Glory Of The Football Manager System

Behind me the lounge had gone quiet in a way I did not like.

Boussoufa had stopped translating again. He was stood dead still with his arms folded and his eyes on that screen.

”Roy, would you have taken extra time?” Jones said.

”Every time.”

”Gary?”

”I would have sent them up.”

”Jamie?”

”I would have sent them up and then I would have been sick behind the dugout,” Carragher said, and Jones let the desk laugh, because they needed it.

”Thierry.”

Henry took a second.

”I would have taken extra time,” he said. ”And I would have been wrong.”

”How can both of those be true?”

”Because I am 40 years old and I have won it,” Henry said. ”You manage differently when there is a medal in a drawer at home.

”He has not got one. He has never lost a final in his life and he has never once had to be careful, and that is exactly why that team was 3-3 in the first place.

”You cannot ask a man to be reckless for 45 minutes and then careful for 1.”

The lounge had gone quiet behind me.

I turned round, because I could feel it.

Murmur-murmur. Boussoufa was translating, low and fast, for the ones with no English, and he had been doing it since the clip.

Amine Harit was sat on the floor with his back against a chair leg and his knees up, watching a television he could not follow, and he had not touched the plate on the carpet beside him.

”Thierry,” Jones said. ”Last word. Your country won the World Cup tonight.”

”They did. And I have been sat here since the whistle and nobody has asked me about it, and I do not mind at all.”

He came forward.

”In the group stage I sat on this desk and said that what this manager had given those players was toughness. That he had taught them to stand in a storm.

”I want to correct myself, because I was not right.”

Jones waited.

”He did not teach them to stand in a storm,” Henry said. ”He taught them that they were allowed to be seen in one.

”Those players were not wanted. That is not a line for television, it is the fact of it. Half of that team were released or let go for nothing by clubs in Europe. Their goalkeeper is at Girona. Their striker is at Málaga. Their captain has been told for 2 years that his legs are gone.

”And tonight their manager went on world television and made sure not one of them will ever have to answer for losing it.”

He sat back.

”They lost. And I am telling you now, in 10 years nobody will talk about the score.”

”They will, though,” Keane said.

”Roy.”

”No, I am sorry, this is where I get off.” Keane turned in his chair to face him properly, and the desk went quiet. ”Everybody has had a lovely night and I have enjoyed it as much as anybody.

”That group lost a World Cup final. In 10 years there will be a line in a book that says France beat Morocco 4-3, and every man in that dressing room will read it and it will still take a piece out of him.

”You are telling them the score does not matter. It matters. It is the only thing that gets written down.”

”I did not say it does not matter,” Henry said. ”I said nobody will talk about it.”

”Same thing.”

”It is not.” Henry came forward, and it was the only time all night I saw him properly go. ”In 1998 I won this tournament. I have got the medal. And I am telling you that the thing people say to me in the street is not the score of the final.

”It is where they were. Who they were with. What their father said to them. That is what a tournament leaves behind and it is not written on the trophy.”

”For the winners.”

”For everybody, Roy.”

”No.” Keane shook his head once. ”For the winners. And I would say that to any of those players if they were sat here, because they are grown men and they do not need it dressed up.

”They were 1 kick away. That will hurt them for the rest of their lives and no amount of people on a street in Casablanca is going to fix it, and pretending otherwise is not respect. It is the opposite.”

Henry looked at him for a moment.

”You may be right,” he said. ”I hope you are not.”

”So do I,” said Keane.

Nobody in that lounge could follow a word of it.

They went quiet anyway, because Boussoufa had stopped translating and was just stood there with his arms folded looking at the screen.

”One last thing before we go, and it is the awkward one,” Jones said. ”He gets on a plane this week and he comes home. To work. In this country.”

”Ah,” said Carragher.

”Thursday, we are told. Back at Crystal Palace, pre-season on the 9th.”

”Yeah.” Carragher sat back and blew his cheeks out. ”See, I said this after the semi and I got hammered for it, so I will say it again and take the hammering.

”He knocked England out of a World Cup. He is from Manchester. And a fortnight later he is walking into a Premier League ground.”

”And?”

”And there is a bloke in a pub in Croydon right now who has not decided how he feels about that. There will be 30,000 of them on the 11th of August and I do not know which way it goes and neither does anybody on this desk.”

”They will sing his name,” Neville said.

”Palace will sing his name. I am not talking about Palace.” Carragher pointed at him. ”I am talking about the away end at Old Trafford in September. I am talking about Selhurst on a Tuesday when they have lost 2 on the bounce.”

”You think he gets it?”

”I think somebody in this country sings something at that man about England before the leaves are off the trees, yes.” He put a hand up. ”And I hate that I think it.”

Keane, who had been quiet: ”He will not care.”

”Everybody cares, Roy.”

”He will not care, and I will tell you why.” Keane turned his hand over. ”A man who stands up at 1 in the morning and hands the world a stick to beat him with for 20 years is not a man who is going to lose sleep over a bloke in row Z.

”He has already had the worst thing said about him. He said it himself. On the telly. There is nothing left in the bag.”

”That is a very good point,” Carragher said, ”and it does not make it not happen.”

”No. It does not.”

”Thierry, you played in this country for 8 years,” Jones said. ”What does he get?”

Henry took his time with it.

”He gets both,” he said. ”That is the thing nobody wants to hear.

”He will get standing ovations, and he will get 200 men in an away end singing something ugly, and both of those will be England, and both of them will be real.”

He shrugged.

”He is English and he beat England, and this country has never known what to do with that. It does not know whether he is one of yours or not, and it will keep changing its mind, probably for years.”

”So what does he do?”

”He wins,” Henry said. ”That is the only answer anybody has ever found to it.”

Behind me the lounge had emptied out a bit.

Bray was still on the arm of that sofa and he had not laughed at anything for a while.

I had not thought about the 11th of August once. Not in 6 weeks.

I had thought about Iran, and Portugal, and Spain, and Russia, and Croatia, and England, and France. In that order and about nothing else.

And now a man in a studio in London had put a date in my head that I could not get back out of it.

Selhurst Park. Opening day. 26,000 of my own.

And a bloke in row Z somewhere in the country with a thing to shout, and 3 weeks to think of it.

”You have gone a funny colour again,” Rebecca said, without looking up.

”I am fine.”

”You are not fine. You have not been fine since Friday.” She still did not look up. ”Neither is anybody else in this hotel, so you are in good company.”

”Roy. 20 seconds.”

”He is 29. He is under contract at Crystal Palace. He has taken a squad of rejects to a World Cup final and then stood up and taken the blame for losing it.

”Every big club in Europe watched that tonight. Every single one of them.”

”You think he goes?”

”I think Crystal Palace have got about 12 months,” Keane said. ”And I do not think they know it yet.”

Clk. Marcus turned it off.

Nobody said anything for a bit. Then the coffee machine came on by itself and half the room jumped.

Ksssshhh.

”Right,” Marcus said. ”So. Wheels up at 11. 3 hours 50 to Rabat and we are all on it.”

”All of us?”

”All of us,” Bray said, from the arm of the sofa. ”You did not think we were letting you do Wednesday on your own, did you.”

”You have got a building to open.”

”Sarah has got a building to open. Sarah has been opening it for 6 weeks.” He got up off the arm. ”We transit through Rabat and we all go home Thursday. Marcus did it 2 days ago.”

”2 days ago.”

”Before the final,” Marcus said, and had the decency to look at the carpet. ”We had a bit of a feeling.”

And Rebecca, who had not said one word since I walked in, took her feet off the coffee table.

”Eat something before that flight, Danny. You have not eaten since Friday and I have been counting.”

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.