Glory Of The Football Manager System

Sarah had the board ready at 59 and looked along the bench at me. I nodded. The number had been on Rebecca’s easel since that morning.

60 minutes. Ward for Wan-Bissaka.

And then they took it back.

It started with Kirby, 3 yards from Hesketh, where he had been stood since the 50th minute. Quinn tried to find Hesketh’s feet. Kirby came round the front of him and took it, and gave it 5 yards to Konaté. Konaté put his foot on it.

He stood on that ball for 3 full seconds with Akins running at him. Then he rolled it to Tuanzebe and pointed at the grass with both hands, palms down.

They kept it. Mitchell to Kirby. Kirby to Grealish, and Grealish held it with Allen hanging off his shirt until Fraser came as well, and then released it. Out to Ward. Back to Krul, who took a touch and waited for Akins to come and went round him. Wembley found its voice on the 9th pass and by the 14th the whole ground was doing it.

”OLÉ.”

Bowen. Olise. Kirby again, first time, left to right.

”OLÉ.”

Burton chased it. I will say that for every 1 of them. They chased it in pairs, and the pairs kept arriving where the ball had been. On the 17th pass Stephen Quinn stopped running, in the centre circle, and put his hands on his knees.

The 21st was Olise’s. He took it with his back to goal and Hutchinson tight on him. He let it run across his body, and went the other way, and Hutchinson went with the ball.

The 22nd was a reverse pass off the outside of his left boot, into a space only he and Jarrod Bowen had seen.

Bowen took 1 touch and hit it across Collins with his left, low, into the far corner.

Swsh.

4-1.

All 11 of them had touched it, the goalkeeper as well. Bowen did not run anywhere. He turned and pointed at Olise with both hands, and then at Kirby, and then he gave up and pointed at all of them.

Up in the directors’ seats behind me somebody was laughing. I think it was Rodríguez.

70 minutes. Cartwright for Blake.

70 minutes. McArthur for Grealish.

Grealish was Rebecca’s other number. Cartwright was mine. Blake came off to the whole of Wembley on its feet and did not know where to look. Grealish came off blowing, with his socks down, and Kirby clapped him all the way to the line.

”Well played, Grandad,” Kirby said.

Clough made his changes too, and sent his centre halves up for every free kick, 4-1 down with 20 minutes left. They won 3 corners. Konaté headed all 3 away.

On 77 Olise finished it.

He picked it up on the right, 35 yards out, with Hutchinson in front of him and Quinn coming across to help. He slowed down. He almost stopped. Hutchinson planted his feet, and Olise pushed it through his legs and went round him to collect it, and Quinn, who had started an FA Cup final on that pitch, came sliding in from the side at full stretch.

Olise lifted the ball over the slide with the toe of his boot and stepped over the man.

He was in the box with Collins coming and the goal in front of him. He had scored 1 already. He was 17 and it was Wembley, and any boy alive hits that.

He rolled it sideways.

Ellis Cartwright was 8 yards out with nobody on him and he passed it into an empty net.

Tk.

5-1.

Cartwright went to Olise. All of them went to Olise. In the row behind me I heard Michael Cooke’s seat go up, and when I looked round he was stood with his cap crushed flat against his chest in 1 fist. He released Ellis Cartwright in May. He was right to do it, and he has thought about it every week since.

On 88 minutes we won a corner on the left.

Konaté went up for it. Ward went up. Cartwright and Semenyo and Bowen were in the box already, and Olise jogged across to take it with the whole Palace end singing his name. 5-1. There was nothing on it. Every boy in that side wanted another goal and half of them looked across at the bench as they went.

I looked at my arm. It was where I had left it.

Then I looked at the halfway line.

Tyrick Mitchell and Axel Tuanzebe were stood on it, 10 yards apart, with their hands on their hips. Nobody had sent them. Nobody had waved. They had walked back there on their own at 5-1 in the 88th minute. A man with a laminated card had taken them there by the elbow at 11 o’clock that morning, and that was where they lived at corners.

Olise swung it in. Buxton headed it clear, a real header, 30 yards, and it dropped to Akins on the run with green grass in front of him and the yellow end roaring him on.

He got as far as the centre circle. Tuanzebe stepped across and took it off him.

Bray did not look at me. He took the card out of his pocket, turned it over to the side with my writing on it, read it, and put it back.

At 5-1 that proved nothing about me, and I knew it. Nobody had asked my arm the question. But I had sat 3 feet from a set piece coach and watched 2 lads of 19 and 21 do, without being told, the thing I did not do in Moscow with a World Cup on it.

Prrrp. Prrrp. Prrrrp.

CRYSTAL PALACE 5 BURTON ALBION 1.

Clough did not come looking for me, and I did not go looking for him. He got his players into a line on the halfway line, all of them, the substitutes as well, and he walked them the length of that pitch to the yellow end with their heads up. Buxton at the front. The drum was still going. They stood and clapped the people who had come down the motorway for them, and the people sang back, and it went on for a long time.

Then the Palace end stood up and clapped them off as well. All the way to the tunnel.

Konaté took the armband off in the centre circle and looked for somebody to give it to. Deano was already walking out to him with his hand open.

Michael Cooke caught me at the mouth of the tunnel. He had put the cap back on.

”April is going to be very quiet,” he said, and went to find his car.

There was a television on a bracket in the dressing room corridor, and when I came round the corner there were 9 of them stood under it in their boots and their towels with the steam still coming off them.

Leicester 1 Manchester City 1. No extra time. It had gone to penalties at the King Power while we were clapping Burton off.

Nobody spoke. City’s cup goalkeeper saved 2 of them. A Leicester defender missed another. Then Oleksandr Zinchenko walked up and scored, and it was over, 3-1, and the sky blue shirts were running across the screen.

Manchester City were in the semi-finals. So were we.

”I want them,” Nya Kirby said, to the television.

Olise hit him with a towel.

Sarah had come up beside me with the sheet folded in her hand. She kept her voice down.

”The draw is tomorrow night, after Chelsea play Bournemouth. 2 legs, in January.”

On the screen Pep Guardiola was walking across the grass at Leicester with his hands in his coat pockets. In 4 days I was taking a team to his ground with 47 points against his 48. It would be a different team. Kovačić, Neves, Zaha, and a manager who had sat on his hands all night and still did not know what he would do with them on Saturday at 0-0.

Kirby was still looking up at the television. He was the only 1 of them smiling.