Glory Of The Football Manager System

For 22 minutes we kept the ball, and it was the hardest thing that squad has ever done.

The 9th minute is the one I would show you.

Thud. Bounou rolled it out to Saïss. Saïss to Benatia, square, no risk. Benatia stood on it for 2 seconds while Griezmann came at him and then slid it into El Ahmadi’s feet with Griezmann 3 yards away.

Tk. El Ahmadi took it on the half-turn and gave it to Boussoufa.

And Boussoufa had Paul Pogba on his back.

33 years old, playing his football in the United Arab Emirates, a man whose entire career happened in places the cameras do not go. He took it on the outside of his right foot, rolled his hip, and came off Pogba like a man getting off a bus.

Thwack. Wide to Hakimi. Hakimi 15 yards up the line, checked, came back inside.

Thwack. Sofyan. Sofyan first time, no touch, straight back into Boussoufa.

Boussoufa turned again. Kanté arrived, skhh, boots and water off the wet grass, and Boussoufa gave it to Mendyl before he got there.

Mendyl back to Saïss. And we were where we started 40 seconds later having gone nowhere at all.

And 40,000 people stood up.

”OLÉ!”

On a sideways pass. In a World Cup final.

”OLÉ! OLÉ!”

Marcus leaned over from the bench with his hood up. ”Gaffer. Look at Umtiti.”

Umtiti had his hands on his hips. Griezmann had come 40 yards deeper than he wanted to be. Mbappé stood on the halfway line on his own with his arms hanging, waiting for grass that was not coming.

19 minutes gone in a World Cup final and Morocco had 61 per cent of the ball.

Rain steady on the dugout roof behind me now. Tp. Tp-tp. Tp.

Then a throw on the right came off Pavard’s shin and went behind for a corner.

Wooooooo. The blue half stood up all at once, that low swell an away end makes when it smells a set-piece.

Fweet. Pitana’s whistle for the corner, small and flat under all that noise.

Griezmann put the ball down and I was already moving, because I have known what happens next since Thursday night on a laptop in a hotel room.

”SAÏSS! WHO HAS GOT VARANE? WHO HAS GOT HIM?”

And the number came up. Unasked, the way it does.

[RAPHAËL VARANE. JUMPING REACH 18.]

18 out of 20, on a man 6 feet 3 with a run-up, in a box with 9 other bodies in it, and me 40 yards away on the wrong side of a white line with my mouth open.

The fire again. Always the fire, and never the water.

Griezmann hung it to the back post. A slow one, the sort that stays up long enough for a man to pick his moment.

Wooosh. Griezmann’s boot through it.

Varane came from 8 yards behind Saïss with a run I did not see start, got up over the top of him with his neck already cocked, and put his forehead through it.

DOOMF.

Down, hard, off the wet turf, skidding up under Bounou’s hand.

Bounou got 2 fingers on it. It is on the tape. It made no difference at all.

Behind that goal, in the second row, a boy in gloves 4 sizes too big put both hands on top of his head and left them there.

RRRAAAAAAH!

38,000 people making the sound of a thing they had been waiting 23 uncomfortable minutes for.

And the green half did not go quiet. 4 seconds, a groan, and then before the ball was back on the spot they were singing.

”DIMA MAGHRIB! DIMA MAGHRIB!”

Boom. Boom-boom. Boom.

0-1. 23 minutes.

”HEADS UP! That is ONE. Same again. KEEP IT.”

Benatia was screaming it in Arabic and pointing at the grass.

And we did keep it. 3 minutes later we had 18 passes and the olés came back, thinner, but they came back.

And off to my right, in among 40,000 people singing in Arabic, 40 blokes from South London were doing a Palace song with the words changed, badly, in English, and I could pick it out because I have heard it 200 times from a dugout at Selhurst.

”WE’VE GOT WALSH, DANNY WALSH...”

They were the only 40 people in that stadium singing in English and they had been at it since the anthems.

The rain got heavier and you could see it in the floodlights, coming down in slants, and the noise on the dugout roof went from tp-tp to trrrrr, like a tap turned on above us.

Sofyan Amrabat had been immense. For 33 minutes a 21-year-old ran that midfield against Kanté and Pogba and did not give it away once.

Then Boussoufa laid it back to him 45 yards out, and Sofyan lifted his head, and 60 yards away Nordin made a run in behind Hernández.

It was almost on.

And everything in that boy, everything that got him out of Huizen past everybody who told him no, everything that beat Spain and put England on the floor 5 days ago, said hit it.

So he hit it.

Hernández read it. He had been standing there 34 minutes waiting for exactly that.

Skhh. His boot took it 15 yards to Kanté, and Kanté did not control it, Kanté turned his body and stroked it first time up the line into a piece of grass with nothing in it.

[KYLIAN MBAPPÉ. CA 147. PA 197.]

Hakimi went with him. Achraf Hakimi is 19 and one of the quickest full-backs alive and had a 3-yard start, and he went with him for 12 yards and then he did not.

Nobody does.

Whoosh.

The crowd got there before the ball did. A rising AAAAAAH out of 78,000 throats at once, everybody seeing it a half-second early, the noise you hear when a car goes through a red light.

Thp-thp-thp-thp. His studs on the wet turf, and that is the only part of Kylian Mbappé you can actually hear.

Bounou came. He made himself as big as a man can make himself and went down at the last instant.

Mbappé rolled it under him with the inside of his right foot without breaking stride and did not look to see it go in.

RRRAAAAAAAH.

38,000 people at a coronation.

A man in the front row of the blue end had his little girl up on the barrier by both arms, holding her out at the pitch like she was something he was showing to it, and he was screaming and she was laughing and hanging on to his wrists.

0-2. 34 minutes.

And 40,000 in green made no sound at all. Not a groan. Nothing. You could hear the rain on the roof of the stand.

Sofyan went down on his knees on the halfway line with both hands over his face.

Benatia got there first. My captain, who cannot run, covered 30 yards to reach that boy before anybody else, and did not console him. He took a fistful of shirt at the shoulder, hauled him onto his feet, put his forehead against his and said something short into his face.

Sofyan nodded. Benatia let go, slapped his cheek twice, hard enough to hear from where I stood, and pointed at the centre circle.

40 minutes.

Ziyech put one over the top and it was 2 yards too long and Varane was favourite from the start.

Skkkh. Youssef went anyway.

He turned off the bad side to get onto it, at full pelt, on a wet surface, and pulled up for a stride and a half. His leg came out from under him in a way legs do not. He put a hand on the back of it.

Then he ran on and jumped for a ball he was never going to get.