Glory Of The Football Manager System

Out in the centre circle, Croatia had stopped existing.

Modrić flat on his back, forearm across his eyes. In 5 months a room full of men in dinner jackets will hand him a golden ball and end 10 years of 2 other men owning it, and on that night he lay in the mud in Moscow because a lad from Casablanca guessed right twice.

Rakitić on his haunches. Hands hanging between his knees. Looking at nothing.

And on the edge of the circle, on his own, Ante Rebić with both hands over his face.

He had been Croatia’s 5th. It never came.

And I had watched him do that exact thing before. Same hands, same face, on his knees. The 86th minute, 6 yards out, our goal hanging open and Bounou beaten and the ball sitting up for him.

He sliced it wide.

2 hours apart. Same man. Same position. And nobody would remember his name at all if he had scored either one.

I turned and looked for my own 5th man.

Sofyan was 20 yards away with his hands on his knees, and he was not celebrating either.

He had asked me for the first one. I gave him the last one, and the last one never came. He stood in that circle for 20 minutes with his arms round 2 other men, holding them up, and never once got to kick a ball at a World Cup semi-final.

He felt me looking and he straightened up.

And he grinned at me. Wide. A great daft 21-year-old grin, with his eyes red raw.

”Next time,” he shouted.

Down the far end, Subašić had sat down in his own 6-yard box.

Gloves off. In his lap. He did not cry and he did not shout and he did not put his head in his hands.

He just sat.

And not one man in a white shirt went near him.

I want this on the record, because I do not think one person in that stadium understood it, and I only understood it because I had spent 120 minutes screaming about it from a white line.

Youssef En-Nesyri had 5 goes at that man on the 7th of July.

The 26th. Subašić came off his line like a train and punched it away.

The 54th. Youssef leathered it and he got a wrist to it.

The 66th. In behind, low and hard for the bottom corner, and it came off the man’s palm and round the post.

And the 88th. Boutaïb squared it, the whole goal was open, my boy had a tap-in to put Morocco in a World Cup semi-final, and a 33-year-old came off his line and threw himself flat and got a thigh in the way.

4 times. 4 times that man stood between a 20-year-old and his country’s whole history, and 4 times he won.

And on the 5th, from 12 yards, he read it. He went the right way. He got a glove on it.

And it hit the inside of the post and went in.

Danijel Subašić did not lose to a better man tonight. He lost to a post.

6 days ago he saved 3 against Denmark and they carried him off this pitch like a king.

Tonight he saved 1, and did everything right, and he is on a plane in the morning.

I walked 60 yards through the noise and sat down in the mud next to him.

40,000 people were singing above us. It did not stop. It did not even dip.

”YA-SSINE BOU-NOU!” clap-clap. ”YA-SSINE BOU-NOU!” clap-clap.

They sang the other goalkeeper’s name over the top of his head for 10 minutes without pausing for breath. That was the worst part of the whole night, and there was not one thing on this earth anybody could do about it.

He did not look up.

After a while he said something in Croatian. He was not saying it to me.

Then Dalić came and stood over the pair of us and put a hand on the back of his keeper’s neck. He had walked our whole bench first and shaken every hand on it and rushed not one of them.

He looked down at me. Nodded once.

”Semi-final,” he said.

Then he tipped his chin at Bounou, up on 20 shoulders with the whole ground screaming his name.

”Take him.”

And I have thought about that for 8 years and I still do not know if he meant look after him or he took it off us.

Then Croatia went to their fans.

Dalić got them up off the grass one at a time. He went round every one of them, Modrić, Rakitić, Vida, Lovren, Rebić, and he took hold of them and got them onto their feet, and he pointed them at their own end.

Then he walked them over there himself.

They lined up in front of the checks with their arms round each other’s shoulders, 11 men who had lost a World Cup quarter-final on penalties, and they stood there and faced it.

And 40,000 Croatians got up and would not stop clapping.

They did not boo. They did not leave. Not one of them turned his back.

”HR-VAT-SKA!” Clap. Clap-clap. ”HR-VAT-SKA!” Clap. Clap-clap.

They sang it at a beaten team the same way they had sung it at a winning one, and Modrić stood in the middle of that line with his shirt balled up in his fist and could not lift his head to look at them.

And then our end joined in.

I do not know who started it. 40,000 Moroccans got to their feet and put their hands together for Croatia, and for about 20 seconds the whole of the Luzhniki was making one sound.

80,000 people clapping at once does not sound like clapping. It sounds like rain coming across a roof. Then like a river. Then like nothing there is a word for.

It was not for us, and it was not for them. It was for what had happened on that grass.

Then Modrić came off the end of that line and found Sofyan, and pulled his shirt over his head, and gave it to the kid who had spent 120 minutes running him into the ground.

Sofyan holds on to that shirt to this day. It is in a frame in his mother’s front room in Huizen and she will show it to anybody who knocks.

Then the stands opened and the mothers came down.

Not the fans. The fans they held. The families. Down the aisles, through the gate by the corner flag, out onto the grass in their good shoes, sinking into it, and nobody in a hi-vis jacket even tried to stop them.

And 40,000 people saw what was happening and went up again.

lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu.

Every woman in that stadium at once. Not for the goal and not for the penalty and not for the semi-final.

For the mothers, walking out onto a World Cup pitch in their good shoes.

It was the loudest thing I heard all night.

Sofyan went to his knees in front of his mother and put his forehead against her and stayed there while she held the back of his head with both hands. She has cleaned 3 houses a day for 20 years. She has never missed a game.

Boussoufa’s mum came out and danced with him. Held his hand and turned him in a circle in the mud, an old woman and a 33-year-old with a torn calf, going round and round.

clap. clap. clap. clap.

40,000 people found the beat for them and kept it going until she had finished with him.

Benatia’s daughter came down the steps.

That was the one. Not the goal. Not the save.

He had walked 60 yards, missed the penalty that could have ended his country’s night, walked 60 yards back with his face wet, and stood in that circle and made himself watch every kick.

And his daughter came down the steps.

And up on the rail behind our bench, where he had stood for 120 minutes and a shootout without once sitting down, the old man was not singing.

32 years. A boy on his father’s shoulders in ’86, crying. He had told me that once and I had not known what to do with it.

He was not crying now either. He had both hands flat on the barrier and he was just looking at the pitch, at all of it, taking it in the way you look at something you are trying to memorise because you know you will not get another go.

I went over and put my hand on top of his on the rail.

He did not say anything. Neither did I.

And then I looked up, because I had felt it, and Emma was coming down the aisle behind him.

She had said 4 words to me on a Thursday in Voronezh, and I had carried them across a country and through 120 minutes and 8 penalties, and she came down those steps in the wrong shoes with her mascara halfway down her face.

I got both arms round her over the barrier and lifted her clean off the step.

She said one thing into my ear, and 40,000 people were singing, and I heard every word of it.

”You went and won it.”

And I said, ”We’ve won nothing.”

And she laughed and hit me on the back of the head.

Then I saw Yassine go down on his knees in the mud, and everything else went away.