Glory Of The Football Manager System

The РОССИЯ chant went up again after that, the way it had every 30 seconds all half. This time it got halfway round the ground and died, one section starting it and the next not answering, and the sound fell into itself.

Men who’d been on their feet since the anthem sat back down. Behind Bounou’s goal a fella in a Russia shirt had both hands on his head and hadn’t moved in a minute. The wall of noise had holes in it now, and you could pick out one voice at a time in it, the first time all night.

And we started to fight our way back into it.

It showed first in Ziyech. He dropped a shoulder on the halfway line, rolled the first man to close him down with the sole of his boot like it was a Sunday kickabout, and grinned back at their bench.

”Give me it!” he was shouting, slapping his own boot, the lad who’d hidden for 20 minutes wanting every ball now and pointing for more.

But Russia did not hand a yard of it over. You take a game like this back a yard at a time, and every one of them hurts.

Sofyan won the first yard with his studs, not Ziyech with his silk. A tackle on Zobnin in the middle of the park that folded the lad clean in half, thwack, all ball, and the Russian stayed down a second, and the red end roared like he’d scored.

That was the turn. Sofyan settled and began to dictate, that engine of his eating up the grass, and Ziyech dropped into the pocket and started pulling strings, and every yard of that pitch we had to drag off Russia by force.

And Achraf Hakimi looked up, found Yuri Zhirkov, 34 years old, and went to work on him.

The first time, he knocked it past the man and beat him for flat-out pace and won a throw, Zhirkov turning to watch him go.

The boy had a gear nobody else on that pitch owned, the one those numbers had been screaming at me for a month, and the old full back had no answer to it anywhere in his legs.

The second time, Zhirkov backed off him 5 yards, frightened of the ball in behind. The red end saw it. Smelled it. ”OLÉ,” from 30,000 throats as Hakimi rolled him a third time and left him stumbling.

Behind him, Akinfeev came right out of his six-yard box screaming at his old full back, ”Stay with him! Don’t let him turn!”, arms wide, the panic climbing into the Russia captain’s voice, because he could see what was coming down that side and could not stop it any more than Zhirkov could.

I’d been calling for that ball for 10 minutes. From the moment Zhirkov started backing off, the channel in behind him sat there wide open, and I was on the touchline waving Ziyech infield off his wing and stabbing a finger at it, there, in behind him, put it there.

On 38 minutes, Ziyech saw it too. Deep, half a yard of room, and he read the run before Hakimi even made it, because those two share the one thing you cannot coach into anybody. He slid it first time down the line, into the channel in behind Zhirkov, and Hakimi was gone.

Zhirkov spun, and his 34-year-old legs had nothing in them, and Hakimi took it to the byline, right onto the whitewash, and cut it back low across the face of the six-yard box.

And En-Nesyri did not snatch at it. 3 weeks ago he might have. Not now. He took the half-yard, opened his body up, and passed it, low and hard, inside the far post, past Akinfeev’s outstretched glove.

The composure the tournament had built into him, the thing only I could see in numbers, and he finished it like a drill on an empty pitch.

Smack.

And Luzhniki died.

50,000 people, the loudest ground in the country, and all of a sudden you could hear the away end clear as a bell, because everything else in the building had stopped. Dead. A hole in the air where a nation’s noise had been a second before.

And in that hole, 30,000 in red came apart, and it was the only sound left in Moscow.

En-Nesyri wheeled away from goal and he was gone, tearing the length of the touchline towards the red, arms flung out wide like wings, screaming it back at them, ”On this grass! On this grass!”

He went down and slid, 10 yards on his knees across the soaked turf. Then he was up, dead still, arms folded across his chest and his chin in the air, staring out the silent Russia end while 30,000 behind him came apart at his back.

Hakimi hit him at a full sprint and took them both to the floor, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and roaring in his face. Ziyech next, screaming, ”That’s what I’m talking about!” in his ear.

Then Sofyan, then the lot of them, and off the bench they poured, every sub, Bray, Rebecca, a red tide sprinting the length of the pitch to bury him in the corner.

”That’s how you play a knockout!” a Moroccan fan bellowed over the rail, waving his flag over his head.

And the song went up. It started in the red end and it rolled, three sides of Luzhniki, 30,000 of them singing while 50,000 Russians sat in a silence you could have dropped a pin into.

I was screaming something into it, and my voice cracked and gave out halfway, and I felt how raw my throat had been for the best part of an hour, shredded on a touchline nobody could hear me from.

Bray had me round the shoulders, shaking me. My 40 from South London were a knot of blue-and-red bedlam, the bedsheet waving, the old man hoisted off his feet again.

And the gift gave me the payoff, the number I’d nursed up in that boy for a month, ticking over to its new high as I watched, earned on the biggest grass in the world.

En-Nesyri. Composure 15 to 16. Earned it.

Then I looked down at Hakimi at the bottom of the pile, 19 years old, and thought about the other number, the one no lens will ever see, and about Dougie and Sarah and a café and a boy we probably couldn’t have. I stamped it flat. Not now.

Morocco 1 - 0 Russia. (38’)

Russia came again before the break, stung, pride shoving them forward now. Cherchesov was bawling on the touchline, the crowd cranking РОССИЯ back up out of the floor, hauling one last effort out of tired legs.

Golovin curled one that had the whole ground up on its feet, whip, and Bounou watched it every inch of the way and caught it clean into his chest, thump, and the roar collapsed again.

Dzyuba climbed above Benatia and flicked a header a yard past the post, then stood with his hands on his hips staring at the grass. The Russia end fell quiet a full minute before the whistle even came, 50,000 who’d not drawn breath since the anthem, sat back down with nothing left to give it.

Pheeep. Half-time.

1-0. In the lion’s mouth. On the same grass they robbed us on.

I walked off past the fourth official holding the crowd back off the mouth of the tunnel, and I did not feel one ounce of relief. Not a drop.

My head was already down the tunnel and into the next 45, redrawing it, working out where they’d come at us and what I’d change before they did it to us.

Because it was 45 minutes yet, and it was the hosts, and it was 50,000 who were down but a long way from beaten, and one goal on this pitch of all the pitches in the world meant precisely nothing until the last whistle blew.

I had seen with my own eyes what this ground could do to a team with a lead.

We were halfway there. Only halfway. And everyone in that dressing room knew the hard half was still in front of us.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.