Glory Of The Football Manager System

The second half was the best 45 minutes of our summer and I have watched it back 4 times.

Benfica changed. Vitória went to a back 3 at half time to get a spare man in the middle, which is the correct answer and which I would have done as well.

And it did not matter, because a back 3 gives you an extra body in the middle and takes one off your flanks, and we had Andros Townsend and Antoine Semenyo running at 2 full backs with nobody outside them.

We went round them for 20 minutes and then through them for 20 more.

Jack Grealish drifted inside off the left in the 51st and did the thing he did on pitch 2 at Beckenham.

Stopped the ball dead with the sole of his boot, in front of a Benfica midfielder with 60 caps, and waited.

And waited.

Shhk. The man lunged.

Tk.

Grealish rolled it round him and threaded it into Alexandre Pato’s feet from 40 yards with the outside of his right boot.

58th minute.

Andros Townsend went outside and drove it low and hard across the 6 yard box.

Pato arrived at the back post like a man who has done it 300 times in 3 countries, put it in with his shin, and did not celebrate for 2 seconds because he did not believe the linesman.

RRRAAAAAAA!

28 years old. 10 goals in 27 caps for Brazil and they have not picked him since 2013. He came off that pitch with a swapped shirt and his own name on his back and he was the loudest man on the coach.

3-1.

Then Benfica put a boy on.

62nd minute, and I did not know his name, and nobody in my technical area knew it, and I had to ask Marcus Reid, and Marcus had to look at a printed sheet.

João Félix. 18 years old. 4 first team appearances.

I watched him for 6 minutes.

[JOÃO FÉLIX. CA 121. PA 183.]

I sat down on that plastic bench.

183 is a number I have seen 3 times in my life. It is the number that gets a boy sold for a figure that makes grown men furious in newspapers.

And this one was playing for a club that would take a telephone call, and there is 130 million pounds sat in a bank in Croydon, and 15 days left of a window.

”Marcus.”

”I am already doing it, boss.”

”Do not say the name out loud.”

”I have not said a word out loud since you sat down, Danny, and I am going to need 40 minutes and a hotel wifi that works.”

Window 2 at 66. Window 3 at 80.

At 80 I took Jack Grealish off, because Jack Grealish has ankles I am responsible for and 11 days to a Community Shield.

I put Ellis Cartwright on because there were 10 minutes left, and he is 18, and he has been a professional footballer for 5 days.

I did not think about it for longer than 4 seconds.

87th minute.

Antoine Semenyo took it down the right on the outside of Grimaldo, who has played 200 games for that club, got to the byline, and cut it back with his left foot into the space in front of the penalty spot.

Michael Olise. 16 years old. Arriving from 25 yards. First time, without breaking stride.

THWACK.

Top corner. Off the underside of the bar and down.

Clang.

RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I have coached that boy since he was 14. I have watched him hit that exact ball on a freezing Tuesday in front of 40 people and 2 dogs on a pitch in Beckenham with the perimeter fence blown down.

38,000 people in an NFL stadium stood up for it. The 400 behind that goal came apart. Michael Olise turned and ran at Antoine Semenyo and neither of them knew what to do with their hands.

4-1.

Prrrrp. Prrrrp. Prrrrp.

The whistle went 3 minutes later, and then a man in a terrible blazer came over from the fourth official and told me the competition runs a penalty shootout after every match in the American series.

Win, lose or draw. Because it is an exhibition, and because 38,000 people have paid to be entertained on a Wednesday night in July.

I looked at Bray.

”Is he serious?”

”He is serious. It was in the pack. Page 4.”

”Alan, did you read the pack?”

”I read page 4,” Bray said.

5 names. From the men on the pitch.

I stood on the edge of that grass and did the arithmetic, and the first 4 seconds of it were not good.

I sold Luka Milivojević in June. He took 8 penalties for this football club last season and scored 8. I wrote WHO TAKES THEM on a whiteboard in Beckenham 5 days ago, underlined it twice, and did not have an answer.

James Rodríguez was off. Christian Benteke was off. Jack Grealish was off, 10 minutes ago, by my own hand.

What I had out there was Alexandre Pato, Andros Townsend, Eberechi Eze, Nya Kirby, Antoine Semenyo, Michael Olise, Tyrick Mitchell, Joel Ward, Mamadou Sakho, Ellis Cartwright and Tim Krul.

