Glory Of The Football Manager System

[London Heathrow, Terminal 3. Thursday 19 July 2018. 23:26.]

Chk.

Reverse thrust, and 240 people on that aircraft went about their business as if nothing had happened, because nothing had.

We taxied for 9 minutes. My mother put her book in her bag and did up her coat and said, ”Well,” which is my mother’s entire summary of a World Cup.

Then the seatbelt sign went off and the cabin stood up as one animal, and I was home.

Bing.

The purser was at the door of the flight deck when I came up the aisle, and she had clearly spent 4 hours deciding whether to do it.

”Mr Walsh. I am so sorry. Would you mind?”

”Course not.”

There were 6 of them in the end. 2 of the cabin crew, the purser, a girl who could not have been 22 who had been serving my mother hot towels for 4 hours, and then both pilots came out of the flight deck in their shirtsleeves.

The captain had a Palace lanyard on his phone case.

”20 years I have flown this route,” he said, lining up. ”Never had a reason before.”

Somebody held the camera. Somebody else counted to 3.

Click.

And the girl who had been doing the towels said, ”My dad cried at the second one, the bicycle kick. He is 58 and he cried at his own telly,” and then went bright red and apologised for saying it.

”Do not apologise.”

”Sorry.”

”Tell him I said it was the best goal I have ever stood 40 yards away from.”

They got my mother’s bag down for her and would not let her carry it, and she was furious about that the whole way up the jet bridge.

Baggage reclaim at half 11 at night is the most ordinary room on earth.

Grey floor. A belt going round with nothing on it. A man asleep sat up. A woman on the phone saying we have landed, we have landed, yes, we have landed.

Bray stood at that belt with his tie in his pocket, looking at nothing.

”Alan.”

”6 weeks,” he said.

”I know.”

”6 weeks and there is a belt.” He rubbed his face. ”Danny, is that suitcase yours or is it the other blue one.”

Marcus counted the bags 3 times and got a different number twice. Rebecca had her boots off already and her shoes in her hand. Steele took his case off the belt, said ”Right, then,” and that was 2 of his 9 words for the day.

My case came round with a Moroccan federation tag on the handle and a green ribbon somebody had tied on it that I have never removed.

The border was a young lad in a blue shirt in a booth, and I had my passport out and a document wallet in my other hand and I did not know which of the 2 I was supposed to be presenting.

He took the British one.

Tk. Tk.

He looked at the screen, and then at me, and then back at the screen, and then he did not do anything for about 4 seconds.

”You are him.”

”I am.”

”Right.” He put the passport down flat and left his hand on it. ”Can I say something?”

”Go on.”

”My mum is from Salé.”

I stood at a border desk in Terminal 3 at 11 minutes to midnight and did not have one single thing to say to that.

”She rang me on Tuesday,” he said. ”She has not rung me on a Tuesday in about 4 years. She was on that road. She sent me 11 videos and I could not hear a word she was saying in any of them.”

”Salé is 20 minutes from where I was stood.”

”I know exactly where you were stood.” He picked the passport back up. ”I have watched her videos about 30 times and I still cannot hear her.”

He stamped nothing, because it is a British passport and there is nothing to stamp, and he handed it back and held onto it a second longer than he needed to.

”Welcome home, boss.”

I got about 4 feet past that booth before I had to stop and stand still for a second with a passport in my hand, in the queue lane, with the tape either side of me.

My mother waited and did not ask.

The doors to arrivals in Terminal 3 are 2 sliding panels with frosted glass, and you cannot see through them, and that is the design.

I went through them at 4 minutes to midnight with a trolley and my mother on my left.

FLASH.

I got 2 steps.

Flashflashflashflash.

It came at us out of the dark on the other side of that glass and it did not stop, and the first thing that goes is your eyes. You cannot see the floor. You are walking a trolley and a 61-year-old woman into white.

I have come through those doors after Lyon. 30 people, a picture, a wave, 4 minutes.

This was 3 deep on the barrier and the barrier was not holding them.

”DANNY.”

”DANNY, OVER HERE.”

”MR WALSH.”

”DANNY, ANY REGRETS?”

I got a hand on the small of my mother’s back and I put my shoulder half in front of her and kept going, because that is all there is to do, and then the front of that pack came round the end of the barrier.

They do not stay behind it. Nobody tells you that. There is a barrier and then there is 1 man round the end of it and then there is no barrier.

He came in sideways with a recorder held out at my mouth and I had to stop dead or walk into him.

”Danny. Do you feel guilty?”

”Get out of the road, mate.”

”Do you feel guilty?” He was walking backwards in front of me, and there were now 4 of them doing it. ”You knocked England out of a World Cup. You are English. You are stood in an English airport. Does that sit right with you?”

Flashflashflash.

”Anything you want to say to the country you have come home to?”

There is a thing that happens in your chest. It is not anger. It arrives before anger and it is worse, and it is the thing you get when somebody puts a hand on your car.

And under it, and I have never written this down anywhere, a small voice going: he is asking a fair question.

Because 8 days ago I stood in a technical area in Moscow and coached 11 men to beat the country I was born in, and I did it well, and I enjoyed it while it was happening.

That was the 19th of July. England went out on the 11th.

There had been a World Cup final in between, with 2 other countries in it, and a parade on another continent, and a man in a crown. And here were 40 people in an arrivals hall on a Thursday night asking me about the 11th.

I had thought it was finished. I had sat on an aeroplane over the Bay of Biscay thinking about a Community Shield.

”Danny. Guilty or not?”

Then a lad swung a camera round on its strap to get an angle and it came across and caught my mother on the shoulder.

Not hard. It did not hurt her. It moved her about 6 inches and she took a step to keep her feet and her bag came off her arm.

Clatter.

And my mother, 61 years old, from a road in Moss Side, in the middle of 40 people and all that light, bent down and picked up her own bag off the floor of Terminal 3 and stood back up and said, to nobody, in a voice I have heard exactly 4 times in my life:

”That is quite enough of that.”

They did not hear her. It was too loud in there.

I heard her.

I put the trolley sideways across the front of them, hard, so the corner of it went into the pack and stopped the 4 who were walking backwards, and I got in front of my mother and I turned round.

And I did not say anything.

I have thought about why, and the honest answer is that I could not trust the first sentence, so I did not have one.

I stood there in a wet suit and looked at the man with the recorder, and he was about 30, and he stopped talking, and then he took a step back, and then the man behind him did.

There is a photograph of that. It is in circulation to this day and I look like somebody out of a bad film.

Then 2 hands came onto the barrier either side of me.

”Right. That is enough of that.”