Glory Of The Football Manager System

At 10 they came into the team room, scrrk, scrrk, scrrk of chairs dragged over that horrible hotel carpet, 23 men and the smell of coffee and menthol rub.

Somebody’s phone went off. Bzz-bzz. Killed inside a second. The projector fan hummed over the top of everything, hhhhh, and out through the wall, faint but there, that drum in the road.

I let them settle and shut up on their own.

Half of them still had Wednesday in their faces. That shine that does not come off for a week.

And that shine was the most dangerous thing in the room, and somebody had to take it off them, and it was going to have to be me.

”Right,” I said. ”France.”

Click.

I showed them the truth, because I am not walking 23 men into a World Cup final wearing a blindfold I tied on them myself.

I showed them Belgium. The best group of players that country has ever produced, having the ball for an hour, getting nowhere with it. Hazard beating a man and Varane’s leg arriving out of nothing. 2 banks. No gaps.

Then I ran the turnover at full speed with no commentary, and I watched 23 heads go still.

Mbappé, in the space, gone.

”Again.”

Marcus ran it back. Click. They watched it again, and this time somebody at the back swore quietly in Arabic.

”9 seconds. Box to box, 4 passes. That is what happens the moment you lose it with men up the pitch.”

Nobody said anything. The projector fan hummed.

”So. Here is where we are, and I will say it once, and then we never say it again in this building.”

I put the clicker down.

”On paper, we lose this match. They have better players than us in nearly every position. They are rested, they are the meanest defence in this tournament, and they have a 19-year-old up there faster than anybody any of us has played against.”

Benatia’s head came up. Sofyan’s jaw set.

”Every pundit on television has picked them. The bookmakers have picked them. If you go on your phone this afternoon you will find 100 million people explaining, politely, what a lovely story we have been.”

I let that sit.

”Now. Here is what none of them have worked out.”

Click. The team sheet came up on the wall.

And the room changed. I watched it go round those chairs like a current through water.

”Wednesday I sent a side out to beat England, and it beat England. And while it did, some of the best players at this tournament sat in tracksuits and watched.” I ran the pointer down. ”Bounou. Hakimi. Benatia. El Ahmadi. Boussoufa. Ziyech.

”5 days’ rest. Not one of you kicked a ball in that semi-final. France have played 120 minutes against Uruguay and then a war against Belgium, and they are 2 days behind us on legs.”

Ziyech was forward on his elbows now.

”They are expecting a tired team of reserves who overachieved. They are going to be shown 11 fresh men who have not been on a pitch in a week.”

Boussoufa said something in Arabic that got a low noise out of half the room.

”And the way we hurt them,” I said, and looked straight at Ziyech, ”is the thing they showed the world on Thursday that they cannot deal with. Umtiti won that semi from a corner. Their block is the best in football. Their box is not.

”Hakim. You will take 8 or 9 set-pieces on Sunday. Every one of them is a chance, and I want them in the same place every time.”

”Which place?”

”On the grass this afternoon. You will be sick of it by Sunday.”

”Good.”

Then Sofyan Amrabat put his hand halfway up, which he has never done in his life, and put it down again, and said it anyway.

”Coach. Can I ask you something, so I have it right in my head?”

”Ask.”

”You want us to keep the ball.” He said it carefully, like a man reading a word he has not seen before. ”So we are not running at them. We are not countering. We are not going forward together.”

He opened his hands, and there was nothing in it but a lad trying to understand.

”That is us, coach. That is what we are. It is how we beat Spain. It is how we beat England on Wednesday.”

”I know.”

”So you are asking us to be a different team. In 2 days.”

And there it was. The thing that had been sat in my chest like a swallowed stone since Thursday night, said out loud by a 21-year-old in a hotel meeting room with a projector fan going.

I could have talked round it. I did not.

”Yes. That is exactly what I am asking. You are right that it is a big ask and I am not going to pretend otherwise.”

Nobody moved.

”Here is why. If we go at France the way we went at England, we lose. Not might. Will. Everything that makes us good is the exact thing they are built to punish. They want us to come. They are praying we come.”

I leaned on the table.

”The only sides that have troubled them kept the ball off them and made them chase it. Nobody has managed it for 90 minutes yet. Nobody.”

”And you think we can.”

”I think we are the fittest team left in this competition. I think 11 men in this room have had a week’s rest.

”And I think if we keep it for 60 minutes, then somewhere in the last 30 there is one corner, one throw, one mistake, and Hakim puts it on somebody’s head.” I straightened up.

”That is the plan. It is thin. It is the only one that works, and I would not stand here and sell you something I did not believe.”

Sofyan was quiet for a second. Then he nodded, once, and I watched him put the whole thing away and pick up the new one, which is a harder thing to do than people think.

”Then we had better get good at keeping the ball by Sunday,” he said, and there was a low noise of agreement round those chairs that I have not stopped being grateful for since.

”That is this afternoon. Bring your lungs.”

They had people at the training-ground fence when we got there.

Not a crowd. They had shut the roads and there were police on the gate and it was supposed to be closed. There were maybe 40 of them, pressed up against green mesh at the far corner of the pitch where a gap in the trees let them see.

An old boy in a folding chair he had brought with him. A bloke selling flags out of a suitcase who had walked to the exact spot where he could sell flags to 40 people. 3 lads who should have been at work.

They started up the second the cones came out.

[”DI-MA MAGH-RIB!”] Clap-clap. [”DI-MA MAGH-RIB!”]

40 voices in a field. It sounded thin and daft and enormous all at once, and Nordin Amrabat put both arms up at them without breaking stride, and they went off their heads.

Then we got to work, and it was ugly.

There was a drone up somewhere over the trees, zzzzz, some agency’s, and Mustapha spent 10 minutes glaring at it like he could bring it down with his eyes.