Glory Of The Football Manager System

Eighty-fifth minute. Eighty-seventh. Eighty-eighth.

Spurs corner. Eriksen takes it. Vertonghen rises at the back post and meets it clean. The ball is going low and hard at Hennessey’s near post and Dann throws himself across his line and clears it off the goalline with his right shin. The ball spins out to the edge of the box. Riedewald collects. Plays it to Olise on the right wing.

Olise drives.

Aurier in front of him. Aurier backs off. Olise takes him wide, hits the byline, looks up.

Blake is in the middle. Aviero is two yards behind Blake at the top of the eighteen.

Olise pulls it back.

Blake dummies it.

The ball runs through Blake’s legs and arrives on the right foot of Brandon Aviero, seventeen years and three days, on his FA Cup debut, in his third minute on the pitch in senior football.

Aviero opens his body up.

Inside of his right foot. Bottom left corner of Lloris’s net.

Aviero. 89’. Crystal Palace four, Tottenham three.

I could not move from the technical area. Sarah was on her knees on the floor with her hands over her face. Bray had his fists in the air. Aaron the kitman was hugging Rebecca.

The bench were sprinting to the corner flag, Sakho out in front in his tracksuit, Pope after him, Wan-Bissaka behind that, jacket flapping.

Aviero went into the Holmesdale corner and got tackled by Olise and Blake. The three of them went into a pile. Joel Ward arrived. Dann came from sixty yards back, didn’t slow down, dived onto the top. Hennessey ran from his own area and dived onto Dann.

Aurier got there. He shoved Aviero in the back as Aviero was getting up. Seventeen years old. On his debut. In the back. Hard.

Sakho had Aurier by the front of his shirt before the referee was across. The benches emptied. Pochettino on the pitch. Me on the pitch. The fourth official, the medical teams, twenty-four players, twelve stewards.

I didn’t get to the middle of it. Steve Parish, who had come down from the directors’ box in the eighty-eighth minute, had his hand on the front of my jacket pulling me back. ”You stay here. Let it play out.” I stayed. It played out. The referee booked Sakho, Aurier and Vertonghen and got everyone off the pitch.

VAR check.

Twenty seconds. Thirty. Forty. The big screen flashed up.

GOAL.

Three minutes of stoppage time. Dann won four headers, blocked a shot, made two clearances, organised the offside trap for Eriksen’s last free kick and shouted Tomkins forward. Aviero, on the pitch for five minutes, won a corner.

The whistle went.

FULL TIME. CRYSTAL PALACE 4. TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 3.

I have never heard noise like that and I do not expect to hear it again until either we win a Europa League or we win a league.

[FULL TIME: Crystal Palace 4–3 Tottenham Hotspur. FA Cup Quarter-Final.]

[Goals: Benteke 12’, Eze 35’, Zaha 54’, Aviero 89’. Tottenham: Kane 6’, 41’, Son 67’.]

[Manager Record: P48 W40 D6 L2.]

[Youngest FA Cup goalscorer in Crystal Palace history: Brandon Aviero, 17y 0m 3d. Tenth academy debut of the season.]

[Through to FA Cup Semi-Final, Wembley, April.]

The Holmesdale started it before the players had stopped piling on each other in the centre circle.

”Wem-ber-ley. Wem-ber-ley. We’re the famous Crystal Palace and we’re going to Wem-ber-ley.”

Twenty-five thousand people on their feet. Scarves up. The away end was already filing out, half empty by the time the chant got to full volume, and the Holmesdale was making sure they heard it going up the steps.

Dann came to find me at the centre circle. Blood on his right shin from the goalline clearance. Grass stains down the front of his shirt. He was smiling. Scott Dann smiled about three times a year.

”Captain,” I said.

”Gaffer.”

”You played like you were twenty-six.”

”I am twenty-six.”

”Not for five years you haven’t been.”

He laughed. He put his hand on the back of my neck. I put mine on his. We walked towards the Holmesdale together.

The kids did the lap of honour. All three of them. Aviero in front with his hair coming out of the band that had held it back, Olise next to him with the academy crest pulled up to show under his shirt, Blake holding a Palace scarf above his head that someone had thrown from the front row. The Holmesdale did ”Wembley Wembley” through every yard of it.

Sakho ran out of the tunnel, where he had gone to get something. He had a tracksuit on but he had pulled a Konaté 31 shirt over his tracksuit and was holding the back of it up to the Holmesdale. The Holmesdale roared. The kids in the front row of the Holmesdale all stood up at once. Konaté would see that footage from his sofa in Sydenham within the hour, and he would not throw the bandage away for another six weeks.

Bray came out next, with everyone he could find. Pope. Wan-Bissaka. Neves. Aaron the kitman. Rebecca and her two physios.

The analysts who never came onto the pitch on a match day and didn’t know what to do with their hands now they were on it.

He walked them all to the centre circle. Then the eleven who had finished the match drifted in. Hennessey from his end. Dann and Tomkins from the technical area side. Joel Ward from the Holmesdale corner where he had been clapping the front row.

They held hands.

The starters, the substitutes, the academy boys, the medical team in tracksuits, the kitman in his fleece, the analysts in their club polos. Every man and woman with a Crystal Palace badge on their chest.

A chain across the width of the pitch from one technical area to the other. Dann in the middle. Me at the right end with Bray’s hand in mine. Sarah at the left end with Aviero’s mum’s hand in hers, because Aviero’s mum had got onto the pitch from row C of the family stand and nobody had stopped her.

