Glory Of The Football Manager System

”You might,” I said.

His head snapped round.

”You might give one away. You might have a shocker. The best players who ever lived have had shockers in World Cups.”

I tapped the photo on his screen, the green, the front room, the faces. ”But you’ve got that the wrong way round, son. You’re looking at that and seeing a hundred million people waiting on you to let them down. Look at it again.”

He looked.

”They’re not in that room scared of you. They’re in that room because a lad off their own street took the best footballer who’s ever lived to the last kick of a World Cup, and made them prouder than they’ve been in twenty years. They’re not waiting to be let down. They cannot wait to watch you do it again.”

Something moved in his face. Not fixed. You don’t fix it, not really. But it shifted.

”That room’s not a weight on you, Sofyan. That room’s the reason you run. You don’t carry them out there. You play for them. There’s a world of difference between the two, and your legs’ll know which one it is on Monday.”

He looked at the photo a long while. Then he turned the phone face down on his knee, and the thumb went still.

”Come and eat,” I said, and got up, and put a hand down for him. ”You’ll want your legs full on Monday, not your phone.”

He took my hand. He pulled himself up.

And walking him back to his lunch, I made my mind up about the phones, the home clips, all of it. Half the managers in this tournament would’ve binned the lot by now. Not us.

You can’t tell a man his people aren’t out there roaring his name when he’s just watched them do it. So it comes in, all of it, and I point it somewhere.

The next two days in the Voronezh camp went the way World Cup camps go. Nothing glamorous about it. Recovery, prep, and waiting, round and round.

The hotel smelled of Deep Heat and coffee and damp grass. In the physio room the compression boots were going, a low hmmmm that never stopped.

I walked in on the Friday afternoon and found Hakimi and Ziyech side by side on the tables, playing FIFA on a little monitor, but the usual trash talk was gone. Just playing. Dead silent. Hammering the ball.

Meals went quiet. The lads ate their grilled chicken and plain pasta while the big TVs in the dining hall ran the sports coverage on a loop. Every hour, on the hour, the Spain highlights came round. Isco spinning out of trouble. Iniesta sliding a pass through the eye of a needle. Diego Costa bullying a centre-half.

Every time it came on, the last fork hit a plate, tink, and then nothing. Every eye in the room up at the screen. Memorising. Hating. Preparing.

I kept half an eye on the HUD.

[Squad Check]

[Fatigue: Recovering, optimal]

[Morale: Aggressive / Vengeful]

Most weeks you want a squad calm. Focused. Confident. This week, vengeful was the fuel we needed. I wasn’t about to put the fire out. I just had to keep it from burning the house down.

I spent the evenings with Marcus and Bray in my room, half-empty coffee cups and tactical printouts everywhere.

”Three points,” I said late on the Saturday, staring at the table drawn up on the whiteboard in thick marker.

”They’re on four. We’re on three. We sit back and play for pride, they’ll pass us to death and we’re flying home. We’ve got to take it to them.”

”It’s Spain, boss.” Marcus rubbed his eyes. ”You go toe-to-toe with that midfield, they’ll carve you open.”

”Not if we break the carousel,” I said, tapping the board.

Sunday afternoon. The last big tactical session before matchday.

Marcus had the squad in the meeting room, the red shirts up on the screen, running that famous carousel, the ball pinging round in little triangles that never stop.

”Here’s the problem.” He ran the footage.

”Seventy per cent of the ball, and made up about it. They want you chasing. Chase that ninety minutes, and you’ve nothing left to hurt them with.”

I let the numbers come up over the red shirts. Good players. A couple of them world-class.

But Santos had a monster in Ronaldo, a freak no shape on earth solves. Spain just had a method. And a method’s got answers in it if you dig.

”We don’t chase it,” I said, stepping to the front. I grabbed a marker and drew three blocks on the board. Squeak, squeak.

”We let them have it in their own half. All night if they fancy. But the second the ball crosses the middle third, we snap the trap shut. We starve Busquets. We block the lines into the feet that actually matter. They can’t get through, their seventy per cent goes sideways and nowhere.”

We worked it till the light went. Out on the grass. Thwack, thwack. The ball snapping round the press. Drilling the shape, the triggers, who jumps and who holds the line.

Hard graft. The kind that fills a man’s skull right up and leaves no room in it for burning streets.

By the time we wrapped, they were barking at each other about pressing triggers instead of scrolling. And Sofyan was right in the thick of it, loud, arguing his corner, a different lad to the one I’d peeled off a corridor floor.

Before we broke for the showers I pulled them into a circle on the pitch. The air had a real bite to it, but the lads were steaming in the cold.

”You were robbed,” I said. ”The world knows it. But there’s exactly one way left to answer Wednesday, and it isn’t on a screen.”

I met their eyes, one by one.

”Three points gets us out of this group. A draw sends us home. So you don’t leave the next one to anybody sat in a dark room. You put it so far beyond them not a soul alive can lift a finger and take it. You take it yourselves.”

Benatia got up off his haunches. He didn’t add a word. He just looked round every man in that circle, slow, one at a time, and gave one hard nod.

It did more than anything I’d said.

We walked off that grass a different team to the one I’d found raging over its breakfast.

Elena had the camera up as we filed past, clack, clack, clack up the tunnel, and there was a look on her she’d been growing for days.

She’d flown out here to film a man and a system. She was getting a team with a continent on its back, walking at the biggest night of its life with its jaw set.

Spain on four. Morocco on three.

We weren’t leaving this one to a man in a dark room. We were going to go and take it ourselves.

***

Thank you for 100 Power Stones.