Glory Of The Football Manager System

”Say it, then.”

She was not going to move until I did. I know that woman.

She had come across a continent and stood in row 9 for 120 minutes and a shootout on the Saturday, and hidden nothing on her face while she did it, which is the whole problem with her.

It was Tuesday now. 2 days on, the night before the semi-final. She had found me the way she always finds me, in an empty function room with the lights half on, sat with a thing I had not said to anybody.

She had my hand in both of hers on the table and she was not letting go of it.

So I looked at her instead of answering.

Red hair come loose out of whatever she had put it up in that morning. Green eyes. Yesterday’s mascara she had not fully got off, because she had not been home either, because home was 2,000 miles away and neither of us had one out here except the other one.

”You’ve been hiding from me since Sunday,” she said. Not cross. Just true.

”Yeah.”

”2 days.”

”Yeah.”

”Because I’m the one who looks at you and knows.”

I did not say anything, which is the same as saying yes, and she knows that too.

She let a breath go and pulled my hand in and pressed the back of it against her mouth for a second, and did not let go of it after.

”Then say it,” she said. ”Whatever it is you’ve been sat up there not saying. Say it to me. That’s what I’m for.”

And I did, because she is the only person on this earth I can.

”There is no part of me that does not want to beat England.”

She did not flinch.

”I have watched them since I was a boy, Em. My dad had me on a settee in front of them before I could read. He’s been gone 20 years and I still think of him when they play.

”And on Wednesday I am going to stand in a dugout and do everything I have got to knock them out, and there is not one part of me holding back, and I do not know what that makes me.”

She reached up and put her hand on the side of my face. Cold hand. She always has cold hands. And she made me look at her.

”It makes you the man I’m marrying,” she said. ”It doesn’t make you anything worse than that.”

”Em.”

”You don’t get to pick, love. You took the job. 25 men got on a plane believing you wanted it more than the fella in the other dugout. That’s the deal you made with them.

”And the day you can get to no, the day there is a part of you holding back, that’s the day you owe it to them to walk away. Not before.”

She held my face a moment longer.

”So there had better not be a part of you holding back. Do you hear me?”

”I hear you.”

”Good.” And she kissed me. Not a peck. Properly, both hands on my face now, the coat sliding off the back of the chair onto the floor and neither of us reaching for it, and for the first time since a ball came off the inside of a post on Saturday, I was not thinking about football at all.

She pulled back and put her forehead against mine, the way my keeper had done to me in the mud, the way half this squad does to each other now, and I do not think she knows where she picked it up and I have never told her.

”You look like a coat on a peg,” she said against my mouth. ”When did you last eat?”

”I can’t remember.”

”That’s what I thought. Come on.”

And that was it. That was the whole thing I had been carrying since Saturday night, and she took it off me in about 3 minutes without once letting go of my hand, and then she picked her coat up off the floor and took me down to eat.

The phone went while we were still on the stairs.

Bzz. Bzz.

DOUGIE.

I stopped on the landing and Emma carried on down without me, and turned at the bottom, and gave me a look that said she had known it would ring before my foot left the step.

”Go on,” she said. ”Both of you. I’ll get you a plate.”

Understand, this was not a new conversation. Dougie Freedman and I had been having the same one on and off since Sunday, in 90 second bursts between my sessions and his phone calls.

It was now Tuesday, a travel and press day with no training in it, which is the only reason either of us had 5 minutes to breathe.

On Sunday he had rung to tell me Villa were moving and Grealish had gone from a 10 million pound footballer to a 40 million pound one in the space of a night, and there was a London club in for the boy, and everything I touched had got more expensive the second Croatia went out.

That was Sunday.

This was Tuesday. And Dougie Freedman does not say hello, and he does not ring twice with the same news.

”It’s done,” he said.

I stopped dead on the landing.

”Say that again.”

”Grealish. It is done, son. 10 million pounds. Signed this morning.”

”You told me Sunday they wanted 40.”

”They did want 40. On Sunday.” I heard him take a slow breath, the way he does when he is enjoying himself and does not want to show it. ”And they still would, if they had 6 weeks. That is the thing. They have not got 6 weeks.

”The takeover is real, Danny. The Egyptian and his people are still in, still coming, and when it lands Villa are fine and Grealish is a 40 million pound player again and none of this happens.

”But it has not landed. It is lawyers and due diligence and it completes when it completes. And in the meantime that club has a wage bill it cannot pay past August and a bank that wants seeing.

”So they need cash in the building this week, before their own buyers have signed a thing. And a lad worth 40 the day the takeover completes is worth whatever gets money through the door today, because today is the problem, not August.”

”And today,” I said, ”you had 10 million pounds sat ready.”

”I had 10 million pounds sat ready. On the Monday morning. Before anybody else worked out the window that was open, which was the 5 days between a club needing cash now and a takeover that pays them later.”

”And the London club?”

”Went in at 30 on the Tuesday and were a day late, because Villa had already shaken hands with us on the Monday. We had money we could give them now, a bid that did not wait on a takeover of our own, and a boy who had already told his people where he wanted to go.” A beat.

”He wanted us, Danny. He turned down more money and a bigger city to come and play the way we play. I told him the man who built it was in Russia knocking countries out of a World Cup, and the lad said, and I am quoting him, that will do for me.”

I sat down on the stairs. I could not help the grin.

Jack Grealish. 10 million pounds. The thing I had wanted for a year, and it had landed because a good club fell on hard times on exactly the Monday we happened to be ready.

”That is the best bit of work you have ever done.”

”It is your work, son. I did the typing. He signs because of what you have made that club, not because of me.” Dougie let a beat go.

”And he does not want a fuss, before you ask. No unveiling, no scarf on the pitch, not while there is a World Cup on and it is not about him. He said he will do all that in August, when it is quiet, and let the football do the talking. A 22-year-old said that to me, Danny.”

That is the one that told me we had the right lad. Not the left foot. That.

”Højbjerg?”