Glory Of The Football Manager System

Two days later two days Selhurst Park again. Lazio, Europa League, Matchday 6. The final group match.

We had already won the group. Thirteen points from five matches. Top seeds for the Round of 32. Nothing that happened on Thursday night could change anything. It was, in the purest sense of the word, meaningless.

I treated it that way. Eight academy players in the starting eleven: Pope; Mitchell, Hannam, Webb, Digne; Morrison, Kirby; Olise, Aviero, Semenyo; Blake. Inzaghi, to his credit, did the same resting Immobile, Luis Alberto, his entire first-choice defence. Two groups of young men, given the keys to the car and told to drive.

The Holmesdale turned up anyway. Twenty-one thousand on a freezing December Thursday for a match that meant nothing because at Selhurst Park, the meaning was never just about the result. It was about being there. About standing in the cold with a scarf around your neck and a song in your throat and the knowledge that you were part of something that mattered, even when the scoreboard said it didn’t.

The match was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying, absurd chaos the kind of football that happens when young players are freed from tactical responsibility and told to express themselves.

Olise was magnificent and maddening in equal measure, producing a dribble in the fourteenth minute that beat three Lazio defenders and ended with a shot that cleared the crossbar by the width of a seagull.

Semenyo ran at everything, his pace a blunt instrument wielded with joyful disregard for consequence. Morrison tackled with the abandon of a man who treated every challenge as a personal referendum on his character.

And Kirby Nya Kirby, eighteen years old, conducting the midfield of a European football match as though he had been born doing it was the still point in the storm. Every time the chaos threatened to consume the performance, Kirby was there, receiving the ball, settling the tempo, finding the right pass. He was the system’s conscience in a match where the system had been given the night off.

Blake scored in the thirty-first minute a near-post header from a Semenyo cross, the kind of instinctive, striker’s finish that the boy produced so naturally it was easy to forget he was eighteen. The Holmesdale celebrated as though it were a cup final. Blake celebrated as though it were his first goal ever. Both reactions were exactly right.

Crystal Palace 1–0 Lazio. Blake. 31 minutes.

Lazio equalised in the fifty-sixth their youth striker finding space between Hannam and Webb, a composed finish past Pope that the two young centre-backs should have prevented but didn’t.

Webb dropped his head. Hannam put his hand on Webb’s shoulder and said something that straightened the younger man’s spine. These were boys learning in real time that professional football punished mistakes with goals, and that the only response was to get on with the next challenge.

Then, in the seventy-third minute, Lazio scored again. A counter-attack that caught Mitchell too high up the pitch the young right-back’s one error in an otherwise excellent performance and Lazio’s substitute winger drove to the byline, cut back, and their striker finished from six yards. Pope got a hand to it. Not enough.

Crystal Palace 1–2 Lazio. 73 minutes.

The Holmesdale groaned, but it was a gentle groan the sound of fans who knew the result didn’t matter and were disappointed in the way you’re disappointed when the film you’re watching takes a wrong turn, not in the way you’re disappointed when something real goes wrong.

I brought on Eze for Aviero, Townsend for Semenyo, McArthur for Morrison. The changes added composure but the goal didn’t come. Olise had two more chances a curling shot that Lazio’s goalkeeper tipped over, then a through ball to Blake that arrived a yard too far ahead. The sixteen-year-old was learning the difference between training and European football: in training, the spaces were bigger and the defenders were slower. In Europe, the margins were measured in centimetres.

The whistle blew. Crystal Palace 1–2 Lazio. Our first home defeat. Our third loss of the season. And it didn’t matter at all.

I shook Inzaghi’s hand. He held my grip and smiled. ”Your young players,” he said. ”They are not ready yet. But they will be. Give them two years.”

”They’ll get less than that,” I said. ”The way this season is going, some of them will be starting in the Premier League by March.”

He raised an eyebrow. Then he nodded. He understood. He managed Lazio’s youth teams before their senior job. He knew what the pathway looked like from the inside.

In the dressing room, I kept it brief. The academy players were sitting in the same spots the senior players usually occupied, their legs dangling, their faces carrying the particular mixture of frustration and wonder that follows a European match you lost but shouldn’t have. Some of them Hannam, Morrison, Kirby looked disappointed.

Others Blake, Semenyo, Olise looked hungry. The difference was instructive. The ones who were disappointed were processing the defeat. The ones who were hungry were already thinking about the next chance.

