around the 90th, walking it like a man going out for the paper.

And they sang him the whole way.

”DI-ma Magh-RIB! DI-ma Magh-RIB!” Slower now, heavier, 40,000 people dragging an old man 60 yards by the voice.

He did not do anything clever.

Put it down. 4 steps. Side-footed it into the corner while Subašić went the other way.

Net.

2-1.

He turned, jogged 10 yards back towards the circle, and had to stop, because his calf went.

So he stood in the middle of a World Cup pitch with his hands on his hips, laughing at himself, while Rebecca ran on with the spray, and 40,000 people laughed with him and kept singing anyway.

The laughing stopped when Mandžukić came out.

Every soul in that ground could do the arithmetic. He misses and Croatia are hanging by their fingernails.

He is 32. Last World Cup he will probably ever play in and he knew it better than I did.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

He put the ball down like it weighed nothing.

High. He always goes high.

Bounou got a hand up there.

Smack.

Over.

And Bounou came off that crossbar and landed in the mud on his backside and did not get up. Just sat there in his own goalmouth with both fists in the air while the entire ground went off above his head.

60 yards away, alone on the corner of the box, Subašić watched it happen.

He did not move.

He knew exactly what was coming next and there was not one thing on this earth he could do about it from where he was stood.

The referee looked at our circle.

He scores and it is over. 3-1. He scores and no 5th man ever walks.

And Youssef came out of that ring, and 80,000 people went quiet.

It did not fade. It dropped, like something falling off a shelf. One second that bowl was full and the next you could hear his studs going into the turf.

You could hear the wind.

Somewhere up in the dark a baby was crying and I could hear it, 50 yards away, over 80,000 people.

Nobody in that stadium let go of anybody. Not the green wall behind halfway, not the checkerboard behind the goal, not the 2 benches on the paint, not the 20 men in 2 rings in the middle of the pitch.

80,000 people, arm in arm, in the deepest quiet I have ever stood inside.

He was not walking properly. That is the thing I could not stop looking at.

His right leg was going stiff on him and he was throwing it out from the hip with every step. And he had 12 yards of the worst grass in Russia to strike a ball off, with the semi-final of a World Cup sat on top of it.

He put the ball on the spot.

It rolled off.

He put it back. It rolled off again.

So he got down on his knees in the mud and dug at the muck with his fingers and packed it in round the ball with the heels of his hands, and the referee stood over him and let him do it.

80,000 people watched a 20-year-old kneel in the dirt and build a little nest for the ball that was going to decide everything.

He got up.

He could not get up cleanly. He got up in 2 goes.

Subašić came at him. All of it, the arms, the mouth, the walk, out to the edge of the box, and the referee had to put a hand on his chest and send him back.

Youssef watched him go the whole way.

Watched him.

Behind me our bench had turned round. All of them, arms still threaded through each other, backs to the pitch. Marcus with both hands over his face. Rebecca staring at the concrete between her boots. Grown men who could not make themselves look at it.

And behind me, up on the rail, in all that quiet, I heard the old man in the green scarf.

Not a chant. Not a roar. Just a man, on his own, low, the way you talk when you mean it.

”Go on, son.”

Peep.

3 steps. He did not slow down. He did not do anything clever. He did not look up.

He hit it as hard as he had anything left to hit it with.

Subašić read it. He read it, and he went, and he got a glove to it.

Thwack. Smack.

It came off that glove and up and hit the inside of the post.

Tok.

And went in.

Net.

And there is a half second before a crowd knows.

I have watched the footage since and it is a whole half second where 80,000 people are stood there with their mouths open, waiting for somebody to tell them it counted.

Then the ground broke.

”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.”

Every arm in that stadium came apart at once. 40,000 people who had been holding each other up for 20 minutes let go and went up, and the tier behind our bench moved on its bolts, and our whole staff chain flew to pieces with Bray’s hands already in my collar.

Except behind that goal. Behind that goal, 40,000 Croatians did not let go of each other at all.

Youssef never saw it go in.

He was already down. The leg went from under him as he struck it and he landed face-first in the mud.

By the time they reached him he still had not lifted his head. Lying on his face in the middle of a World Cup pitch with both hands clamped over the back of his skull and his shoulders going.

They did not celebrate. Not the way you see it on the telly. No sliding. No badge. No running to the flag.

And the nearest man to him in all that stadium was not in the circle. Not on our bench. Not one of the 80,000.

It was the goalkeeper. 18 yards away on the goal line, exactly where the Laws had stood him all night.

Bounou was moving before the ball stopped rolling.

He tore the gloves off as he came, and he did not go to the camera, and he did not go to the crowd, and he did not dive on the boy’s back the way they do on the telly.

He went down on his knees in the mud beside him.

Got both hands under Youssef’s head. And lifted his face up out of the dirt so the lad could breathe.

Then he put his forehead against his and held it there.

10 seconds. The same as he had given every one of them in that circle 20 minutes before, when he was the one shaking.

And 60 yards away the ring broke, and everything left of Morocco came at the pair of them across that pitch. Ziyech first. Then 6 of them, then 10, and half of them had no legs and simply dropped where they arrived.

A heap of green in the mud. And underneath it a goalkeeper holding a boy’s head up out of the dirt, and the boy crying so hard he could not breathe.

80,000 people came apart above them.

I do not believe either of them heard a thing.