Glory Of The Football Manager System

Somebody in that breakfast room made a noise. I could not tell you who.

”Right,” Jones said, and he came forward on his forearms. ”Roy. I’m starting with you. Because you have sat on this programme for 3 weeks and told us this lot were a nice little story and nothing more.”

Keane did not blink. ”I did.”

”And?”

”And I was wrong. That’s it.”

Jones waited. Keane looked back at him with the expression of a man waiting for a bus.

”That’s all we’re getting?”

”What do you want, a song?” He shifted, once. ”They were better than Croatia. Over 120 minutes they were better. They ran further, they wanted it more, and their goalkeeper is the best goalkeeper at this tournament and it isn’t close. That’s not a fairytale. That’s just what happened.”

Bounou did not move his head. He put a forkful of egg in his mouth and chewed it, and 3 of the lads turned round to look at him, and he gave them nothing.

Carragher was already out of his seat.

He does that. He gets up and goes to the touchscreen like a dog let off a lead, and his accent gets thicker the happier he is, and he was happy as a lark.

”David, can I show them this? Because it has not landed on anybody in this country yet. It hasn’t landed on me and I sat and watched it.”

Tap.

GROUP B.

”Portugal. Spain. Iran. Morocco. 200 to 1, Morocco. 200. Every model, every projection, every one of us on this sofa had them finishing 4th. Bottom. Home after 3 games, thanks very much, safe flight.”

Neville, from his seat, flat: ”I had them bottom.”

”We all had them bottom, Gary.”

”I know. I’m agreeing with you.”

Keane: ”I said they’d get beat by Iran.”

Carragher spun round from the screen, delighted. ”You did! You said it on this programme!”

”I know what I said.”

Boussoufa was translating, low and fast, into French, for the 5 or 6 in that room with no English, and every 10 seconds one of them would fire something back at him and the whole corner would go up.

Tap.

MOROCCO: THE ROAD.

”Beat Iran. Lose to Portugal, and everybody in this building knows they were robbed in that game, that goal is onside, so let’s stop being polite about it.

”Beat Spain 4-3 in a win-or-go-home. Put the hosts out of their own tournament. And last night they took the best midfield on this planet to 120 minutes and put them out on penalties.”

He let it sit.

”And here’s the number I can’t get out of my head.”

Tap.

DISTANCE COVERED, 90 MINS. MOROCCO 118.6km. CROATIA 109.2km.

”9 and a half kilometres. In a World Cup quarter-final. Against Modrić and Rakitić, and then they went and did another 30 minutes on top.”

He turned and pointed at it with the back of his hand.

”That is not luck. Somebody sat in a room and designed that.”

Then Neville got up.

He does not get up much. When Neville gets up it is because he has been chewing something over for a while and he has decided he is going to be right about it.

He took the screen off Carragher, pulled the Croatia game up, ran it to the 104th minute, and froze it with Hakimi on the ball in his own half.

”Now watch what is not happening.”

He drew on it with his finger.

”Modrić is 40 yards from his own goal and he is walking. Rakitić is walking. Brozović is walking. These are not lazy footballers. This is the best midfield in world football and they physically cannot get back.”

Tap.

”Because for 104 minutes they have been made to turn, and made to chase, and made to defend. And now there is nothing in their legs.”

He nudged it forward a frame at a time, and Hakimi went past Rakitić like he was a bollard.

”And there it is.”

He turned to the camera.

”They did not out-play Croatia. Nobody out-plays Croatia. They made Croatia run until Croatia stopped being Croatia. It is the most brutal plan in football and it is the hardest one on earth to execute, because it costs you everything you have got.”

Keane, not looking up: ”It’s the plan of a manager who knows he can’t win a football match. So he wins a fight instead.”

Neville: ”Yes.”

”I’m not being funny,” Keane said. ”That was a compliment.”

And then Henry sat forward, and that breakfast room in Moscow went quiet on its own.

”Can I say something? Because you are all looking at the wrong thing.”

Jones opened a hand. ”Go on.”

