Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Lyon. Thursday May 24. 11:07 CEST.]

The photo came through at seven minutes past eleven.

Bzzt.

An old man on an airport tarmac in a wheelchair he was clearly mid-argument about, one hand raised at a nurse in green, the other holding a red and blue scarf into the wind. Behind him a small white jet with its door open and a medic carrying an oxygen bottle down the steps like it was a bag of shopping.

Sarah’s text under it.

Eagle has landed. He made the pilot do a circle over the stadium first. The pilot did it. Nobody says no to this man.

I was standing in a hotel corridor in Lyon with my match suit over my arm, and I laughed out loud, on my own, like an idiot.

Bzzt. A second photo.

The old man out of the wheelchair. Standing. One fist up at the camera.

Mama’s father had arrived in France the way captains’ fathers should.

[Groupama Stadium. 18:50 CEST.]

Two hours before kickoff I took Mama up to the box.

The lift doors opened, ping, onto a carpeted suite high above the halfway line, and there he was. Thinner than the man in the photos on Mama’s phone. A blanket over his knees that he kept pushing off and the nurse kept putting back. The scarf round his neck. And pressed against his right ear, I am not making this up, a transistor radio older than me.

”Papa,” said Mama. Then a river of French I had no chance with.

The old man waved it away. Pointed at the radio. Said something that made Mama’s brother burst out laughing.

”What did he say?”

Mama’s brother wiped his eyes. ”He says the television commentators are idiots. He has listened to the same radio man for thirty years and he is not stopping tonight because his son got fancy. He flew here in a bed in the sky and he is still going to listen to the radio.”

The old man looked at me then. Properly looked, the way men of that generation look at you, like they’re weighing you at market.

He held out his hand. I took it. Christ, the grip. Bone and rope and forty years of work in it.

He spoke. Slow, so his son could carry it across.

”He says,” Mama said, and stopped. Started again. ”He says he used to take Mamadou on the RER to matches when I was eleven. Two hours each way. He says in all those years he never once saw me lose a header.”

The old man raised one finger. Said one more thing. Hard eyes. Dead serious.

”He says if I lose a header tonight, he is taking the jet home at half-time.”

”Tell him,” I said, ”that if his son loses a header tonight, I’ll drive him to the airport myself.”

Mama told him.

The old man looked at me for a long second. Then he laughed, hkk hkk hkk, low and rough, and gripped my hand again, harder, and pulled me down close, and said one word in English. The only English he spent all night.

”Win.”

[The Dressing Room. 19:40 CEST.]

The shirts hung in a row under the lights. Red and blue. POPE 1. WAN-BISSAKA. KONATÉ. SAKHO 5 with the armband folded on the shelf above it. CHILWELL. NEVES. MILIVOJEVIĆ. NAVAS. BOJAN. ZAHA. BENTEKE 17.

On the bench shelf: HENNESSEY, WARD, KIRBY, RODRÍGUEZ, EZE, OLISE, BLAKE.

Bojan stood in front of his shirt with his thumb running over the badge, and he didn’t know I was watching, and I made sure I stopped watching before he found out.

I’d told him Tuesday night, after Dougie left, on the phone, four sentences. You start in Lyon. You play the whole ninety, whatever the score, whatever happens. I don’t care if we’re four up or four down, you are not coming off. A man does not say goodbye from a bench.

He hadn’t asked me why. He’d just gone quiet on the line for a second, and then he’d said, ”Gaffer,” in that soft Catalan-flavoured English, and that was the whole conversation.

Olise sat lacing his boots with his knee going tap tap tap against the bench leg. Connor next to him, white as the away kit, fiddling with his sock tape.

Eze walked over to the pair of them with a water bottle, sat down between them without a word, leaned back against the wall, and yawned.

An actual yawn. Loud. Arms above his head.

”How,” said Connor, ”HOW are you yawning.”

”It’s a game of football, lads.” Eze cracked the bottle. Tsk-hsss. ”Grass is grass.”

Olise’s knee stopped tapping.

The lighthouse, doing lighthouse work, right there on the bench where the nerves lived.

I didn’t give them a long talk. The talk had been done on Tuesday, in a video room in Beckenham, in a boot room with a dripping tap.

”Lads. Everything we said Tuesday is still true tonight. Aaron knows his man. Mama knows his half-yard. Rúben knows whose eyes to watch. First corner we get, you know what it is. There are twenty thousand of ours behind that goal and one old man in a box up there with a radio against his ear, and there’s a fella in the other dressing room who has waited twenty-two years for tonight. Let him wait one more night. Mama.”

Mama stood. Took the armband off the shelf. Pulled it up over his sleeve and pressed it flat with two fingers, once.

”Allez,” he said.

[The Tunnel. 20:38 CEST.]

Arsène Wenger was waiting in the tunnel mouth.

Long coat, even in May. He looked taller than the telly makes him and older than the photos, and he stood with his hands behind his back watching my lads line up like a man inspecting a harvest.

He came over. Offered his hand.

”Monsieur Walsh.”

”Mr. Wenger.”

”Twenty-two years,” he said, and nodded down the tunnel at the light and the noise at the end of it. ”And it went past like one Thursday. Enjoy it. Whatever happens out there. Promise an old man you will enjoy it, because you will blink, and you will be me.”

”I promise.”

”Bien.” He glanced at my lads. Stopped on Eze, back of the line with the subs, tracksuit on, headphones round his neck, calm as Sunday. Something moved across the old man’s face. ”We let that one go,” he said. ”I argued. I lost the argument. He is on your bench tonight and I am still frightened of him. Tonight I think I pay for it.”

He buttoned his coat and walked out into the noise.

RAAAAAAAH.

The wall of it. Fifty-six thousand. Our end to the left, a sheer cliff of red and blue, and a drum going DUM. DUM. DUM. at the heart of it because Tom Donaghue had got that bloody drum through French customs.

Eze leaned forward in the line and tapped Olise on the shoulder.

”Grass is grass,” he said.

”Grass is green,” said Olise.

We walked out.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.