Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Heinz Field, Pittsburgh. Wednesday 25 July 2018. 19:25.]

The sheet went up on the tunnel wall at 25 past 7, and 30 men read it.

11 names in the first column.

Nick Pope. Aaron Wan-Bissaka. James Tarkowski. Ibrahima Konaté. Ben Chilwell. Rúben Neves. Pierre-Emile Højbjerg. James McArthur. Jarrod Bowen. Christian Benteke. James Rodríguez.

That is the Community Shield side, and every man stood in that concrete corridor knew it.

4-3-3, and it is the only shape we have got.

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg alone in front of the back 4. Rúben Neves and James McArthur either side of him and 10 yards ahead. Jarrod Bowen and James Rodríguez wide and high, Christian Benteke down the middle.

3 things, and I have said them so often since May that Bray mouths them along with me.

Everything goes through the middle third at pace, because if you play round the outside of a good side you have to be perfect 40 times and we will only be perfect 30.

When we lose it, 4 seconds. Not a press, a swarm. 3 men inside 4 seconds and then we drop.

And when Neves goes, Højbjerg fills. That is not tactics. That is 1 man and 1 job and it is the entire thing the season is built on.

Clk. Clk-clk.

Studs on concrete, and a bass line coming through 40 feet of wall from a stadium PA playing something American at a volume no English ground would allow.

Mamadou Sakho read it, nodded once, and went and sat down.

Alexandre Pato read it, laughed out loud at something Jesús Navas said in Spanish, and went and got his boots.

And Eberechi Eze read it, and then read it again.

He scored in a Youth Cup final for me at 18. He has been waiting 14 months for somebody to put his name in the first column of something real, and it was not in the first column tonight.

I watched a 20-year-old work out he was not starting, then work out he was in the 19 who were, and then decide which of those 2 things he was going to spend the next 2 hours on.

He picked the right one. He was first man out of that dressing room.

You come up a tunnel in an NFL stadium and it does not open onto a football pitch. It opens onto a hole in the world.

The heat came first. 26 degrees at half 7 at night and the humidity had not moved since lunchtime, and it sat on your chest like a hand.

Then the light. 4 banks of it, and it is whiter than English floodlight, and it takes the colour out of everything for about 3 seconds until your eyes catch up.

Then the noise.

RRRAAAA!

38,712 in Heinz Field, and the top tier shut, and it still came down on 30 men who play in front of 25,486 at Selhurst Park.

The grass smelled of water. They had put the sprinklers on 40 minutes before and the steam was still coming off the far side under the lights.

There were Palace shirts in that crowd from Ohio and from Maryland, and one bloke with a Holmesdale flag the size of a bedsheet who had driven 11 hours from Toronto and told a steward about it 4 times.

And behind the goal, maybe 400 of them, red and green flares going up into the wet air and a printed poster of a 19-year-old in a tracksuit sat on our bench.

Achraf Hakimi did not look at it once in 90 minutes. I checked twice.

Benfica have 37 Portuguese titles and 2 European Cups. Rui Vitória has had that job since 2015 and won a domestic double in 2 of his 3 seasons.

They landed in America 2 days before us. They had 3 weeks of legs on us.

And Rui Vitória sets up in a 4-4-2 with Pizzi tucked inside off the right, which means their 2 central midfielders have to cover the width of a pitch between them.

That is fine in Portugal. It is fine against most people. It is not fine against 3 men going through the middle at pace, because the second one of that 2 gets dragged, there is 25 yards of grass in the middle of a football pitch with nobody in it.

Marcus had it on a laptop 3 days ago. I did not tell the players any of that, because you do not send 11 men out to look for a hole. You send them out to run at people, and the hole finds itself.

They were 2-0 down inside 27 minutes.

Tk. Tk. Tk-tk.

I have been trying to build 1 thing at this football club for 14 months, and on a Wednesday night in Pennsylvania in July, for about 20 minutes, it turned up.

Ball off Nick Pope, and this is the pattern, and we have done it 400 times.

Pope to Tarkowski. Tarkowski square to Konaté. Konaté into Højbjerg, who takes it on the half turn with his back to Portugal and gives it straight back.

