Glory Of The Football Manager System

91 minutes. Our corner.

And I sent them up. I caught Benatia’s eye from the touchline and windmilled my whole arm at the French box, go, go, and my captain went, and Saïss went with him, and I screamed at Bounou to hold, to stay home, because a draw was no good to me and I wanted the winner and I wanted it now.

Everybody up. Everybody. Benatia up. Saïss up. Hakimi at the far post, of course, where else.

20 years in this job told me to leave 2 men on the halfway line. I ignored every year of it. You do not claw 3 goals back in a World Cup final to play for extra time. I put every shirt I owned in their box and left my own net standing open in the rain.

Deep breath. Ziyech over it.

The ball came in and Varane rose over the top of everything the way he rose in the first half, and headed it clear, smack, flat and long, out to the halfway line.

To Pogba. No.

Pogba took it out of the sky on his chest, thud, and before it had touched the grass he had gone round El Ahmadi’s lunge, and El Ahmadi threw everything at his shirt and got rain.

Gasp. And every green shirt on the pitch turned at the same time. 10 men who had gone forward for a winner now had 70 yards of open grass behind them and their own goal at the far end of it.

They turned as one body and ran back into that grass, splash, splash, splash, and it was already gone, and some part of every one of them knew it inside the first stride.

I was already screaming. BACK. GET BACK. I had come 3 steps onto the pitch with both arms going, herding men who could not be herded, and it did nothing, because a manager cannot cover 70 yards of grass with his voice, and I had given that grass away myself 8 seconds before.

And I knew. The bottom dropped clean out of my stomach.

I had seen it coming for 45 minutes and it did not matter, because a manager cannot make a tackle from a white line, and that is the whole of the curse.

Pogba did not even look up. Boom. He wrapped his boot round it and hit the channel he had hit since Argentina.

[KYLIAN MBAPPÉ. CA 147. PA 197.]

The 3rd time the card has come to me. The fire, one more time, and never once the water.

And 78,000 people who had been roaring for the goal we scored 90 seconds before heard the noise curdle in their own throats. Uuugghhh. The roar bent, and thinned, and climbed half an octave into something with no joy left in it, a wail going round the bowl one section at a time as the counter reached each of them.

Hakimi went after him. Scrape. Dig. 19 chasing 19, 12 kilometres already in his legs, and he found a sprint out of nothing, arms going like a man falling downhill, and inside 40 yards he clawed a whole yard back off the fastest boy alive. Come on.

He needed 6. The pitch was running out under both of them.

Saïss came flying across on the angle, and the geometry said no. The same no I had said out loud in the dressing room an hour before.

And then it was Yassine Bounou, off his line, spreading into a wall one more time, arms and legs and 6 weeks of miracles, with one boy in white running onto him. Hold.

And everything went slow.

I saw Bounou set his feet, squelch. I saw Mbappé’s eyes drop to the ball, flick up to the near post, drop again. I saw the gap over Bounou’s left shoulder, a foot of wet air, and I knew he had seen it too, because he has been finding gaps like it since he was a boy in Bondy.

He did not shoot it. He placed it. A soft, deliberate, unforgivable thing, lifted up over the shoulder and dropped.

fsst.

The net took it without a sound, and for half a second the whole stadium hung there, 78,000 people and the rain, and then it tore straight down the middle.

YYYEEAAAHHHH!

The French end went up like a struck match.

Behind that goal a man in a blue shirt who had spent 20 minutes with his hood up and his head in his hands, who had already grieved this, came up off his seat with his mouth wide open and took the stranger next to him by both shoulders and shook him.

A whole end of people who had watched a 3-goal lead turn to ash and made their peace with losing, finding out all at once that they did not have to.

And 40 yards of the same stadium went to nothing. A silence I felt in my back teeth.

The old man on the rail did not move. His cap came off his head slowly, on its own, and hung at his side. The woman from Huizen put both hands flat over her mouth. Oh my god.

Behind the far goal the boy in gloves 4 sizes too big sat straight down on the wet concrete, hard, whack, as if his legs had been taken out from under him.

3-4. 92 minutes.

Mbappé stood in front of the corner flag with his arms folded and his chin up, letting them climb on him, not celebrating, because some part of a 19-year-old already knew he was the bill and somebody has to be.

I did not move. I could not have told you my own name.

The thing that had held me upright for 6 weeks went out of me all at once, the way water leaves a bath, and for the first time since the first half I felt the rain.

It had been through the jacket for an hour and I had not noticed it once, and now it was ice on my back, and my ears were ringing, eeeeeee, and I could not pull a full breath down into my chest. Hhhh.

And I knew exactly what I had done. I had sent 10 men forward for a corner because a draw was worth nothing to me, and the quickest boy alive had run into the field I left open behind them and taken the World Cup off us through the middle of it.

The grass I traded. I had traded it myself, from a white line, and then I stood on that line and watched it come.

Achraf Hakimi stood 40 yards away with his hands on his head, looking at the grass that had been his all night. Sofyan went to him and took his face in both hands and said something into it, close, the way Benatia had once done for Sofyan.

Nobody blamed him. There was nothing to blame. He had done everything, and everything has a price.

And then we went again. Breathe.

Of course we did.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.