Glory Of The Football Manager System

”Højbjerg?”

”Southampton will do it at 12. They will not do it at 10. And they know we have got the money because they read the same papers as everybody else.”

”And Hakimi.”

The pause went on so long I thought the line had gone.

”You cannot ask me that.”

”I am not asking you anything.”

”Danny.” Dougie’s voice went flat, the way it does. ”You are the manager of Morocco. That boy plays for Morocco.

”If you so much as breathe near a conversation about his registration while this tournament is running, we are in front of FIFA, and you are finished, and Palace are finished, and it does not matter that you are right.”

”I know.”

”Real Madrid rang him this morning.”

”I know that as well.”

”They can. You cannot.”

And there it is. That is the whole thing in one sentence.

I made that boy. I put him on that right side at 19 years old when a whole country told me he was not ready, and I watched him run 60 yards through Croatia in the 104th minute of a World Cup quarter-final.

And the men who can pick up a phone about him are the men who did nothing, and I have to stand behind a wall and watch, and smile at him at breakfast.

We trained at 11.

I use the word trained.

6 of them could not run. Not could not be bothered. Could not run.

Saïss got to the end of the first jog, stopped, and stood there with his hands on his hips and the expression of a man who has walked into a lamppost.

Boussoufa’s calf had gone to concrete overnight. 20 minutes on a bike and he had to be helped off it.

Benatia jumped for a ball, cleared it by 4 inches, and landed like a sack of coal. He is my captain and he is 31 and on Wednesday he has to jump with Harry Maguire.

Ziyech was fine.

Ziyech was the only one who was fine, and Ziyech had cramp so bad on Saturday that he could take 3 steps at a penalty, and I have given up trying to understand that man.

And Sofyan Amrabat trained like a lunatic.

First out. Last in. Ran until Rebecca physically stood in front of him with both arms out.

He had not kicked a ball on Saturday night.

Nobody has said one word to him about it. Not me. Not anybody.

He ran like he was trying to burn a hole in the grass.

4 days.

100 hours. And I have read enough to know exactly what that buys you, which is nothing.

A man who has played 120 minutes is not right after 24 hours. He is not right after 48. At 3 days his hamstrings are still measurably weaker than they were the morning he walked out, and that is in a laboratory, on a lad who has not just been kicked for 2 hours by Mario Mandžukić.

3 days is the floor. And I had 4, one of which is a travel day and one of which is a press day, and neither of those is a training day.

So what I actually had was 2 sessions.

2 sessions. 11 men who cannot run. Against England.

And here is England.

8 of their 11 goals at this tournament have come from set-pieces. 3 penalties, 4 corners, 1 free kick. The most any side has scored from dead balls at a World Cup since Portugal in 1966.

Maguire heads them. Trippier delivers them. They have a coach on that staff whose whole job is dead balls and who has been to America to study basketball screens, and it shows, because they do not just swing it in, they block for each other, they run decoys, they put bodies in front of goalkeepers.

They beat Sweden with 2 headers.

And 3. Only 3 of those 11 goals have come from open play.

That is the whole thing.

England cannot make a chance. They have played 5 matches and created less in open play than teams who went home a fortnight ago. Take their dead balls away and they have got a lovely back 3 and nowhere to go.

So the plan writes itself, and it is the simplest plan I have ever taken into a football match, and it is horrible.

Do not concede a corner.

Do not foul in wide areas. Do not put it out for a throw in your own third. Do not go to ground.

Do not give Trippier one blade of grass to stand a ball up from. Because if you do, a 25-year-old centre-half from Sheffield who is having the summer of his life will out-jump my captain and put us out of a World Cup.

And press their midfield, because there is only 1 proper central midfielder in it.

That is it. That is the semi-final.

Now go and do it with 11 men who cannot walk down a flight of stairs.

The papers came in at 2.

Marcus did not put them on the table. He held them, and he stood there holding them, and said, ”Danny.”

”Give them here.”

”You don’t need to see these.”

”Give them here, Michael.”

He is not called Michael.

Nobody in that corridor said a word about it, which tells you exactly what they all think of the state I am in.

THE MAN IN THE OTHER DUGOUT

WALSH: THE ENGLISHMAN TRYING TO END OUR DREAM

ONE OF OUR OWN. AND HE WANTS US OUT

WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON?

12 hours.

12 hours ago I was a lovely little story. On Friday one of them ran a warm piece about a lad from Moss Side whose dad had a garage, and they got the name of the road right and everything.

Now there is a photograph of me on a back page with my mouth open and both fists in the air on that white line, screaming, at the exact moment Morocco knocked Croatia out of a World Cup.

And above it, in letters 2 inches high, the country I am from is asking whose side I am on.

Emma had been in that hotel since 10 in the morning.

She came over with Jessica and walked in past the 200 people at the glass and the drum and the flags, and she sat down in that lobby, and she waited.

And I did not go down.

I want that written down as well, because I have not got a good reason for it and I am not going to invent one now.

That woman got on a plane to Voronezh for me. She stood in row 9 for 120 minutes and a shootout. She came down the steps onto a World Cup pitch in the wrong shoes and I picked her up off the top of a barrier in front of 40,000 people.

And on the Sunday I sat 2 floors above her head for 4 hours and did not go down the stairs.

Because she is the only person alive who takes one look at me and knows.

I sat in a plastic chair in an empty function room and I made myself ask it properly. Because if you do not ask it, it does not go away. It just sits in you and it rots.

Is there any part of me that does not want to beat England?

I sat with that for a long time.

And I could not get to no.

That is the truth and I am not dressing it up. Not yes. I did not sit there wanting my own country to lose.

I could not get to no.

Bzz.

The phone went once on the table in front of me, and stopped.

EMMA.

3 words on the screen.

Look up, love.

And I looked up.

She was in the doorway with her coat over her arm and her hair up and yesterday’s mascara not quite all the way gone.

She had been stood there a while. Long enough to watch a grown man sit down in a plastic chair with that question and lose to it.

She did not say anything.

She has never had to.

She came across that room and sat down in the chair next to mine, and took my hand off the table, and held it in both of hers.

And after a bit, without looking at me, she said it.

”Say it, then.”

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.