Glory Of The Football Manager System

A steward had brought a kid through the gate. 11, maybe 12, in a green shirt 3 sizes too big, his father behind him with both hands on his shoulders and a face like a man who has walked into the wrong room.

The kid still had the gloves on.

The ones Bounou threw him after the Russia game. Flapping off the ends of his fingers. He had stood in that corner for 2 hours in a pair of gloves he could not close.

And Yassine Bounou, man of the match, 2 saves, a post, the best night in the history of Moroccan football, got down on his knees in the mud in front of an 11-year-old so their eyes were level.

And he took the boy’s hands in his own.

There were 400 cameras in that stadium and I do not think one of them was pointed at it.

Skhh.

A woman in a FIFA polo shirt with a lanyard and a clipboard walked out and put a hand on his shoulder.

He looked up at her from his knees.

She said something. He nodded. He stood up. He gave the kid’s dad a look I have thought about a hundred times since, half apology and half I know, and he walked off that pitch with a stranger.

He did not go to the dressing room. He was not allowed to.

Doping control. They tap you as you come off and you go straight there, and the draw does not care what you have just done.

A flash interview in the tunnel and that is it. You do not get your dressing room. You do not get your teammates. You cannot leave that room without permission, and a chaperone walks with you if you do.

They give you water.

And after 120 minutes and a shootout, a footballer is a dried-out husk with nothing left in him to give.

He will sit in that room for 1 hour, 2, 3, drinking bottle after bottle and unable to produce the one thing they want, while the greatest night in his country’s history goes on 50 feet away through a wall.

They took En-Nesyri as well.

The keeper who won it and the boy who scored it.

Neither of them was in that dressing room. Not for one minute of it.

And they read the man of the match out over the tannoy while Yassine was sat in that room with a stranger and a bottle of water.

Bddmm.

That flat dead stadium voice, Russian first and then English, bouncing off the concrete and coming back at itself.

”YA-SSINE... BOU-NOU.”

40,000 people stood up and roared his name back at an empty pitch, and he did not hear a word of it.

His little trophy got handed to Steeley in a corridor 20 minutes later.

Steeley carried it round in a Tesco bag for the rest of that night because he did not know what else to do with it, and he would not put it down, and he would not let anybody else hold it.

They put a microphone in my face 30 seconds off the pitch and I was still shaking so hard I could see it in the water bottle.

tk tk tk tk tk. Shutters, going like rain. And behind the camera, behind the boards, 40,000 people still going, so the poor woman had to shout her first question at me from 2 feet away.

”Danny... Morocco are in the semi-final of a World Cup... No African nation has ever....”

”Croatia have got the best midfield on this planet. Modrić, Rakitić, Kovačić. They were 3-2 down in a World Cup quarter-final with 15 minutes left and they got level in the 118th. Nobody does that. Nobody.”

”But Danny...”

”Not one of their lads missed that goal tonight. Not one. Perišić hit the post and the other 2 hit good penalties and my keeper saved them. So do not write that Croatia lost.”

I looked straight down the barrel.

”Write that Yassine Bounou won.”

”This is history, Danny. The first African side ever to...”

”We’ve won nothing.” My voice went and I let it. ”There is no cup at a quarter-final. Nobody hands you anything tonight. All we have done is buy the right to play again on Wednesday, and I have got 4 days to get 11 broken men back on their feet, and one of them cannot walk.”

I gave her the microphone back and I walked off.

@KenitraKid HE SAID DONT WRITE THAT CROATIA LOST WRITE THAT BOUNOU WON. I am DECEASED 😭😭

@VatreniForever genuine respect. he didn’t have to say that. he said it anyway 🇭🇷🤝🇲🇦

@notsteveparish ”we’ve won nothing” mate you have just put Morocco in a World Cup semi-final, have a pint

@AtlasLionsUK MAN REFUSED TO CELEBRATE ON LIVE TELEVISION. absolute lunatic. LOVE HIM

@rachidcasa nobody in Casablanca is sleeping. NOBODY. the whole street is out. my father is 71 and he is DANCING IN THE ROAD

And they did not empty. Not Casablanca, not Rabat, not Brussels or Amsterdam or the 12th arrondissement.

Not until the sun came up.

I found the tunnel on my own.

40,000 people were still in that bowl and still singing, and it came through the concrete into the corridor, and it got quieter with every step I took.

There was a television bracketed to the wall halfway down, on mute, and 3 of our kit lads had stopped dead in front of it.

ENGLAND 2 SWEDEN 0.

Samara. They were still out on the grass over there, all of them, arms up in front of their own supporters, doing that thing they do. The waistcoat on the touchline. The flags. A whole country coming off its hinges 500 miles away.

Semi-final. Wednesday night. The Luzhniki.

This tunnel. This grass. This bowl. 4 days.

England.

And I stood in a corridor in Moscow, still shaking, with another man’s mud drying on my face, and looked up at 11 lads I have watched every week of my life since I was old enough to sit still.

I am from Moss Side. My dad had me on that settee in front of them before I could read. There is a photo of me at 6 in a shirt with 3 lions on the chest and a hole in the elbow.

And in 4 days I have to take it off them.

Then somebody came and stood next to me, and it was Sofyan Amrabat, with a bag of ice strapped to his thigh and a limp he was pretending not to have.

He looked up at that screen for a long time and he did not say anything.

He beat England on his own in Saint Petersburg on the 9th of June. 9 seconds. El Ahmadi sprang a tired Henderson pass and the kid was gone before England had touched the ball, and a month later I do not believe they have worked out how.

”We have done them once,” he said.

”Friendly.”

”Was it?” He grinned at me with his eyes still red raw. ”Next time, you said, gaffer.”

And he limped off down that corridor towards the singing.

Rebecca was waiting outside the dressing room door.

She was not celebrating. That was the first thing I noticed.

Marcus was stood next to her with the laptop open in both hands and he would not look at me either.

”Danny.”

”He cramped,” I said.

”His leg went as he struck it.”

”He cramped, Rebecca.”

”Danny.” She turned the laptop round so I could see it, and Marcus had it frozen on one frame, and she put one finger on the screen. ”A calf does not fold a man onto his face. He was down before the ball hit the net. He never even saw it go in.”

And on the other side of that wall, 40 men were singing.

”DI-ma Magh-RIB!” CLAP. ”DI-ma Magh-RIB!” CLAP.

Came through the breeze blocks like a fist knocking. I could hear Ziyech in it. I could hear Mustapha, and he cannot sing, and he has never let that stop him.

And 40 feet down that corridor, in a windowless room with a stranger and a bottle of water, Youssef En-Nesyri sat waiting for permission to go and celebrate the greatest night of his life.

He did not know.

Nobody knew but me and the woman with her finger on the screen.

And I stood in that corridor with my hand on the door, and the singing coming through the concrete, and I had to decide whether to walk in there tonight and take it off him.