Glory Of The Football Manager System

In Block 122 the lad next to Terry Dolan put both hands flat on his own face.

3 rows in front of him a woman of about 30 in a Palace shirt with WARD on the back turned round and looked for somebody behind her, and there was nobody there she knew, and she turned back round again.

Terry Dolan did not sit down.

He stood there with his arms folded while 60,000 people sat around him and the lad pulled at his sleeve twice and he did not move an inch.

He is 58. He has had that seat since 1979. He has watched this football club from the third tier of English football.

He was not sitting down for Sergio Agüero.

1-2. 32 minutes.

I did not look at my bench.

I had been looking at 1 man on it since about 54 minutes, and I had been looking at 1 man on their pitch since about 51, and the 2 of them were the same idea.

Benjamin Mendy had gone 40 yards forward for the 29th time and come back at a jog.

”Rebecca.”

”Christian goes now.”

”I know he does. How long have I got with him?”

She had the tablet up before I finished the sentence and she did not turn it round for me to argue with, she turned it round for me to read.

”5.9 kilometres. I said 65 and it is 59, and he has done 5.9 of it marking a man in 29 degrees.” Her thumb was already on the substitution board. ”6 minutes. And you have already decided, because you have been looking at Jesús for 4 minutes and I have been watching you do it.”

”Get him up.”

”He has been up since 54,” Rebecca said.

Jesús Navas is 32 years old.

He came to us on a free transfer 13 months ago when he was 31 and there was not 1 club in England that would look at him. He played 8 seasons at Sevilla and 4 at Manchester City and he won a Premier League and a Europa League and 2 more, and by the summer of 2017 every scouting department in this country had written 1 sentence about him and the sentence was legs gone.

Steve Parish asked him for 3 years. He asked for 2 himself.

I found out why in July 2017 in Steve’s office when he said it in English, slowly, because he had thought about how to say it.

He wants to go home to Andalusia in June 2019 and he wants to play until the day he goes and he does not want anybody to make a fuss.

6 people in that stadium knew that. Me, Steve, Dougie, Sarah, Rebecca, and a 32-year-old sat in a tracksuit with his boots on.

Everybody else in that ground thought they were watching a substitution.

”Jesús.”

He was up before I finished the word.

”Bowen,” I said. ”Right hand side. And Jesús.”

”Coach.”

”Mendy has run 40 yards forward 30 times today and he has run 40 yards back 30 times, and he is 24 and he has done 6.4 kilometres.” I had my hand on his shoulder. ”You have got 28 minutes and he has got nothing left in him.”

Jesús Navas looked at that pitch.

”28 minutes is enough,” he said.

”NUMBER 7. NUMBER 20.”

62 minutes.

Jarrod Bowen came off and Jesús Navas went on.

Clap clap clap clap clap.

That is what a substitution gets. Polite, 4 seconds, and half of them were still looking at Bowen.

There is a photograph of that moment on a wall at Beckenham now, next to the one of 30 men who are not looking at the camera.

It is not a photograph of Navas.

It is a photograph of the Palace end at 62 minutes, and if you look at it you can see about 400 people already stood up in the corner where the drum is, and none of them have any idea what is about to happen either.

He touched it 4 times in the first 3 minutes and 3 of them were backwards.

Then on 66 minutes Benjamin Mendy went 40 yards forward for the 31st time.

And did not get back.

69 minutes.

Rúben Neves picked it up in his own half with his head already up, because Rúben Neves has been free for 20 minutes and a free Rúben Neves is worth more than any substitution I have ever made.

Tk.

He hit it 50 yards down the right hand side without breaking stride, and I was up off that bench before it had finished travelling. GO. JESÚS. GO.

Navas did not take a touch to control it.

He took a touch to go.

shhk. shhk. shhk.

That is the noise a 32-year-old makes on dry grass in the 69th minute of a football match he is not supposed to be able to run in, and Benjamin Mendy went with him for 8 yards and then Benjamin Mendy did not.

I watched a 24-year-old French international who has been up and down that touchline 31 times put a hand out towards a man he could not reach.