”You lost,” I said. ”Welcome to professional football. But you competed. You played in a European match, at Selhurst Park, against a Serie A club, and you made them work for every minute. The result goes in the record book. What you learned goes in your bones. That’s worth more.”

I turned to the whiteboard and wrote seven fixtures.

Dec 9: Leicester (A).

Dec 13: Swansea (H).

Dec 16: Manchester City (H).

Dec 19: League Cup quarter-final.

Dec 23: Huddersfield (A).

Dec 26: Southampton (H).

Dec 30: West Brom (A).

The room went still. Even the academy players who wouldn’t start these matches but might be on the bench for some of them felt the weight of what was written on the board. Seven matches in twenty-one days. Six Premier League fixtures and a cup quarter-final. Christmas football. The gauntlet that Neville had been warning about since August.

”This is what we built the squad for,” I said. ”Every single person in this building will play between now and New Year. Pato and Bojan have scored five goals in three starts they’ll start at least two of these. Tarkowski, Digne, McArthur, Townsend the rotation players who have won us matches all season you’ll be called on again. And some of you...”

I looked at Kirby, at Eze, at Blake ”might get a chance you don’t expect. Be ready.”

I paused. The weight of December settled over the room like a blanket.

”Neville said Christmas. He said if we’re still in the top four at Christmas, he’d accept that this is real.” I looked at every face.

”We’re third. Thirty-three points from fifteen league matches. Group winners in Europe. Quarter-finalists in the cup. We didn’t get here by accident. We got here by being better prepared, deeper, more unified, and more relentless than anyone expected.”

I clapped my hands. Once. Sharp. The sound cracking the silence.

”Seven matches. Twenty-one days. Let’s finish the year the way we started it.”

I drove home through the December night, the Selhurst Park floodlights fading in the rear-view mirror, the London streets quiet and cold. Emma was waiting at the apartment with takeaway from the Thai place on Lordship Lane and a bottle of red wine that she had opened an hour ago and was halfway through.

”You lost,” she said, handing me a glass.

”The kids lost. I watched. There’s a difference.”

”Is there?”

”No,” I admitted. ”Every loss hurts. Even the ones that don’t matter.”

She curled up beside me on the sofa, her legs across my lap, her wine balanced on the armrest, her red hair falling across the cushion behind her. She smelled of jasmine and the Thai food and the faint, clean scent of the cold December air that clung to her jacket.

”Seven matches in twenty-one days,” she said.

”Seven.”

”Including Manchester City away and a cup quarter-final.”

”Yes.”

”And you’re third in the Premier League.”

”Yes.”

She looked at me, her green eyes serious beneath the reading glasses she hadn’t bothered to take off. ”Danny. When this season started, you were a twenty-eight-year-old with a UEFA A Licence and a team that the bookmakers had at fifteen hundred to one for the title. You are now third in the table, top of your European group, and José Mourinho has publicly called you annoying. In what universe is that not extraordinary?”

”The universe where December still has seven matches in it.”

She took my wine glass, set it on the table, took my face in both hands, and kissed me slowly, deliberately, the kind of kiss that said shut up and listen to me.

”You’re going to survive December,” she said. ”The squad is deep enough. The system works. The rotation works. You have Konaté back, Chilwell fit, Pato and Bojan clicking, and twenty-eight players who would run through a wall for you.” She held my gaze. ”And you have me. Sitting on this sofa. With this wine. Waiting for you after every single match.”

I put my forehead against hers. ”That’s the most important part.”

”Obviously.” She kissed my nose. ”Now eat your pad thai before it goes cold. You’ve got Leicester on Saturday and I need you fed.”

[Season Status December 7th, 2017.]

[Overall: P32 W26 D3 L3. GF: 78. GA: 29.]

[Premier League: P15 W10 D3 L2. Points: 33. Position: 3rd.]

[Europa League: P6 W4 D1 L1. 13 pts. Group H winners.]

[EFL Cup: Quarter-final, December 19th.]

[Pato-Bojan: 5 goals in 3 starts. The trigger and the blade.]

[Villain record hostile aways: P4 W2 D2 L0. Unbeaten.]

[Upcoming: 7 matches in 21 days. Neville’s Christmas deadline: 3 weeks.]

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.

All games played professionally are: 5(16/17)+15(17/18)+6(Europa)+2(preseason)+4(europa qualification)= 32