Glory Of The Football Manager System

UEFA stopped doing trophy presentations in the stands in 2017.

Čeferin changed it. The pitch is the players’ stage, and the men in blazers come down to them instead of the other way round, and nobody climbs 40 steps in front of a crowd any more.

So there are no steps at Lilleküla.

Rrrrrr.

They wheel a black podium out to the centre circle 4 minutes after the whistle, 8 men pushing it, with a strip of red carpet rolled out in front of it and a table for the medals and the Super Cup on a plinth at the top.

And it is on the grass.

Which means there is nowhere to stand.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

Hnnn.

Real Madrid went first, because the losing side always goes first, and that is the cruellest 4 minutes in European football and nobody has ever changed it.

10 men, because Sergio Ramos was sent off on 58 minutes and a sent off player does not come out for a medal.

Marcelo had the armband. He went along that line and took a silver medal off Aleksander Čeferin and shook his hand and had it off his own neck before he was 6 paces past him.

Modrić took his and put it straight in his shorts.

Toni Kroos put his on and left it on and I have thought about that more than anything else that happened in Estonia.

Then they came back past us.

We were stood in a line on the halfway line waiting our turn, 23 men and 14 staff, and 10 Real Madrid players walked the length of it about 4 feet away.

Nobody on our side said a word.

Not a look. Not a hand out. Christian Benteke had his arms folded and his eyes on the podium and 22 men did the same thing without anybody telling them, and I have never been prouder of a football club in my life than I was for those 11 seconds.

Marcelo went past me last and I put my hand out and he took it.

Then it was ours.

RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Mamadou Sakho had the armband because Sakho played 90 minutes and Scott Dann sat on a bench for 94.

He got to that podium and stopped a yard short of it.

Every man in that squad watched Jesús Navas go up at Wembley 10 days ago and hand a trophy back down, and none of them have mentioned it since, and all of them were thinking about it.

Sakho turned round and looked for a goalkeeper.

Tim Krul shook his head at him.

Sakho put a hand flat on his chest and pushed him.

30 years old. Free transfer in July. 3 weeks of waiting for a competitive match and then Real Madrid.

3 saves. Benzema at 14. Benzema at 45 and 2, low across his own 6 yard box, the one Michael Steele has watched him make 400 times on a Tuesday in Beckenham with a bag of balls.

A clean sheet against the champions of Europe.

Tim Krul put both hands on the UEFA Super Cup at 24 minutes past 11 at night in Estonia, and he did not lift it straight away. He stood there with his hands on it and his head down for about 2 seconds.

”KRUUUUUL. KRUUUUUL.”

Then he put it over his head.

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

I do not know what confetti costs and I have never asked, but they fire it out of 6 cannons at pitch level and it goes about 60 feet in the air and it takes 90 seconds to come down.

There is a photograph of me from that night that has been on about 40 front pages.

I am stood in the middle of it, in a wet quarter zip, with my arms by my sides, and I am looking at the floor.

I have not walked onto a pitch to be looked at since the day I got this job. The podium is on the grass now and there is nowhere to go.

Christian Benteke put me on his shoulder for about 4 seconds and I have watched that back and I look like a man being carried out of a burning building.

And Rúben Neves, 21 years old, came through 4 people, took the trophy off Tim Krul without asking, and put it in my hands.

It is 12 kilos of solid silver and it was cold, and both my hands went round the base of it because 1 will not do.

Ding.

[UEFA SUPER CUP. SECURED.]

[CRYSTAL PALACE. RECORD.]

[U18 PREMIER LEAGUE. WON.]

[FA YOUTH CUP. WON.]

[CARABAO CUP. WON.]

[FA CUP. WON.]

[UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE. WON.]

[FA COMMUNITY SHIELD. WON.]

[UEFA SUPER CUP. WON.]

[MOROCCO. FIFA WORLD CUP. RUNNER-UP.]

It went down that list at about a line a second and I stood there and let it.

It put the under 18s at the top with the rest of them. It has never done that before and I have thought about it since.

[CRYSTAL PALACE. REPUTATION: CONTINENTAL.]

It has said continental since the 24th of May. It said national for 11 months before that and it said regional the day I got the job.

The word changes when this club wins something and I have never told a living soul that it does.

[REPUTATION: WORLD.]

And then it did something it has never done in 3 years.

I have had this thing since I was 26. It has read about 4,000 footballers for me, and every single time it has waited until I looked at a man and then told me what he was.

It has never once looked back at me.

[DANIEL WALSH. AGE 29.]

I was stood in a centre circle in Estonia holding a European trophy with red and blue paper coming down on my head and 12,424 people making a noise, and I could not hear any of it.

[CURRENT ABILITY 172.]

I have seen 172 twice. Both of them were footballers and both of them are in Spain.

[POTENTIAL ABILITY ...]

It sat there.

It has never sat there. It takes a second and it costs me nothing and it has been instant every time since a Tuesday in 2015.

3 seconds. 4.

[POTENTIAL ABILITY: INSUFFICIENT DATA.]

And it went.

Bray was shouting at me from about 4 feet away and I had not heard 1 word of it, and Christian Benteke had a hand on the back of my head, and there is a photograph of that exact moment on 40 front pages of a man holding a trophy and looking at nothing at all.

Everybody in England thinks that is a man overwhelmed by winning something.

I have not told 1 living soul what it actually was, and I am not going to.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

That dressing room was the loudest room I have been in.

Somebody put the speaker on before the door was shut. Michael Olise sat in a corner with a medal round his neck and a towel over his head and did not move for 10 minutes. Achraf Hakimi got a bottle of something off Sarah and Sarah does not drink.

Scott Dann, 31, club captain, 94 minutes on a bench, went round every single member of staff in that room and shook their hand.

Ellis Cartwright stood against a wall with his medal in his hand instead of round his neck, turning it over.

And Steve Parish stood in a doorway in a suit that had been on since Tuesday and did not come in, because Steve Parish never comes in.

Clk.

I got out at about 20 past 12 and stood in a corridor.

Marcus was in it with a phone.

”Boss. You need to see 4 things and then I am putting it away.”

Spain. The 2 commentators on the Real Madrid feed went 11 seconds without speaking at the 4th goal and 19 at the 5th, and the second one has been clipped 2 million times by 1 in the morning.

Marca had a black front page ready by midnight with 5 words on it and 1 of them was vergüenza.

Sky cut their whole schedule and put Neville and Carragher on at 1 in the morning, and Gary Neville said the sentence that ran everywhere the next day.

”There are 6 clubs in England who have spent 100 years telling everybody that this is not possible, and a football club that was 14th 16 months ago has just done it in Estonia in front of 12,000 people.”

And talkSPORT. Marcus turned that one round last.

”They have had a 3 hour phone-in and Simon Jordan has done 40 minutes of it. He owned that club for 10 years and he lost it, boss, and he has just told the country that Crystal Palace are the best run football club in England.”

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

3 messages, and I read them stood against a breeze block wall with a medal in my hand and 1,500 miles of Baltic between us.

Emma. 23:31.

talkSPORT have offered me the 3 to 6. My own show, 5 days a week, national.

I am not talking about it tonight and I am not asking you anything. I have got until Monday, I will have decided by Sunday, and you are the second person I tell.

You won a European trophy. I am so proud of you I could be sick.