Come on.

Aymeric Laporte came across on the angle and the geometry said he would get there. I have seen that geometry a hundred times and it is almost always right.

Navas did not go past him.

He went outside him. 2 yards of white paint, on the byline, at 32 years old, with a man 8 years younger arriving at full speed.

Come on.

He got his right foot round it and looked up for about a quarter of a second, and that quarter of a second is 15 years of doing this at the Sánchez Pizjuán and the Etihad and a hundred grounds nobody in that stadium could name.

Tk.

6 inches off the deck. Across the face of it. Hard.

And Wilfried Zaha came in from the left.

He has been at this football club since he was 12. He was on that pitch the day they went down. He went to Manchester United at 20 and it did not work and he came back and this country laughed at him for 3 years, and he had not scored a goal in a football match since the 12th of May.

And everything went slow.

I saw John Stones turn his head to find him and not find him. I saw Zaha’s stride shorten by about 6 inches. He does that. It is the last thing he does before he hits one.

I saw Claudio Bravo set his weight to go low, because everything Navas had put across that box all afternoon had been low.

Thwack.

Right foot. 6 yards. Into the roof of it, over a goalkeeper who was already going the other way, and it hit the stanchion and came back out so fast that 4 men in blue put their hands up to appeal and Jon Moss was already pointing at the halfway line.

RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I have been inside this stadium 5 times.

I have never heard anything like what came out of that lower tier at 9 minutes past 4 on the 5th of August 2018. It went up, and it hit the arch, and it came back down half a second later and hit us all over again, and then it did it a third time.

”YEEEEEEESSSS.” Somebody 3 feet behind me, in my ear, and I still do not know who.

Bray had hold of my shoulder with both hands and I do not know when he got there.

”OH, WILF. WILF. WILF.”

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

The drum went and the whole of that corner went with it.

Wilfried Zaha did not run to the corner flag.

He went 40 yards the other way, to the halfway line, to a 32-year-old Spaniard stood with both hands on his knees, and he took hold of the front of his shirt with both fists and picked him up off the grass.

In Block 122, Terry Dolan was 4 rows down from where he had started, in a row that was not his, being held up by 2 people he had never met in his life.

The woman in the WARD shirt had both arms round the lad who had put his hands over his face at 58 minutes, and he was somebody else’s son.

”WE ARE PALACE! WE ARE PALACE!”

Pep Guardiola stood on the edge of his box and did not move at all.

2-2. 21 minutes.

And here is where it got dangerous, because everybody in that ground wanted a winner and so did 11 men in red and blue, and Manchester City are the best team in England at making you want a winner.

I went 6 yards out of that technical area and got a warning off the fourth official for it, and I would do it again, because a 22-year-old was about to do the bravest thing anybody did all afternoon and he needed to hear 1 voice out of 60,000.

”HOLD. HOLD. PIERRE, HOLD.”

”GO ON THEN! GO ON!” 20,000 of them at the same man, wanting the opposite thing, and he could hear all of it.

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg held. 22 years old, 10 million pounds, told to stand in 1 place for 45 minutes, and he stood in it while a stadium screamed at him to go.

I have not forgotten that. I told him so in October.

73 minutes. Gündogan hit one from 25 and Pope went full length and pushed it round.

OOOOOH.

75 minutes. Guardiola took Foden off for Brahim Díaz.

Marcus, without looking up: ”That is 3 changes and he has not got a striker on that bench who is not a centre-half.”

”Then James comes off Foden.”

”Boss?”

”Foden is not on the pitch, Marcus, so James has got nobody, and I have had a 30-year-old man-marking a boy for 30 minutes for nothing.” I was already down that line. ”JAMES. LEAVE IT. GET FORWARD. GO.”

James McArthur, 30 years old, 250 appearances, 11.4 kilometres in his legs, went and stood 40 yards further up a football pitch than he had been all afternoon.

And City had to think about him, and thinking about James McArthur is 3 seconds nobody at that club has ever had to spend before.