Glory Of The Football Manager System

1-0

”GLAD ALL OVER.”

Wembley erupted. The massive flags in the lower tier went up and down in the dark like the stadium itself was breathing.

Zaha sprinted to the Holmesdale lot with one finger pointed high in the air and got buried by Cartwright and Townsend in a pile of bodies at the corner flag.

But PSV came straight back at us. Van Bommel was on the edge of his technical area with both arms going like windmills, physically pushing his full-backs higher up the pitch with his bare hands.

”ALLEZ PSV. ALLEZ PSV.”

In the thirty-eighth minute, Lozano picked up a loose ball on the halfway line with forty yards of wet grass in front of him, and he took it. Scott Dann came across to cover. Dann did not dive in.

He ran with him, matching his stride, staying on his feet. He stayed on his feet. But at the absolute edge of the box, Lozano shifted the ball once onto his right foot and bent it beautifully inside the far post before Dann could get a desperate boot in the way.

1-1.

The PSV end went up in a single, massive red and white jump, and they sang a chant in Dutch, over and over, and I did not need Sarah to translate the hostility of it.

Scott Dann stood on the edge of his own box with his hands on his hips. He looked straight through the rain at my technical area.

I held my hand up to him, palm flat, level with my shoulder. He had stayed on his feet. He had done his job. Lozano had just hit a perfect shot.

Dann nodded once, turned round, and went to get the ball out of the net himself.

PRRRP.

At half time, the dressing room was thick with adrenaline and shouting. I ignored the noise and talked to exactly two of them.

”Jack.” Grealish looked up with the ice pack already strapped to his ankle and his socks rolled down round his shins.

”Rosario is going wherever Rúben goes. Nobody is going with you. Come inside off the touchline, drift between Rosario and their centre-halves, and ask for the ball.”

”Inside where?”

”Where the ten would stand.”

”I have not played there since I was fifteen.”

”You have played there in every single training match since August when you think I am not looking at you.”

He grinned, a sudden flash of teeth, and adjusted the ice pack.

”Pierre.” Højbjerg had a towel draped over his head. ”Twenty more minutes of you breaking them, and then Mateo.”

”Rebecca said?”

”Rebecca said.”

Højbjerg looked across the crowded dressing room at Kovačić. The Croatian was sat in his tracksuit with his match boots fully laced up already, rhythmically tapping the metal studs on the concrete floor. Tk tk tk tk.

”He has had his boots on since the Champions League anthem,” Højbjerg said.

Jack Grealish scored in the fifty-eighth minute, from the exact blade of grass I had told him to stand on.

Neves fired a pass into him between the lines, hard and flat. Rosario was ten yards away, stuck tracking Neves’s shoulder.

Grealish turned with the ball glued to his left foot and ran directly at Nick Viergever. He went past the defender with a devastating drop of the shoulder and delicately dinked the ball over Zoet as the keeper rushed out.

2-1.

He ran to the touchline, right to our dugout, and held his right ankle up in the air for Rebecca to see. Rebecca put her pen in her mouth and clapped for him with both hands.

”GREALISH. GREALISH. GREALISH.”

On seventy minutes, the fourth official’s board went up in neon red.

Wembley stood up and roared for a man it had never actually seen play a competitive minute in our shirt.

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg jogged off the pitch, stopped at the white line, hugged Mateo Kovačić tight round the neck, said something aggressive in his ear, and shoved him onto the grass.

[MATEO KOVAČIĆ. CONDITION 97%. MATCH SHARPNESS 52%.]

His first touch of a football in a Palace shirt went straight to Pablo Rosario. The PSV end cheered it ironically.

His second touch, exactly one minute later, he took with his back to goal. Rosario was tight on his hip and Jorrit Hendrix was coming at him fast from the front.

Kovačić didn’t panic.

He rolled the ball under his right foot, shifted his weight, and turned completely the other way round the pair of them completely...the exact same liquid half-turn he had used to ruin Grealish and Dann on pitch two the Monday prior. Without even looking up, he clipped a thirty-five-yard pass perfectly into the right channel for Zaha to run onto.

”OHHHHHHH.”

”THERE IT IS!” Grealish was screaming it from the edge of the opponent’s box, pointing at the midfield. ”THERE IT IS, MATEO!”

I put Benteke on for Cartwright with fifteen minutes left, and eighteen-year-old Ellis Cartwright came off to a standing ovation from every section of the stadium.

In the eighty-first minute, Kovačić turned Rosario again. On the halfway line this time. But he did not play the long killer pass. He put his head down, carried the ball twenty yards through the broken midfield, and slipped it perfectly into the path of an overlapping Hakimi. Hakimi didn’t break stride, whipping a cross from the byline straight onto Benteke’s head.

Benteke did not even have to jump properly. He just leaned his massive frame into the cross and directed it past Zoet with his forehead. It went in off the inside of the post.

Tonk.

3-1.

”GLAD ALL OVER.”

Benteke didn’t run to the corner flag to celebrate. He ran straight back to Kovačić, picked the Croatian midfielder up entirely off the grass, and carried him ten yards. Kovačić was laughing so hard that he nearly collapsed when Benteke finally put him down.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka went on for Hakimi with four minutes left to lock the door. The last meaningful action anybody took in that match was Scott Dann standing up to Luuk de Jong at the edge of our box. He did not go to ground. He did not go to ground. He just watched the feet, waited, and took the ball cleanly off his toe while both men were completely upright.

PRRRP. PRRRP.

Van Bommel shook my hand at the mouth of the tunnel, said, ”Good team,” through gritted teeth, and went down the steps into the dark.

In the dressing room, the music was deafening. Kovačić sat in his corner with his boots still laced tight, staring at the floor, exhausted but smiling.

”Twenty-two minutes,” Rebecca said, leaning over him and holding the medical card up.

”Twenty and two.”

”I have written the two down,” she warned him, tapping the card.

Marcus appeared in the dressing room doorway holding his phone high.

”Dortmund won in Milan,” he shouted over the noise. ”Palace nine points. Dortmund six. Inter three. PSV zero.”

Nobody cheered. They were too tired. Tarkowski sat with both feet submerged in an ice bucket, his eyes shut tight. Rúben Neves was essentially asleep sitting upright against the lockers.

I walked out into the corridor to find some quiet. Nathan caught me halfway to the manager’s office, walking fast, holding his phone flat against his chest like he was hiding a bad hand of cards.

”Boss. Before you see it somewhere else.”

He stopped and turned the screen around to face me.

It was the photograph of my mother. Row G, at Old Trafford. Wearing her Palace hat, with her handbag gripped tight on her knees. It had been taken from a few rows behind her on Sunday afternoon. Somebody had put it up online with her face circled in a crude red MS Paint circle, and underneath it, the caption read: Found Judas’s mum. Moss Side. Same street he grew up on?

It already had six thousand likes.

”The club solicitor has it,” Nathan said quickly, watching my eyes. ”The club security team has it. The police have it.”

I took the phone out of his hand. The screen felt hot. I looked at the picture of her for longer than I should have, tracing the red circle with my eyes.

”Where is she tonight?”

”At home, boss. I rang her an hour ago to check.” Nathan took the phone back out of my grip, very gently. ”She said to tell you she has been called worse by your Auntie Sheila.”

***

Thank you for the constant support.