The Selhurst Park PA is a wood-panelled setup that has not been changed since 1994, run on a Saturday by a man called Reg. Reg is sixty-eight and has been a Palace fan for fifty-three of them. Reg does the team-sheet, the goal music, the substitution names. On a night like this one, once in a generation, Reg also picks what comes out of the speakers after the line has linked up and the Holmesdale is on its feet and waiting.

Reg picked Legendary by Welshly Arms.

The opening came across the south end of Selhurst Park, that slow blues-rock build into the guitar. The Holmesdale knew it before the chorus arrived. They had heard it twice this season already, after the Carabao Cup Final and after the Wanda, but Reg had only ever played it in the dressing room before. Tonight it was in the stadium for the first time.

”I wanna be a legendary man.”

Twenty-five thousand voices. Not a word missed.

”I wanna be a legendary man.”

The line clapped. The Holmesdale clapped back. Aviero’s mum was sobbing into Sarah’s shoulder. Sakho was crying. Dann was not crying but he was looking at the Holmesdale like he was going to remember the night for the rest of his life.

Steve Parish came out of the tunnel. Suit. Tie crooked. He walked to the middle of the line and he got himself between Dann and Tomkins and they linked his arms in. He sang the chorus along with all of us, no jacket, eyes wet. The Holmesdale saw him on the big screen and roared.

The song finished. The Holmesdale held the last chord with their hands above their heads, and Reg, sixty-eight years old and not given to encores, played it again from the start.

The line did not break.

The Holmesdale sang it through a second time.

Parish leant across Dann’s chest when it ended and said into my ear, ”I want that song.”

”What.”

”For us. I am ringing them on Monday.”

”Steve.”

”Four-year lease. Standard music agency terms. It plays at Selhurst after every home win. It plays on the bus after every away win. It plays before every European night. We are buying the licence on Monday.”

”They might say no.”

”They will say yes.”

”How are you so sure.”

”Because they have just watched the line, Daniel. They have just watched their song play in the south end of Selhurst Park while twenty-five thousand people sing it. They will say yes.”

He hugged me. I let him.

”Daniel.”

”Yeah.”

”Wembley.”

”Wembley.”

”Three trophies in a calendar year. The Carabao, the semi-final, and whatever comes after.”

”Don’t get ahead of it, Steve.”

”I am getting ahead of it. I am chairman. That is my job today.”

I laughed. He hugged me again. He went off to find Dann.

Pochettino was at the tunnel mouth. He didn’t offer his hand. He walked past me. Five seconds later he stopped, turned around, came back, and offered it.

”Daniel. A great match. A great young manager. We don’t meet you again in the Premier League this season. I hope to meet you again.”

”Right.”

”You played the kids.”

”I played the kids.”

”That is courage I have not seen from a manager of your age.”

”Cheers, Mauricio.”

He held my hand for two seconds and was gone.

I did the Sky interview on the pitch. The journalist asked me about Aviero.

”That’s why we run an academy. So that on a night like tonight, three-three with eleven minutes to go in a cup tie, I’ve got a kid on my bench who plays the ten with his head up and has been training with me for two years. That’s the project. That’s all of it.”

About Dann.

”Scott Dann is the captain of Crystal Palace Football Club for a reason. Tonight was the reason.”

About Spurs.

”Spurs have just gone three years without losing twice at Selhurst Park. Tonight they went two. We’ll see them again.”

”Rivalry now, then?”

”It wasn’t when the match kicked off. It is now.”

I walked down the tunnel. Sarah was at the bottom of the steps with her laptop already open.

”Salzburg Monday.”

”Monday.”

”Eighteen days until the first leg.”

”Eighteen days.”

”Feel it first.”

”Twenty minutes. Then we work.”

She nodded and went.

I called Emma. She picked up before the first ring finished.

”He’s seventeen.”

”Seventeen.”

”You put him on at three-three.”

”I did.”

”You absolute bastard.”

”I know.”

”His mum was crying the whole match. Sky kept showing her. She cried harder at the final whistle than she did when he scored.”

”I saw her on the screen.”

”Daniel.”

”Yeah.”

”You’re going to Wembley.”

”We’re going to Wembley.”

”Pochettino’s press conference said you’re the most dangerous young manager in Europe right now. He said it in English. Twice. Sky played both.”

”All right.”

”Come home.”

”I’m coming home.”

”I’m in the slip dress.”

”I’m driving faster.”

She laughed at me and rang off.

I sat in the office for two minutes with my hands flat on the desk and my eyes closed. The Dier stud. Kane’s first. Eze’s outside-of-the-foot finish. Son’s. Aviero’s. Aurier’s hand in Aviero’s back. The Holmesdale singing ”Wembley Wembley” into the back of the Spurs end.

The corridor was empty when I came out. The players’ car park was not. Aviero was in the middle of it with his mum and his dad and three of his brothers, all of them around him, none of them speaking, his mum holding his face in both hands.

Olise was twenty yards from them on a phone call with his dad in Nigeria with the volume up so loud his dad was singing into the speakerphone in Yoruba. Blake was sitting on the bonnet of his car eating chips out of paper. Joel Ward was hugging Wan-Bissaka with his hands clasped behind Wan-Bissaka’s back and Wan-Bissaka laughing into his shoulder.

Dann was leaning on the wall with the medical strapping off his shin and a can of San Miguel in his hand that I did not ask where he had got from. He raised it to me as I walked past.

”Captain.”

”Gaffer.”

”Wembley.”

”Wembley.”

I drove home along the empty roads of South London with the windows down. The Holmesdale was four miles behind me. ”Wem-ber-ley. Wem-ber-ley.” It was loud in my head all the way to Dulwich.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the constant support.