”You are looking at the badge.” He said it slowly, the way he says everything, like he has all the time in the world and none of your nonsense. ”Look at the passports.”

He counted them off on his fingers.

”Amsterdam. Rotterdam. Brussels. Paris. The suburbs of Paris.”

He stopped.

”I am from the suburbs of Paris. So do not tell me about it.”

Nobody on that panel said a word.

”These are not the boys who got chosen,” Henry said. ”These are the boys who did not get chosen. Every one of them was told, somewhere, by somebody who did not look very hard, that he was not the one.

”Ziyech is Dutch, and Holland did not want him. Amrabat is Dutch. Boussoufa has been playing his football in the Emirates.

”This is not a national team. This is a collection of men who were told no.”

He sat back.

”And they are in the last 4 of a World Cup. And you are asking me about the tactics.”

In a breakfast room in Moscow, Sofyan Amrabat stood up and walked out and did not say anything to anybody.

Nobody followed him.

Boussoufa stopped translating.

Then Jones turned it.

”Right. Wednesday. The Luzhniki. And it needs saying, because I don’t think it’s been said enough this morning, that England play Morocco in a World Cup semi-final in 3 days. And there is an assumption in this country today that we have got the easy one.”

Neville, straight back in: ”And it is going to get people hurt.”

Tap.

ENGLAND: 8 OF 11 GOALS FROM SET-PIECES.

”8 of our 11 goals at this tournament. 3 penalties, 4 corners, 1 free kick. The most any side has scored from dead balls at a World Cup since Portugal in 1966.”

Tap.

”And 3. 3 in open play. In 5 matches.”

Carragher: ”That’s the whole story, that is.”

”It is the whole story. We are the best set-piece team on the planet and we cannot make a chance. And Danny Walsh has known that for a fortnight. He will have watched the Sweden game 4 times before breakfast this morning and he will have written it on a whiteboard in about 6 words.”

Jones: ”Which are?”

Neville looked down the lens.

”Do not give England a corner.”

I put my coffee down on the sideboard.

Keane came forward for the first time all morning.

”And what’s he doing about Maguire? Benatia’s 31. He’s played 120 minutes and a shootout. He’ll have woken up this morning and not been able to lift his own arms.”

Carragher: ”He can’t jump with him.”

”He can’t jump with him. So what does Walsh do?”

Nobody answered.

And at the back of that breakfast room, Mehdi Benatia, my captain, stood in a compression top and watched a man on a television tell 4 million people that he could not jump, and did not move one muscle in his face.

”And the other thing,” Keane said. ”Nobody’s said it, so I’ll say it.”

”Go on.”

”We won a shootout.”

He let it sit there.

”England won a penalty shootout at a World Cup. Colombia. First one in the history of the country, after losing every one of them for 28 years. That’s dead. That thing is buried. And if it goes to 12 yards on Wednesday, we are not the ones who are frightened any more.”

And Carragher, quietly, and it was the only quiet thing he said all morning:

”Neither are they, Roy. They did it last night.”

Keane looked at him.

”...Fair.”

And then Jones said it, and I knew what was coming before the picture changed.

”Let’s have a look at the man himself.”

They ran the clip.

Me. On a white line. On my knees on the paint with both fists in the air and my mouth wide open, screaming at nothing at all, at the exact half second Youssef En-Nesyri’s penalty came off the inside of the post and went in.

They ran it again in slow motion.

Then they ran the flash interview.

”We’ve won nothing. There is no cup at a quarter-final. 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 probably cannot walk.”

The room in Moscow did not move.

The room on the television did not move either. Jones let it hang the way they do.

”One of them cannot walk,” he said. ”Jamie. Who?”

And Carragher, who is not a cruel man and had not the first idea what he was doing, went straight at it.

”It’s got to be a big one, hasn’t it? He wouldn’t say that on live television about a squad player. He’s protecting somebody. Boussoufa went down at the end. Saïss was cramping all through extra time.”

Neville: ”It’s not Saïss, he walked off fine.”

Keane: ”It’ll be En-Nesyri.”