Glory Of The Football Manager System

PEEEP.

We went straight at them. Bounou rolled it to Saiss, Saiss to Boussoufa, and inside fifteen seconds Boussoufa had switched it wide and Hakimi was at their box. I’d told them the first minute sets the price.

Ziyech took it on the edge of the area, cut inside the man in front of him, and curled it at the top corner.

PAGH. Beiranvand threw himself across and got two fingers to it, up over the bar.

Ninety seconds gone and he’d already had to be world class.

The ball was coming off boots quicker out here than anything in the league. I clocked it and got on.

Then they pulled the drawbridge up. Eleven men behind the ball, two flat banks of red, every one of them home before we’d worked it back to halfway.

So we went round them. Hakimi to Boussoufa, Boussoufa holding it, waiting, then sliding it down the line into the space behind their number 3. Hakimi onto it a yard from the byline before the full-back could turn.

The Iran end whistled every pass we strung together and cheered every boot that hacked it clear.

On nineteen we won a corner. Ziyech swung it in, a red head flicked it up, and it fell to Benatia eight yards out with the goal gaping. He lashed it.

Beiranvand came off his line and flung himself full length, a hand on it he had no right to reach, and turned it onto the post.

clang.

The Iran end roared like they’d scored. Their number 6, the one sitting in front of their back four, dragged two team-mates back into the line by their shirts.

Hakimi went again on twenty-two. The same run, the fifth time he’d made it, and their number 3 was a yard slow now. Hakimi beat him to the byline and pulled it back, low and hard across the six.

En-Nesyri met it first time. One clean side-foot through the middle of it.

THWACK.

In. 1-0.

”GOAL!” Bray was up off the bench, both fists over his head. ”It’s in! YES!”

Our corner went up like a struck match. A flare caught somewhere in the heart of it, red smoke rolling into the white sky, four thousand of them finding one noise at once. Morocco’s first goal at a World Cup in twenty years, and the green knew it, grown men with their shirts off and tears down their faces.

En-Nesyri wheeled away open-armed and the whole bench went with him. I stood on my line and didn’t move, because one goal is nothing. Behind me the big Iran fan who’d been roaring at my back since kickoff had gone quiet.

The announcer let it rip over the top of it. ”GOOOOL! ... EN-NESYRI!”

Now they had to come out, a goal down on a plan built for nil-nil, and the second they pushed up they left grass behind them.

It cut both ways. On forty a pass of ours ran loose in midfield, and their striker was onto it and gone.

SARDAR AZMOUN · ST · pace 16 · don’t show him the inside

Azmoun ate the ground in long strides, clean through the middle, and Mendyl turned and went with him.

Mendyl had been a yard early his whole career. England had done him twice down this exact channel a fortnight back. This time he held the line, showed Azmoun the outside, and rode his shoulder all the way to the box, and that bought Bounou the half-yard to come.

Bounou came off his line, all of him.

SMACK. The ball thumped into his chest and he wrapped it up.

The red end groaned. On the bench Steele said one word. ”Good.”

Half-time. 1-0.

The room took the roar down to a thud through the wall. The lads dropped onto the benches steaming, shirts dark down the spine, the only sounds in there heavy breathing and the squirt of water bottles.

I’d picked Sofyan at a hundred and twenty-eight, the lowest number in my eleven, and he’d run their midfield into the floor for forty-five minutes. The number had been a lie. I left the shape alone and changed one thing.

”They’re out now. They’ve no choice, they’re losing. That wall you couldn’t break in the first half is gone.” I looked down the bench. ”Stop forcing the cross. When they step out, go through them.”

Then Ziyech. ”You’ve had one shot. He saved it. Next one, from distance. He doesn’t fancy them from out there.”

Rebecca had two fingers on Mendyl’s knee and a question. He nodded. She waved him on.

They came out for the second half a different side. Their manager had thrown a fresh pair of legs on at the break, their number 17, and pushed both full-backs high, and for ten minutes it was a proper game.

In the fifty-fifth minute, they got the ball that kills a team like us. A free kick, wide left, their number 3 standing over it, the whole red end on its feet. It came in deep and hung in the lights.

Benatia rose in the middle of them, where Bray had stood him in a dark room a fortnight ago and promised him it would drop.

crack. Headed flat to halfway. On the bench, Bray drove his fist into his folder and said nothing.

Three minutes later, Ziyech did what I’d told him. Twenty-five yards out, they backed off him, and he took the half-yard. One touch to set it, then his left foot crossed the ball.

ToNNN.

Off the underside of the bar and down over the line, the keeper’s fingertips a fraction short. 2-0.

”GOOOL!” went the announcer. ”ZIYECH!”

Beiranvand picked it out of his net and looked back at the spot. Nothing he could have done, and he knew it.

We should have killed it there. We didn’t. We went hunting a third and got greedy, and on seventy it cost us.

We lost the ball high. They broke, four against two, faster than I could get a word out. Azmoun carried it and slid it square, and a red shirt arrived late behind him.

their number 8 · arriving · clean off his right

The screen only ever told me their names when it had stopped mattering.

THUMP. Low across Bounou and inside the post. 2-1.

***

Thank you for 200 Power Stones.