3 passes to move their 2 midfielders 8 yards to their left. That is all it is for. Nobody in that stadium noticed it and Rui Vitória noticed it immediately.

Then Rúben Neves stepped up into the space where one of those 2 had just been, and drove it into James Rodríguez between their lines.

Rodríguez turned on a sixpence. And Jarrod Bowen was already 30 yards up that pitch, because Bowen goes the second Rodríguez turns and has done since March.

Thwack.

11th minute. Near post. Across Vlachodimos and in off the far upright.

Dnk.

RRRAAAAAAA!

Then the thing I had walked 9 times that morning happened at speed.

Rúben Neves went forward. Pierre-Emile Højbjerg was already moving before Neves had vacated it.

Pizzi came inside looking for the hole, and there was no hole, because a 22-year-old who has been at this club 4 weeks was stood in it.

He took it clean off him, gave it to Ben Chilwell, and we were 60 yards up the pitch in 5 seconds.

Højbjerg looked at me on that touchline for about half a second on his way past.

He did not say anything. He did not have to.

That 1 movement is the difference between 6th and 2nd.

Everybody who has ever watched football knows a holding midfielder fills in when the 8 goes forward. Almost nobody does it before the 8 has gone.

To do it before, you have to know your own midfielder is going. That is 200 hours on a training pitch and there is no shortcut anywhere.

Luka Milivojević did it for 2 years and I sold him in June and I have been frightened about it since.

At 20 past 8 on a Wednesday night in Pennsylvania I stopped being frightened about it.

27th minute. Christian Benteke.

James Rodríguez put it in from the left. Benteke went up above Rúben Dias, who is 21 and 6 foot 2 and will play for Portugal 100 times, and hung in that wet air long enough for it to be embarrassing.

Boom.

Benteke ran to the corner flag, in front of 400 Palace supporters from 4 American states, and pointed at that poster of Achraf Hakimi for a full 4 seconds.

The bench went up. Alan Bray had to sit down to stop laughing.

[CHRISTIAN BENTEKE. HEADING 17. JUMPING REACH 17.]

Aaaah.

They pulled 1 back on 41 through Jonas, who is 34, who scored 34 in Portugal last season, and who does not need 2 chances. I did not enjoy the way we defended the ball into that box and I said so.

But we went in 2-1 up, and we had been the better side by a distance that surprised everybody in that stadium except the 30 of us.

Prrrrp.

The away dressing room at Heinz Field is built for men in helmets and it is about 4 times the size we need. 22 wet shirts in a room made for 53 Americans.

Half time. Window 1.

11 changes.

You are allowed to do it once and nobody expected it, and Benfica’s bench had to stand up and start writing numbers down.

Tim Krul. Joel Ward. Scott Dann. Mamadou Sakho. Tyrick Mitchell. Jack Grealish. Eberechi Eze. Nya Kirby. Andros Townsend. Alexandre Pato. Antoine Semenyo.

Same shape. Same 3 things. I did not change a single instruction and I told them so in about 40 seconds.

”You have watched 45 minutes of it. Go and do the same 45 minutes. If it works with those 11 it works with these 11, and if it does not work with these 11 then it is my shape and not their legs.”

The only difference is the base. Kirby sits where Højbjerg sat, and Kirby is 17, and Kirby has been doing that job since he was 14 in a building 20 minutes from here in a different country.

”Gaffer.” Bray, at my shoulder. ”That is a lot of children.

”It is 45 minutes of friendly football in July, Alan.”

”It is 45 minutes of Benfica and we are winning.”

”Yes,” I said. ”That is exactly when you do it.”

And I did not tell him the other part, because he stood next to me for all of it and he already knows.

Mitchell behind them, Kirby holding the base, Eze in front of Kirby.

That is the spine of a team I coached to a Youth Cup 14 months ago, going on together, in that order, in the same relationship it had at 16.

60 games like that. They do not need a whiteboard to know where the other 2 are running.

If I am putting 11 men on at once against Benfica, I am putting on 4 who have never needed telling.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.