Glory Of The Football Manager System

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

”What’s next is tonight. Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we recover. And then we go again. Because this club has tasted something tonight that it has never tasted before. And I promise you, it’s going to want more.”

Ferdinand shook my hand. The interview ended. The broadcast cut. I stood on the Wembley pitch in my ruined suit and watched my players celebrate and I thought about nothing except the fact that it had happened and that it was real and that the boy from Moss Side had done it.

The bus left Wembley at eight-fifteen. The trophy was strapped into the front seat. Not in a case. On the seat. The seatbelt around the handles, Barry having secured it with the same meticulous attention he applied to everything. The green and gold ribbons trailing over the armrest.

The bus was loud. Music. Singing. Dann was standing in the aisle with the trophy, holding it above his head while the squad sang ”Glad All Over” for the fifteenth time. Sakho had his phone out, filming, his daughters on FaceTime, the two girls in their Palace shirts screaming at the screen because their father was holding a trophy on a bus and the bus was very loud.

Zaha was in the back seat, his medal around his neck, his headphones off for the first time all day. He was smiling. Not the villain’s smile. A real one. The smile of a boy from Thornton Heath who had just won the first trophy of his career at the club he had been at since he was twelve.

The bus drove south through London. Police escort. Two motorcycles. Blue lights. The A406 to the South Circular to Beckenham, the route that every Palace player drove five times a week and that tonight felt like a different road in a different city in a different life.

London traffic. The great equaliser. Even with a police escort, the bus sat in traffic on the South Circular for twenty minutes. The celebrations continued. The traffic was irrelevant. The bus was a bubble. The world outside could wait.

Behind the team bus, in a separate van, Barry’s assistants were making the same journey with the kit. The muddy boots. The dirty shirts. The grass-stained shorts. The medical supplies. The used tape. The empty water bottles. The equipment that a cup final produced and that somebody had to pack and somebody had to transport and somebody had to wash before Monday. The unglamorous, essential, invisible logistics of professional football.

The bus arrived at Beckenham at nine-thirty. The car park was dark. The floodlights off. The building quiet. The players spilled off the bus, the trophy passed from hand to hand, the singing continuing in the car park.

Parish was waiting. He had driven from Wembley with Jessica and the board, and he was standing in the car park in his coat with his hands in his pockets and the expression of a man who had bought a football club out of administration and had just watched it win its first trophy.

”Danny. A word.”

We stepped aside. The players were loading into their cars, the celebration still buzzing, some of them already talking about where to go, which bar, which restaurant, which club.

”I’ve spoken to Jessica and the board,” Parish said. ”We want to do this properly. A parade. Through Croydon. Through South London. An open-top bus. The fans. The trophy. Everything. But not tonight. Not this week. After the season.”

”After the season.”

”You’ve got a league match this week. Then Atlético. Then the FA Cup. The season isn’t finished, Danny. And I’m not going to let us celebrate our way into dropping points.” He looked at me.

”Tell the players: everyone goes home tonight. Good night’s rest. No parties. No clubs. No bars. The parade happens when the season is over. And the party happens when the parade is over. Tonight, they go home to their families and they sleep.”

I looked at him. The chairman who had trusted me since the corridor. The chairman who had put a bus in a museum and bought a van for a teaching assistant and said yes to every idea I had brought him since August.

”You’re right,” I said.

”I know I’m right. Now go tell them before Zaha books a nightclub.”

I turned to the squad in the car park. The singing stopped. Twenty-eight faces looking at me under the car park lights, the trophy somewhere among them, the medals around their necks.

”Listen! Tonight, everyone goes home. Everyone! Families. Beds. Sleep. I know you want to celebrate. I know you’ve earned it. But the season is not over. We have a league match on Saturday. We have Atlético Madrid in ten days. And we have an FA Cup quarter-final after that. The chairman and the board have promised us a proper parade, an open-top bus through South London, through Croydon, through Thornton Heath, past Selhurst Park, with every fan who wants to be there. But the parade happens after the season. Not before.”

Silence. Then Dann: ”The gaffer’s right. We go home. We rest. We come back Monday and we go again. The trophy’s not going anywhere. We are.”

Zaha put his phone back in his pocket. Whatever he had been about to book, he unbooked.

Players found their cars. Neves, whose wife was waiting with Lurdes asleep in the car seat. Pope, driving back to his parents, had the medal on the passenger seat. Wan-Bissaka, ten minutes away, driving home in silence. Sakho, FaceTiming his daughters in the car park, the two girls screaming because their father was holding a trophy and wouldn’t stop smiling.

The academy boys left together. Blake, Kirby, Olise, Morrison. Four teenagers in suits, winner’s medals around their necks, sparkling water worn off. Kirby was driving. He had passed his test three weeks ago.

The idea of a newly licensed eighteen-year-old driving three other cup winners home through South London on a Sunday night was the kind of thing that Rebecca would have vetoed if she had known about it. She did not know about it. Nobody told her.

I did not go out. Nobody went out.

I went home. To Dulwich. To the penthouse. To Emma, who had driven from Wembley and was already there, the green coat on the hook, the Cambridge sweatshirt on, the kettle boiling.

”Tea?” she said.

”Tea.”

We sat on the sofa. My legs ached. My voice was gone. The medal was in my jacket pocket, the jacket ruined, the jacket I would never wash because the mud on it was Wembley mud and Wembley mud does not get washed off.

”You did it,” Emma said.

”We did it.”

She kissed me. The kitchen was warm. The city was quiet. The trophy was locked in Parish’s office at Beckenham, the green and gold ribbons hanging over his desk. The parade would come later. The party would come later. The season was not over. A league match on Saturday. Atlético in ten days. The FA Cup quarter-final after that.

But tonight, the machine was off. Tonight, the boy from Moss Side was drinking tea with the woman he was going to marry, and the first trophy in a hundred and twelve years was real, and that was more than enough.

[Carabao Cup Winners 2018. Crystal Palace 4-2 Manchester City.]

[Trophy lift: Dann climbs the steps alone. Takes an old man’s hand on the seventh step. Three-handled silver urn. Confetti. ”Glad All Over.”]

[Players hugging fans on the Wembley steps: Sakho letting thirty hands grab him. Zaha signing a ten-year-old’s shirt. Rodríguez applauding the Palace end.]

[Danny tossed in the air. Three throws! Sakho’s catch was ”a controlled fumble.” Rebecca calculating insurance implications.]

[Academy team photo on Wembley pitch: Blake, Kirby, Olise, Morrison, Bowen + Danny, Sarah, Rebecca, Steele. The Portakabin four. FA Youth Cup and U18 Nationals winners.]

[BT Sport interview: Ferdinand pitch-side. ”The boy from Moss Side did what he said he would do.” Danny laughing on camera.]

[Parish: parade after the season. Open-top bus through South London. ”The season isn’t finished.” Everyone goes home tonight.]

[Next: PL match Saturday. Atlético Madrid R16 March 8th (H), March 15th (A). FA Cup QF TBC. The season continues.]

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Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.