Glory Of The Football Manager System

Monday. Training in the morning, Milan preparation. In the afternoon, the official Carabao Cup final media day at Beckenham. The EFL’s broadcast team was arriving with cameras and lighting rigs to film the promotional content for the final.

Photographs of the squad in the cup final kit, which Macron (our kit sponsor) had designed specifically for the occasion: a bespoke Palace strip with gold trim on the collar and the EFL Cup final patch and the ball on the right sleeve. Individual portraits. Group shots.

The captain holding a replica trophy for the poster graphic that would be displayed on every screen at Wembley. Dann would hold the trophy. Dann would look at the trophy with the expression of a man who had been at the club for seven years and who was imagining what it would feel like to hold the real one.

”That sounds exhausting,” Emma said.

”It’s necessary. The final is on television. Sky Sports, BT Sport, the BBC. The promotional content sells the match. The match sells the club. The club sells the identity.”

”You sound like Jessica.”

”Jessica is right about everything except my tie collection.”

Tuesday. Video content for the EFL’s social media channels. Short clips: players talking about what the final means to them, what it would mean to win the first trophy in the club’s history. The EFL’s content team had sent a list of questions.

Danny had reviewed them. They were fine. Standard. ”What does this final mean to you?” ”How does it feel to play at Wembley?” ”What would you say to the Palace fans?”

But the question that every player would be asked, the one that the content team had put at the top of the list because they understood that the narrative was the product, was: ”Crystal Palace have never won a major trophy in a hundred and twelve years. What would it mean to change that?”

Every player would answer it differently. Dann would answer it with the quiet, measured authority of a captain who had been waiting for this moment since he joined the club.

Sakho would answer it in his own way, which could mean anything from a five-minute philosophical speech about destiny to a single word delivered with such intensity that the sound engineer would have to adjust the levels.

Zaha would grin and say something about South London and the Holmesdale. Kovačić, who had been at the club for five weeks, would say something diplomatic and precise and absolutely correct.

And Danny Walsh would say: ”It would mean everything. And we will focus everything we have on making it happen.”

Wednesday. Travel day for Milan. The squad flying to Italy on Wednesday evening, training at the San Siro on Wednesday night under the floodlights, sleeping in a hotel in Milan, playing the second leg on Thursday night.

Six-one on aggregate. The match was a formality. But the San Siro was the San Siro and Sakho was going to walk onto the pitch where Maldini had played and Sakho was not going to treat it as a formality because nothing about Sakho’s relationship with AC Milan was ordinary or casual or routine.

Thursday. The second leg. Milan. The San Siro. Eighty thousand seats. The ghosts of European football. And then, immediately after the match, the flight home, the recovery, the preparation for Sunday.

Friday and Saturday. Two days to prepare for the biggest match in Crystal Palace’s history. The Carabao Cup final. Wembley. Manchester City. Guardiola.

”And the BT Sport interview,” Emma said, reading something on her phone.

”What BT Sport interview?”

She turned her phone towards me. A notification from the BT Sport app. Rio Ferdinand was filming a pre-final special. Two interviews. One with Pep Guardiola. One with Danny Walsh. Back-to-back.

The format: long-form, in-depth, one-on-one conversations about the final, the season, the journey. Ferdinand had done these before, the sit-down specials that went beyond the five-minute press conference and allowed the managers to speak without the mask, without the twelve-minute time limit, without the room full of journalists competing for a headline.

”Rio called Jessica this afternoon,” Emma said. ”She texted me because she knew you’d be on a bus.”

”When?”

”Wednesday morning. Before you fly to Milan. He’s doing Pep on Tuesday at the Etihad. Then you on Wednesday at Beckenham.”

”What does he want to talk about?”

”The final. The season. Moss Side. The academy. The project.” She looked at me over her phone. ”You. He wants to talk about you, Danny. Not the manager. The person. That’s what the long-form format is for.”

”I don’t want to talk about me.”

”You never want to talk about you. That’s why it makes good television.” She put her phone down. ”And it’s Rio. He’s not a journalist. He’s a former player. A former Manchester United captain. He understands what a cup final means. He understands what it means to be twenty-eight and managing against Guardiola. He’ll be fair.”

”He’ll ask about Moss Side.”

”He’ll ask about Moss Side. And you’ll answer. The same way you answered when I asked. Not the full version. Not the documentary version. The version that’s appropriate for television. The version that says: I came from nothing and I built something and on Sunday I have a chance to win a trophy.”

I looked at her. The Cambridge sweatshirt. The wet hair. The green eyes that knew me better than the pundits, better than the press, better than the Netflix cameras, better than anyone except Frankie Morrison in a pub in Moss Side.

”You should be my media advisor,” I said.

”I am your media advisor. I’m also your girlfriend, your alarm clock, your emotional support system, and the person who reminds you that Valentine’s Day exists. I don’t get paid for any of it.”

”You get a Mercedes and a penthouse with a sauna.”

”I got a Mercedes because you wanted to return the Audi. I got the penthouse because you wanted to live in South London. And I got the sauna because I opened a door you never noticed.” She smiled. ”But I’ll take it.”

The evening settled. The tea cooled. The city hummed outside. The sofa held two people who were quietly, privately, unremarkably in love on a Sunday night in February while the most important week of their lives arranged itself on a phone screen.

Milan on Thursday for the romance. Wembley on Sunday for the history. And in between, the photographs and the videos and the interviews and the promotion and the machinery of a cup final that a club had waited a hundred and twelve years to play.

I put my phone on the coffee table. Emma’s legs were across my lap. Her feet were cold against my thigh. The Cambridge sweatshirt was too big for her and the shorts were too short and her hair was drying in the particular, untamed, slightly chaotic way that it dried when she didn’t use the hairdryer, which was always, because Emma believed that hairdryers were ”an unnecessary assault on perfectly functional hair.”

”Danny.”

”Mm.”

”You’re going to win on Sunday.”

”You don’t know that.”

”I know that. I’ve known it since the press conference after the Milan match. When you said a hundred and twelve years and the room went quiet. You weren’t making a speech. You were making a promise.” She looked at me. ”And you don’t break promises.”

”I broke the Valentine’s Day promise.”

”There was no Valentine’s Day promise. There was a Valentine’s Day assumption. You broke an assumption. That’s different.”

”Is it?”

”Legally and emotionally, yes.”

I laughed. She laughed. The apartment was warm and the city was dark and the week ahead was the most important week of my life and the woman beside me had just told me I was going to win on Sunday and I believed her because Emma Hartley did not say things she didn’t mean and the things she meant had a way of becoming true.

Milan on Thursday. Wembley on Sunday. Rio Ferdinand on Wednesday.

And Sunday night, the yoga mat, the gym with the sauna, the woman in the Cambridge sweatshirt, and the promise that the hundred and twelve years were about to end.

[Sunday, February 18th, 2018.]

[Cup final promotion week: Monday media day (squad photos, Nike cup final kit with gold trim). Tuesday video content for EFL social channels. Wednesday BT Sport interview with Rio Ferdinand (Walsh at Beckenham, Pep at Etihad).]

[Rio Ferdinand pre-final special: long-form, one-on-one. ”The final. The season. Moss Side. The academy. The person.”]

[Milan (A) San Siro: Thursday, February 22nd. Travel Wednesday. Training under San Siro floodlights Wednesday night.]

[Carabao Cup Final: Sunday, February 25th. Wembley. Manchester City. Guardiola. 112 years.]

[Emma: ”You’re going to win on Sunday. You were making a promise. And you don’t break promises.”]

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