And then the second 4 seconds happened, and I stopped worrying, and I want to put down why.

Because I have watched 3 of those men take a penalty in front of a crowd before, and none of it was in the Premier League.

Nya Kirby took one in a Youth Cup semi-final at 16, in front of 9,000 at Selhurst, with the tie level. He put it exactly where he always puts it and did not look up once.

Ellis Cartwright took 40 of them off me on a Tuesday in a Portakabin car park in the rain in February 2017, because he asked, and because I had nothing else on that afternoon.

”Alan.”

”I know.”

”Pato, Townsend, Eze, Kirby, Cartwright. In that order.”

”You are putting the 18-year-old 5th.”

”I am putting the 18-year-old 5th.”

There is a thing that happens in a stadium before a penalty that does not happen anywhere else in sport.

38,000 people stop at the same time. Not quiet. Stopped. You can hear a man 60 yards away tell his mate to shut up.

Prrrrp.

Alexandre Pato took the first and put it in the top corner without changing his walk.

Andros Townsend took the second and hit the same place.

Benfica scored their first 2, and the second was that boy again, and he put it exactly where their first one went and looked at Tim Krul on his way back.

Thwack.

Eberechi Eze took the third.

20 years old. First goal of any kind for the senior side of this football club, in a shootout in Pennsylvania at 5 past 10 at night, 14 months after he scored in a Youth Cup final for me at Selhurst.

8 yards inside the net before the goalkeeper moved.

Then Tim Krul saved one.

He went early, got low, and threw 2 hands to his right.

Smack.

He had it in both gloves and he was up and rolling it towards the halfway line before the Benfica lad had stopped looking at the spot.

Michael Steele, stood next to me, said nothing whatsoever.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

38,000 people doing the slow one. Americans work out what a shootout is inside about 4 minutes.

Nya Kirby walked from the halfway line with his socks round his ankles and put it in the bottom left corner.

That is where he put the one at Selhurst in March 2017. It is where he has put every one I have ever watched him take.

He did not look at the bench. He has never looked at the bench in his life.

4-3, and it came down to the 5th, and my 5th was Ellis Cartwright.

18 years old. Released by this football club on the 6th of June. Signed back on the 23rd of July. A professional footballer for 5 days and 3 hours.

He was already walking before Bray had said a word to anybody.

”Danny.”

”I can see him, Alan.”

”He is 18.”

”I can see that as well.”

I put a hand up to stop him.

Then I did not stop him.

Shhk. Shhk. Shhk.

40 yards of an American football pitch, on his own, in front of 38,000 people, 5 days into a career this club had ended in June.

He put it hard and low into the left corner. Same corner he was putting them in on a Tuesday in February 2017, with me stood in a makeshift goal in a car park and 4 cones for a wall.

Thwack.

He did not celebrate. He turned round and walked back and got about 4 yards before 10 men landed on him.

RRRAAAAAAAAA!

OLE, OLE, OLE, OLE!

I stood on that touchline with my hands in my pockets and let them get on with it.

4-1 in 90 minutes and a shootout won, against a club with 2 European Cups, with 11 of my players changed at half time and a 16-year-old scoring the 4th.

I will take that in July.

And what I actually got out of that evening is not on any scoresheet.

James Rodríguez still has not taken a penalty for me and Christian Benteke still wants to, and that argument is coming in a room at Beckenham in about a fortnight.

But I have got 5 men who will walk from a halfway line in front of 38,000 people and put it exactly where they said they would.

2 of them are teenagers. 1 of them I signed 5 days ago off a pitch nobody uses.

And 3 of them were mine when they were 16, and I already knew, and I did not have to think about it for longer than 4 seconds.

I found Marcus Reid in the tunnel at 20 past 10 with a laptop balanced on a kit skip and his tie already off.

”Well?”

”His name is João Félix. He is 18 and he made his debut in May.” Marcus did not look up. ”He has got a release clause and it is not small.”

”How not small?”

Marcus Reid told me the number.

I stood in a concrete tunnel under an NFL stadium in Pittsburgh at 20 past 10 at night, in a suit, with 4 goals and a shootout behind me and an 18-year-old being carried 30 feet down that corridor by 5 lads he won a Youth Cup with.

And 130 million pounds sat quietly in a bank in Croydon.

I did the only sensible thing available.

I laughed.

”Right,” I said. ”Get Dougie on the phone.”