Glory Of The Football Manager System

We got a coach from a firm in Tallinn with a Flora Tallinn sticker in the back window.

There were 4 UEFA people waiting at the bottom of the steps with laminates and an itinerary, and a girl of about 20 in a volunteer polo shirt holding a board with CRYSTAL PALACE FC on it in 2 languages.

Her name is Kadri. She is a student.

She is 1 of 140 volunteers the Estonian FA put through an application process in March, and she has been assigned to us for 3 days, and she had the pitch inspection time, the media obligations, the anthem rehearsal and the trophy handover protocol on a single sheet of A4, and she had it in Sarah’s hand before Sarah had put her bag down.

Sarah read it in the coach and said 1 word.

”Better than Lyon.”

At 5 o’clock a man from UEFA came to the hotel and did 20 minutes with me and Sarah on protocol.

Nobody ever sees that part. Where you stand. Which door. Who lifts it and when. What happens if it goes to penalties and which end they will be taken at.

He got to the last bit and read it off the sheet in the same voice he had used for the seating plan.

”And if it goes to penalties, the Real Madrid end. That was drawn on the 2nd.”

Somebody drew a lot for which goal a shootout would be taken at, in a room in Nyon, on the 2nd of August, and neither team was in the room.

Real Madrid are in the Swissôtel in the middle of town with 300 people outside it. We are 6 minutes up the road in a place with 118 rooms and there were 11 people outside ours, 6 of them kids with autograph books.

Ron came. Steve Parish put him on the plane and told him it was not a discussion, and he is 71 and he has never been out of England, and he stood in that car park in his own coat looking at a building for about a minute with Deano stood next to him.

Sarah took me through the old town at half 6 on the way to the stadium because she wanted me to see it and because she had 40 minutes and no other way of making me take them.

Tallinn is 3,000 kilometres from Madrid. It is on the other side of the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki, halfway between Stockholm and St Petersburg, and the old town is 700 years of cobbles and church spires and it is the cleanest city I have ever walked through.

And at half 6 on a Tuesday in the middle of August it was full of people in red and blue.

Vabaduse väljak. Freedom Square, at the bottom end of the old town, with a church on 1 side and a glass column on the other that they put up in 2009 for a war of independence that this country fought and won and then lost again for 50 years.

UEFA had a fan zone in it. It opened Tuesday and it runs through Wednesday.

Chk. Chk. Chk.

They had 3 trophies out on plinths in the middle of that square with 4 stewards round them. The European Cup, the Europa League and the Super Cup, and there was a queue of about 300 people to have a photograph taken next to a trophy that this football club won in Lyon 12 weeks ago.

Clank. Scaffolding going up on the church side, and a screen on it, 12 metres by 7.

And there was a table with a quiz on it, because UEFA had held tickets back and they were giving them away to anybody who could answer questions about a competition most of the people in that square had never seen a match of.

Here is the number that matters.

12,400 people are getting into that stadium on Wednesday.

This football club sold 61,400 season tickets in June. We have got a waiting list of 44,000. UEFA gave us an allocation of about 3,000 and we could have sold it 12 times over, and about 2,000 more have come anyway with no ticket at all.

They came on the ferry from Helsinki for 40 quid. They came through Riga. 1 lad flew to Stockholm and got a boat because it was 90 pounds cheaper and it took him 22 hours.

And on Wednesday night they will stand in a square in a foreign city and watch a European final on a screen with 4,000 Estonians and about the same number of Spaniards.

I stood at the edge of that square for about 4 minutes and nobody saw me, and 2 of them were singing the Zaha song at a trophy on a plinth.

Prrrrp.

We trained at Lilleküla at half 7.

It opened in 2001. It is 2 kilometres south of the old town and you can walk it in half an hour. It is the biggest ground in Estonia and they have put temporary seating in to get it to 13,000 for Wednesday.

About 12,400 people are going to watch a European final in it.

On the 5th of August I stood in the middle of Wembley in front of 84,617. On the 11th we played in front of 24,821 on the Thames.

On Wednesday, for a European trophy, against the champions of Europe, there will be fewer people in this ground than watched our under 18s in a Youth Cup semi-final.

Hnnn. A road behind a stand and the light still up.

It was 18 degrees at half 7 and it was still bright, and it stayed bright.

Tallinn is a long way north. The sun does not go down here in August until about 9 o’clock and then it does not get properly dark for another hour and a half, and a 10 o’clock kick off means we walk out into a stadium at dusk with the lights on and the sky still blue behind the north stand.

Nobody in that squad has played a match that starts at 10 at night. 4 of them are 20 or under and they will be on a pitch at midnight.

Christian Benteke walked out 20 seconds behind me and stopped.

”I can hear the road.”

You can. There is a road behind the north stand and at half 7 on a Tuesday you can hear the cars on it from the centre circle, and on Wednesday night 50 million people in 200 countries will be watching.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Michael Steele took Tim Krul on his own for 40 minutes after everybody else had gone in. Near post, near post, near post.

Nick Pope stayed out and did his own 20 minutes at the other end with a young lad from Flora Tallinn that UEFA had sent over.

Footwork. Nothing else. He kept his back to the far goal for 20 minutes and worked.

At the end of it he shook that boy’s hand and asked him his name.

Rebecca did Hakimi on the touchline at 8 with a bottle in her hand.

”45 minutes.”

”45.”

”You will want 60 at the 40th. You will look at me and I will look at the floor.” She gave him the bottle. ”What did you do on the plane?”

”Slept.”

”Good.”

25 seconds. In July it took 5 minutes and he lost it and did not like it.

Tk. Tk.

Sarah found me at 10 o’clock in a hotel corridor with a laptop.

”Bouknadel opened on Saturday. 41 boys in 60 beds, youngest is 11, and 34 of them come from inside 60 kilometres.”

She turned the screen round and there was a photograph of a corridor with numbered doors and a kit bag outside 1 of them.

”Rachid put 1 line at the bottom and then apologised for putting it in. 11 of the 41 had never slept in a room on their own before Saturday night.”

Brr. Brr.

I rang my mother at 11. 9 o’clock in Manchester.

I did not tell her I had watched it. She did not ask.

14 minutes, and 11 of them were about a boiler that got fixed on Thursday, and 3 about whether I am eating.

Then the last thing.

”Is that little lad on the bench? The one you let go.”

”He is, mam.”

”Right,” she said. ”Good.”

I could not sleep after that and I stopped trying at about half past midnight.

At 1 in the morning I stood at a window on the 4th floor of a hotel in Tallinn and the sky over that city was still not black. It goes a sort of deep blue up here in August and it stays there until about half 3, and you can see the roofs of the old town from that window and 1 crane and a strip of the Gulf of Finland behind it.

Somewhere 2 kilometres south there is a 13,000 seat ground with the temporary seating bolted in and a no-fly zone over it from 6 o’clock tomorrow evening.

Somewhere 6 minutes up the road there are 25 men who have won the last 3 European Cups.

And in about 40 rooms in this building there are 23 footballers, 4 of whom are 20 or younger, and 1 of them was released by this club 10 weeks ago and is going to sit on a bench at a European final tomorrow night with his name on the back of a shirt.

We were 14th in this division 16 months ago. 5 points off going down. I was on a night shift 3 years ago and my mother thought I was going to stay on one.

Tomorrow at 10 o’clock at night, in a country that has never held a European final, in front of 12,400 people and 50 million more, Crystal Palace play Real Madrid for a trophy.

I went to bed at 20 past 1 and I do not remember getting into it.