Glory Of The Football Manager System

A declaration that Crystal Palace could go to the hardest ground in England, concede three goals to the most dangerous attack in Europe, and score three of their own. That the system worked.

That the identity held. That an eighteen-year-old academy product could score at Anfield in the eighty-seventh minute because the manager who coached him trusted him more than the transfer market.

The final three minutes were both teams trying to score a seventh goal. Salah had a shot saved. Zaha had a shot blocked. Firmino headed over. Blake, who was running on pure adrenaline and the invincibility of youth, won a tackle against Van Dijk that made the Dutchman look at him with the surprised respect of a man who had just been tackled by a teenager and who was not entirely sure how it had happened.

The whistle blew. Liverpool 3-3 Crystal Palace.

The Anfield crowd, forty-three thousand people who had been singing for ninety-seven minutes, who had watched their team take the lead three times and lose it three times, who had experienced every emotion that football could produce in the space of a Monday evening, stood and applauded. Not for Liverpool. For the match. For both teams. For what they had just witnessed.

”You’ll Never Walk Alone” began. Not from a speaker system. From the Kop. From the stands. From forty-three thousand throats that had been singing all evening and that had one more song left.

The anthem rising into the Anfield night, the melody carrying across the pitch, reaching the away end, where two thousand Palace fans were standing in silence, listening, respecting, understanding that this song belonged to Liverpool and that the moment it was being sung in was a moment that belonged to everyone.

Lorraine was standing in the away end, her arms at her sides, the sellotaped badge on the dashboard of the hired minibus waiting in the car park. She was not singing. She was listening. The tears on her face were not for the result.

They were for the match. For the ninety-seven minutes of football that she had just witnessed at the age of forty-seven, having driven twelve people across England in a hired van, and that she would describe to Malcolm on the drive home as ”the best match I have ever seen in my life, and I’ve been going since I was twelve.”

Malcolm, whose hip was going to hurt for three days, would say: ”Agreed. And the lad who scored. The eighteen-year-old. He reminds me of someone.”

”Who?”

”Nobody specific. He reminds me of the reason we do this.”

In the dressing room, the mood was complicated. Not defeat. Not victory. The space between. The players knew they had played one of the greatest matches of the season and had not won it. They knew the winning streak was over. They knew the gap to City, who had won that weekend, was now seven points instead of five.

But they also knew what they had just done. They had gone to Anfield and matched Liverpool goal for goal, press for press, attack for attack. They had produced a match that the Monday Night Football cameras had captured and that the country would talk about for weeks. They had played football that made forty-three thousand opposing fans stand and applaud.

I walked to Blake. He was sitting on the bench, his shirt soaked, his face flushed, his eyes carrying the stunned, slightly disbelieving expression of a teenager who had scored at Anfield and who was not yet certain it had actually happened.

”How old are you, Connor?”

”Eighteen, gaffer.”

”You just scored at Anfield. In the eighty-seventh minute. To make it three-three. Against one of the best teams in Europe.”

”I know.”

”Do you know what that means?”

He looked at me. The boy I had coached at under-eighteens. The boy who had won the FA Youth Cup with me. The boy whose first touch I had corrected on a Tuesday afternoon at Beckenham when he was fifteen years old and the senior team was someone else’s problem.

”It means I belong here,” he said.

”Yes. It does.”

Klopp found me in the tunnel afterwards. He was leaning against the wall, his coat unbuttoned, his glasses in his hand, the manic energy of the touchline replaced by the quiet, reflective exhaustion of a man who had just managed ninety-seven minutes of football that had taken everything from him.

”Danny,” he said. ”That was the best match I have been involved in since I came to England.”

”Same.”

”Your boy. The eighteen-year-old. Number thirty-one.”

”Connor Blake.”

”Where did he come from?”

”I coached him at under-eighteens. He was seventeen when I first saw him. He couldn’t head a ball. He could barely trap it. But he could finish. He could always finish. I told him that everything else could be taught but that finishing was a gift, and that he had it.”

Klopp looked at me. ”You are a very unusual football manager, Danny Walsh.”

”I’m from Moss Side, Jürgen. Everything about me is unusual.”

He laughed. The Klopp laugh. The tunnel vibrated.

I did the press conference. The mask. Twelve minutes. ”An incredible match. Both teams can be proud. The boys showed immense character.” I didn’t smile. I didn’t reveal. The press got the manager.

Elena got the footage. She had been in the tunnel for the Klopp conversation. Tomás had filmed it from ten feet away, the camera capturing two managers, the young one and the experienced one, leaning against the wall, talking about an eighteen-year-old who could finish.

Elena would use the shot in the documentary. No narration. Just the image of two men who had competed for ninety-seven minutes and who had found, in the exhaustion that followed, the kind of respect that only football could produce.

The bus drove south through the night. The M6 stretching ahead, the headlights cutting through the February darkness. The players slept. The staff slept. Emma texted at midnight: ”I watched the whole thing. I cried three times. Once when they scored the third. Once when Blake scored. And once when they sang You’ll Never Walk Alone. Come home safely. I love you.”

I read the text. I put my phone away. I looked through the bus window at the motorway lights sliding past, the England that Danny Walsh was crossing in the dark, the distance between Anfield and Dulwich measured in miles and in everything that had happened since a boy from Moss Side first walked through the doors of a football club and decided to change it.

Three-three. At Anfield. The winning streak over. The unbeaten run alive. An eighteen-year-old scoring in the eighty-seventh minute. And ”You’ll Never Walk Alone” sung for both teams, because the football had been so good that even the anthem didn’t belong to just one side.

The second half of the season was not slowing down. It was accelerating. Milan in ten days. The cup final approaching. The league tightening. And a boy from Moss Side, sitting on a bus on the M6, who had just drawn three-all at Anfield and who was, despite everything, despite the streak ending, despite the gap widening, despite the exhaustion and the pressure and the weight of four competitions, smiling.

The real smile. The one that the cameras couldn’t see because the bus was dark and the boy was alone with his thoughts.

The smile of a man who loved football. And who had just watched the best of it.

[FULL TIME: Liverpool 3-3 Crystal Palace.]

[Goals: Zaha 27’, Dann 52’, Blake 87’. Liverpool: Salah 19’, Mané 38’, Salah 73’.]

[PL: P26 W20 D4 L2. 64 pts. 2nd. Gap to City: 7 pts.]

[Overall: P46 W39 D4 L3. GF: 120. GA: 41.]

[11 consecutive PL wins: ended. 23 matches unbeaten across all competitions: continues.]

[Connor Blake: scored at Anfield. 87th minute. 18 years old. ”It means I belong here.”]

[Kovačić-Neves: masterclass against Henderson. The corridor. The adaptation.]

[Klopp to Walsh: ”That was the best match I have been involved in since I came to England.”]

[Netflix: Tomás captured the Klopp-Walsh tunnel conversation. Elena: no narration needed.]

[You’ll Never Walk Alone: sung for both teams.]

[Next: AC Milan. Selhurst Park. February 15th. Ten days.]

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.