Glory Of The Football Manager System

The sound! Forty-five thousand people and a hundred and twelve years compressed into one moment, one man, one trophy. A release that they would hear in their memories for the rest of their lives.

Confetti erupted! Red and blue with Green and Gold mixed in! The Wembley sky filling with colour. Dann was standing at the top of the steps with the trophy above his head and tears running down his face and his mouth open in a scream that was not a word but was everything.

The squad rushed up. Sakho first, because Sakho was always first. Then Neves, then Kovačić, then Zaha, then everyone, the players crowding the Royal Box steps, their hands reaching for the trophy, their voices lost in the noise, their faces lit by the floodlights and the confetti and the flashbulbs of ten thousand phones in the Palace end.

They brought the trophy back to the pitch. The lap of honour.

Dann carried it for the first fifty yards. Then he passed it to Sakho. Sakho passed it to Neves. Neves passed it to Pope, who held it above his head with his goalkeeper’s gloves still on because Pope had not removed his gloves and would not remove his gloves until the lap of honour was complete because the gloves were part of the performance and the performance was not over.

The trophy moved through the squad. Every player. The three handles gripped by different hands, passed from player to player, the loving cup doing what it was designed to do: being shared.

When the trophy reached the academy boys, Kirby held it with one hand and his sparkling water with the other. The photograph would go viral. The caption on every social media account: ”This is Danny Walsh’s Crystal Palace.”

And then someone, I think it was Blake, shouted: ”Academy photo! Academy photo!”

They gathered. The boys. My boys. The FA Youth Cup winners. The Under-18 Premier League Nationals champions. Blake, Kirby, Olise, Morrison, Bowen, Fletcher, and the rest (every single one of them).

The boys I had coached on the Beckenham training pitches when the senior team was someone else’s problem and the academy was mine and the staff was four people in a Portakabin: me, Sarah, Rebecca, and Steele.

That was it. Four people and a group of teenagers and a gengenpress system drawn on a whiteboard that nobody outside the academy had ever seen.

Now the teenagers were standing on the Wembley pitch with a trophy. The whiteboard system was the most talked-about tactical structure in English football. And the four people from the Portakabin were all here.

Sarah, who had been my assistant since the under-eighteens and who had built the tactical analysis department from a clipboard and a laptop.

Rebecca, who had been tracking these boys’ bodies since they were fifteen and who had kept every single one of them fit for a forty-nine-match season. Steele, who had trained Pope into an England-level goalkeeper using the same methods he’d developed coaching the academy keepers.

I called them over. ”Sarah! Rebecca! Michael! Get in the photo!”

Sarah looked at me. ”Danny, this is for the players.”

”You were there at the beginning. All three of you. You’re in the photo.”

They came. The four of us standing behind the academy boys on the Wembley pitch, the trophy in front, the confetti on the grass. The same four people from the Portakabin. The same boys from the academy. The only difference was the location and the silverware and the fact that thirty thousand people were watching.

Tomás took the photo. Elena told him to take twelve. He took fourteen.

The one that would be used, the one that every Palace fan would print and frame, showed five boys and four staff members on the Wembley turf, the Carabao Cup in the centre, Kirby’s sparkling water visible in his left hand, Blake’s grin enormous, Olise looking directly at the camera with the composed, slightly bewildered expression of a sixteen-year-old who had won two trophies and could not legally buy a pint.

Then they found me.

I was standing on the pitch near the halfway line. I had stepped back from the celebrations because the celebrations belonged to the players and the players had earned them and the manager’s job was to watch, to witness, to let the boys have their moment.

They didn’t let me watch.

Sakho started it. He shouted something in French. The squad turned. Twenty-eight players, the coaching staff, the medical team, the analysts, the whole group, converging on Danny Walsh in the centre circle of Wembley.

”No,” I said. Because I knew what was coming. ”Absolutely not!”

They grabbed me anyway. Sakho had one arm. Dann had the other. Neves had my left leg. Kovačić had my right. Up I went! My suit jacket riding up, my tie flapping, my shoes pointing at the Wembley arch.

They tossed me. One! Two! Three! The Wembley sky above me, floodlights blurring, confetti swirling, and for three seconds at the apex I could see the whole stadium. Both ends. The arch. The trophy catching the light.

Three throws. They caught me each time. Barely! The third was higher than the first two and Sakho’s catch was more of a controlled fumble and Rebecca, twenty yards away, was visibly calculating the insurance implications.

They put me down. Suit ruined. Tie sideways. Mud on my shoes. Hair a mess. And I was laughing! The real laugh!

The cameras got it. All of it. The image of Danny Walsh being thrown into the Wembley sky, arms outstretched, face laughing, confetti falling. The image that would sit alongside Guardiola at Barcelona in 2009.

Then the media carwash began.

A BT Sport producer appeared at my elbow. Headset. Clipboard. The urgent energy of someone who had forty-five seconds to get a cup-winning manager to the interview position before the broadcast window closed.

”Danny. Rio’s waiting. Pitch-side. Two minutes.”

”Give me thirty seconds.”

I found Barry. He was already working. Already collecting water bottles and tape and discarded shin pads. Of course he was. The match was over and Barry’s job was never over.

”Barry.”

He looked up. Eyes red. Hands full. Trying to do his job and cry at the same time.

”Thank you,” I said. ”For everything. Twenty-two years. The socks. The meals. The hot sauce. All of it.”

He didn’t say anything. He put the water bottles down and he hugged me. Barry, who did not hug, who communicated through neatly folded shirts and correctly labelled containers and the quiet, invisible, essential work of keeping a football club functioning, hugged the manager on the Wembley pitch, and the hug lasted four seconds and neither of them mentioned it afterwards.

The BT Sport interview. Rio Ferdinand. Pitch-side. The Wembley turf behind them, the confetti still on the grass, the Palace fans still singing in the background, the trophy visible on the pitch where the players were still passing it around.

Ferdinand: ”Danny Walsh. Carabao Cup winner. How does it feel?”

I looked at him. The suit muddy. The tie sideways. The eyes still red. The mask nowhere to be found.

”It feels like...” I stopped. Tried again. ”I don’t have words, Rio. I’ve had words for everything this season. Every press conference. Every interview. Every question. I’ve always had the words. Right now, I don’t have them.”

Ferdinand: ”Take your time.”

”It feels like the boy from Moss Side did what he said he would do. In the press conference after Milan, I said the fans deserve a trophy. I said we would focus everything on making that happen. And the players delivered. Not me. Them. The players. Dann, who found out he was starting forty-five minutes before kick-off and scored the goal that sealed it. Pope, who saved from Agüero when it was three-two and kept us in the match. Eze, who scored the greatest goal I have ever seen. Kovačić and Neves, who played tiki-taka against Manchester City. At Wembley!”

I laughed. The first real laugh on camera. Ferdinand laughed with me.

”Sakho. The man who carried me in December when I broke. He’s carried me all season. He carried us all today. And the fans.” I looked at the Palace end, still full, still singing. ”Those people have waited a hundred and twelve years. A hundred and twelve. And they never stopped believing. They never stopped coming. They never stopped singing. This trophy is for them. Every single one of them.”

Ferdinand: ”You’ve never lost to Pep Guardiola. Four matches now. What’s the secret?”

”There’s no secret. There’s a tested system. There’s an identity. There’s a group of players who believe in something bigger than themselves. And there’s a staff who work harder than anyone in football.” I paused. ”And there’s a bit of luck. A lot of luck, actually. Pope’s save. Sané’s shot hitting the bar. Sterling being offside. You need those moments. We got them.”

Ferdinand: ”And what’s next? Atlético Madrid in thirteen days.”