Glory Of The Football Manager System

4-0.

RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Michael Olise did not celebrate it. He turned round and pointed at Achraf Hakimi with both hands, and Hakimi got to him and picked him off the floor.

Marcus sent me the Spanish feed of that goal on Friday and I have watched it 4 times with the sound up.

There are 2 commentators on it. At the moment Hakimi stops the ball dead, 1 of them says a word I do not know and then says nothing at all for 11 seconds.

11 seconds of a man saying nothing on live television in a country of 47 million people.

Then the other one says a sentence with 3 words in it I did understand, and the words were nuestro, chico and vendimos.

Ours. Boy. We sold.

19 and 16.

1 of them cost 20 million pounds and won a Golden Ball at a World Cup 5 weeks ago, and the other 1 has been at Crystal Palace since he was 9 and his mother drove him in from Hammersmith 4 nights a week for 7 years.

I asked Achraf about it on the plane on Thursday morning and he took a while over the answer.

He said he did not think about Real Madrid once during the 45 minutes and that he has thought about them every day since he was 14.

Then he said the thing I have not repeated to anybody until now.

”When I was 16 they told me I was not quick enough over 5 metres. I have been running 70 metres at people for 3 years so that nobody ever measures the first 5 again.”

”OLISÉ. OLISÉ.”

They had his name inside 20 seconds and they had it wrong, and 6,000 Estonians sang a 16-year-old’s name with the accent on the end of it for the rest of the night.

There is a photograph of the north stand at 69 minutes and there is a lad in it of about 10, in an Estonia shirt, on his father’s shoulders, with both fists up.

He did not have a Palace shirt on. He had never heard of us on Monday.

Somebody sent me that photograph in October and I have not thrown it away.

On our bench Eberechi Eze was stood on the front of his seat with both hands over his own mouth.

There is a camera shot from that night that ran on about 40 channels and I did not see it until Thursday.

The VIP box at Lilleküla is small. It is a glass front and 4 rows and there is nowhere in it to be private.

Florentino Pérez is 71 years old. He has been president of that club for 18 of the last 19 years, he sanctioned the sale of Achraf Hakimi in July for 15 million pounds, and he had signed nobody to replace Cristiano Ronaldo.

He did not put his head in his hands and he did not stand up. He turned about 15 degrees and said something to the man on his left, and the man on his left wrote it down.

On 75 minutes Lopetegui put Vinícius Júnior on for Gareth Bale.

Bale had been the best player on that pitch for 20 minutes of the first half and he came off at 4-0 down with 15 minutes left, and he walked past his own manager without looking at him.

18 years old, 5 weeks at that club, 4-0 down and 10 men in a final, and he went and stood on that left touchline and went at Achraf Hakimi 3 times in 6 minutes.

He got past him once.

That is the only thing Real Madrid did in the last half hour that got a noise out of 2,000 Spaniards, and they made it for a boy who had been on the pitch 4 minutes.

I know exactly what that is worth. I have got one in Brazil.

Clatter.

Rúben Neves got it 30 yards out at 81 minutes and gave it 6 yards sideways.

To Ellis Cartwright.

He had been on that pitch 16 minutes. He is 18 years old. This football club released him on the 6th of June and he came in at 7 in the morning for 6 weeks afterwards with nobody expecting him and nobody paying him.

He did not look up.

He put it round the corner first time with the outside of his right foot, into a channel Isco had walked out of an hour before and nobody in white had filled since, and he did it because Bray has had him playing that exact ball into that exact space on pitch 3 since he was 15 years old.

Wilfried Zaha was in it before the ball got there.

shhk. shhk.

Nacho came across for the second time in 13 minutes.

Come on.

And Zaha did not go round him.

I have watched him go round 400 men. He goes round people. It is what he is, it is what this country laughed at him for, it is the thing they said he would never stop doing.

He hit it first time from 18 yards with Nacho’s leg 4 inches away.

Everything went slow.

I saw Navas go down and to his left. It was the correct way to go. And I saw the ball go the other way about a foot off that grass.

Dnk.

Inside of the far post. In off it.

5-0.

RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

”WE ARE PALACE. WE ARE PALACE. WE ARE PALACE.”

”CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE. YOU’LL NEVER SING THAT.”

3,000 people sang that at the champions of Europe at 25 past 11 at night in Estonia and I have not repeated it to anybody since.

Wilfried Zaha ran to the corner where the drum is and stood in front of it with his arms out and let 3,000 people have him for about 15 seconds.

He has been at this football club since he was 12. He was on the pitch the day they went down. He went to Manchester United at 20 and it did not work and this country laughed at him for 3 years.

2 goals and an assist in a European final.

The last 4 minutes were the strangest 4 minutes I have stood through.

Real Madrid stopped trying to score. Not out of sulking. There was nothing left to get and 10 men and a manager 5 weeks into a job, and Toni Kroos spent the last 3 minutes keeping the ball in the corner of his own half at 5-0 down, and I have thought about that a great deal since.

”OOOOOLÉ.”

The north stand olé’d every Palace pass for the whole of the 4 minutes.

Hnnn.

Luka Modrić came and stood 4 feet from me at a throw-in on 89.

On the 7th of July I stood in the Luzhniki and watched that man carry 10 dead Croatians on his back for 30 minutes of extra time, and then watched him walk to a halfway line for a shootout and score his own penalty, and then watched Yassine Bounou save 2 and Ivan Perišić hit a post.

I put Luka Modrić out of a World Cup 5 weeks ago.

He did not look at me and I did not look at him, and he looked out at that pitch instead, at a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old in red and blue.

I have no idea what he was thinking and I never will.

”WE ARE PALACE. WE ARE PALACE.”

3,000 people. The whole north stand. Kadri, our UEFA volunteer, stood at the mouth of that tunnel in a polo shirt with her hands over her face.

Ron was stood up in the second tier and had been for 94 minutes.

Deano was counting something.

[92:00.]

Isco gave it to Nacho. Nacho gave it back.

Szymon Marciniak looked at his watch.

I have stood through 4 of these now and it has caught me out all 4 times. You spend 94 minutes with your jaw set and your arms folded and a list running in your head, and then a Polish man looks at a watch.

He put the whistle in his mouth and lifted his right arm.

PRRRRRRP. PRRRRRRP. PRRRRRRP.

And 30 yards away, in the middle of a pitch in Estonia, an 18-year-old that this football club released on the 6th of June went down onto his knees with both hands over his face.

I read that boy across a canteen table on a Tuesday in July, 5 days after we signed him back, and I have carried the number since.

[ELLIS CARTWRIGHT. CA 91. PA 148.]

91 was a League One footballer. 148 is a Premier League starter and it is 3 points off what this thing gave me for Aaron Wan-Bissaka the first time I looked at him.

I have looked at him 4 times since and it has said the same thing 4 times, because it always says the same thing.

It gave me something else at 94 minutes and 40 seconds in Estonia and I had not asked it for anything.

[ELLIS CARTWRIGHT. CA 104. PA 148.]

13 points in 23 days.

I have had this since I was 26. I have read about 4,000 footballers with it and I have watched a current ability move 13 points in 3 weeks exactly 0 times.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.