Glory Of The Football Manager System

The next one was worse for England, because it was Sofyan.

But he heard the song before the ball ever reached him. Still going, telling him it was coming home. [”IT’S COMING HOME! IT’S COMING HOME!”] And I watched him lift his head and take it in, and I watched the jaw set.

Because Sofyan Amrabat did not grow up in that pub in Manchester.

Sofyan Amrabat grew up being told he was not quite Dutch, and had spent a week listening to a whole continent argue over whether he was even quite African, and now 38,000 people were singing that a trophy was on its way home, to a country that had never once counted him among its sons.

Modrić heard this song too, I thought. 6 days before he used it to knock England out. Ziyech got told no by Holland. This one got told no by Holland. Half my pitch got told no by somebody.

They did not need my team talk.

England were singing it for me.

He robbed Lingard 40 yards from their goal and did not pass it, he drove, the way he drives, 30 yards eaten with the ball roped to his boot and 2 white shirts backing off him because they could not get near enough to risk the tackle.

He fed Carcela wide, exactly where I had planted him, up on that full-back’s chin, and kept running, and the ball came back to put him through the inside-left channel with the whole thing gaping open ahead of him.

Maguire, a good defender having a good tournament, did the only thing left and hauled him down 30 yards out.

[FWEEEP!] Faghani’s hand was already going for his pocket. Then it went to his ear instead, and he stopped.

VAR.

78,000 people made a sound with no shape to it, that low rolling growl of a crowd ordered to hold in something it physically cannot hold [Rrrrrummmmbbbllle...], while a man in a truck somewhere decided whether it was the last man, whether it was red.

The green end had their hands on their heads. The English end whistled. [FWEEEEEEET!] And Maguire lay on the grass with both hands over his own face, because he knew precisely how close it had come.

How near he had gone to the tunnel, to the 10 men left behind him, to being the centre-half who got sent off in a World Cup semi-final and handed it to Morocco.

Stones had a hand on his shoulder. Kane was in the referee’s ear, walking backwards alongside him, doing the captain’s job, making the case, buying his man the 20 seconds.

And Pickford had come 10 yards off his line to bellow at Faghani about nothing, about anything, because a keeper will always go and shout for the man the truck is deciding to send off.

20 seconds. It was the shootout all over again. My hands were on top of my head and I made myself pull them down, because the bench watches the manager, and a manager with his hands on his head has already told them the thing you never tell them.

Then Faghani’s hand came off his ear, and he pointed at his own arm, and the card was yellow, and the green end let its breath go in a roar that was half relief and half fury that it was not more. [”YEEEE... BOOOOOO!”]

And the whistling started up, and it did not stop, and it was not about Maguire at all. [FWEEEEEET! FWEEEEEEEEET!]

It was about me.

Because I had come up out of my crouch to have a word with the fourth official, and 38,000 people saw the traitor on his feet and let me have it. A wall of whistles, and threaded under it my own name, turned into something you spit. [”WALSH! TRAITOR! WALSH!”]

I have been booed. I have never been hated. This was hate, the real article, the particular hate of people who believe a thing has been stolen from them by one of their own, coming down off that white bank onto one man on a white line, and the man was me.

I looked up at them for the first time all night.

38,000 English faces. My people. My dad’s song still hanging in the air over their heads.

And I turned my back on it and watched my Moroccans set a wall for the free kick, because that is the job, and the job does not stop just because it hurts.

[Fweep. Fweep. Fweeeeeeep.]

Half-time. Morocco nil, England one.

And it was the biggest lie of a scoreline I have ever carried down a tunnel. We had throttled them and battered them on the break, and all they had to show for it was one moment of a dead-ball genius doing the one thing dead-ball geniuses are put on earth to do.

I knew it, and I could read it in the walk of my fringe men coming off that mud. Heads up. Not one of them bent. The boys who had gone the colour of the tunnel wall an hour ago now walking like men who had just worked out they belonged here.

Da Costa had a cut over his eye from meeting one of those corners with his face and had not noticed it yet. Bouhaddouz was hiding a limp on the ankle Walker had stood on.

They had bled a little, and they had not gone under, and that is a better half-time than any lead.

Harit came past and I caught his arm.

”You have been the best player on that pitch,” I told him. It was true. ”First start of your life. A World Cup semi-final. And you are the best player on the pitch. Remember I said that to you.”

He nodded, and something crossed his face that was not fear any more.

The big screen over the tunnel was rolling Trippier’s free kick again as we went down the steps, over and over, and the English fans packed into the concourse cheered it every time.

[”YEEEAAAHHH!”] One of them clocked me and the staff going by and shouted something with the word traitor in it and my name on the end, and Bray took a step, and I put a hand flat on his chest.

”Leave it,” I said. ”Let them sing.”

Because 3 days earlier I had stood over a whiteboard in the treatment room, over 6 ambers and the reds and the one red line that was worse than red, and told Rebecca the plan, and the plan was never to be ahead at half-time.

The plan was to still be standing at half-time.

And we were still standing.

[Clack... clack... clack... boot studs off the concrete, the roar of the ground dulling behind us.]

I got them into that dressing room. 11 nobodies, a bench of broken men, and a captain who could not jump sat in the corner with his voice already gone raw from coaching a match he was not being paid to play.

I did not shout. There was nothing to shout about.

”Right,” I said. ”You have done the hard 45. You have taken their best 15 minutes and their best player’s best moment, and you are 1 goal down, and you have not been second best for one second of it.”

I looked round at them. Munir. Da Costa. Fajr. Harit. Carcela. Bouhaddouz. The Amrabats. Men that white end had never heard of an hour ago and would not forget by midnight.

”Now the second half. And I am telling you one thing, because Nordin gave you the rest last night, and I am not going to improve on it.”

I let it sit.

”Their number 18 has been blowing since the 5th minute. Their whole left side is a 33-year-old running on fumes and a centre-half on a booking who is frightened of Sofyan.

”In 15 minutes their legs go. In 15 minutes that 1 goal becomes the worst thing that ever happened to them, because it talked them into sitting on a lead they cannot hold for 45 more minutes against us.”

I picked the ball up off the floor and put it into Sofyan Amrabat’s hands.

”They have sung all night that it is coming home,” I said. ”Let us go and tell them where it is actually going.”

***

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