Glory Of The Football Manager System

77 minutes.

Bray was off that bench before the corner had been given.

”SIX! SIX!”

6 is Wilfried Zaha short. It is the routine he called at 29 minutes because Claudio Bravo does not want to come for a cross, and Palace had won 3 corners since and taken 6 every time and Bravo had come for none of them.

Zaha stood over it.

He came short, 3 yards, and Bravo took 1 step and stopped.

Tk.

Zaha did not take it short. He never was going to take it short.

He clipped it to the back post over the top of everybody.

And Christian Benteke, who Rebecca had given 6 minutes at 59 and who was in the 77th minute of the hardest afternoon he has had in an English shirt, went up above John Stones and got a head on it and knocked it down.

Thud.

Not a shot. A knockdown, 4 yards out, into a scramble.

Laporte got a leg to it and it came off him.

Bravo got a hand to it and it came off him.

It sat up about 18 inches off that grass in a 6 yard box with 4 men round it.

And everything went slow.

I saw Aymeric Laporte’s leg come across and get nothing on it. I saw Claudio Bravo, on the floor, get an arm up and touch it and not hold it. I saw John Stones look at the ball and take half a step and stop, because in a 6 yard box with 18 inches of air a centre-half has about a third of a second to decide whether to head it or hook it and John Stones spent his third of a second deciding.

OOOH. AAH. OH.

A noise with no shape in it. Not a roar and not a groan. Every man and woman in that bowl making a different sound at the same time and all of them 2 feet off their seats.

Come on.

And stood in the middle of that, 4 yards out, with 2 men in blue between him and the goal, was a 32-year-old who has been on the pitch for 15 minutes.

He did not head it. He did not hook it.

He stuck his left shin at it.

Thump.

Off the underside of the bar. Down. Out.

The linesman had his flag at his side and Jon Moss was already turning and pointing at the halfway line, and 4 men in blue shirts had their arms in the air appealing at a man who was 40 yards away and running.

Jesús Navas is 32 years old.

He has scored 4 goals in England in his life and none of them were any good, and in 15 years nobody has put a single one of them on a television at the end of a season.

That is not what he is. He is a man who is still in the 6 yard box in the 77th minute when everybody else has gone to sleep, and he has been that man since he was 19 years old in Andalusia.

3-2.

RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

And here is what Jesús Navas did.

He did not slide. He did not take his shirt off. He did not go to the corner flag and he did not point at anybody in that crowd and he did not put his hands anywhere near his ears.

He turned round and jogged back towards the halfway line with both hands at his sides and his chin up.

He was smiling with his mouth shut.

9 men caught him before he got there and took him off his feet, and I have watched that back about 40 times, and every single time I watch it I see the same thing.

”NAVAAAAAS. NAVAAAAAS.”

They had his name inside about 6 seconds and I have no idea who started it.

He is not celebrating a goal. He is looking for somebody.

Somewhere in the middle of that pile he found Bray, who had come 20 yards onto the pitch and had no business being on the pitch at all, and he got an arm free and pointed at him.

Number 6.

Bray’s corner, called on a touchline in 29 degrees at 29 minutes because a goalkeeper did not want to come for a cross.

A 32-year-old in his last season pointed at a set piece coach in front of a full stadium, and 4 of us on that touchline knew what it meant, and nobody else in the building did.

In Block 122 nobody was in their own seat.

Terry Dolan was 6 rows from where he started and had lost a shoe, and he did not get it back until 20 past 5.

The last 10 minutes of a Community Shield at 3-2 up against Manchester City are the longest 10 minutes I have stood through in my life.

3 weeks earlier I stood on a touchline in Moscow at 3-3 in a World Cup final with 2 minutes left, and I know exactly what the last 10 minutes of a football match can take off a man.

”OOOOH-AY. OOOOH-AY.”

80 minutes. Kompany came on for Agüero and our end sang at him, and he put a hand up to them on his way past, and about 4,000 of them clapped a Manchester City captain at a Community Shield.

”They have gone to a back 3,” Marcus said. ”No. They have gone to a back 2 and a hope.”

83 minutes. Konaté came on for Tarkowski and Bray had him on the near post inside 4 seconds.

84 minutes. Mahrez put a free kick over the wall and over the bar.

BOOOOO.

They booed a shot that missed. I have never heard that in my life.

86 minutes. Rebecca stood up with the board in her hand and I put my arm across in front of her.

”2 more.”

”No.”

”Rebecca, 2.”

”You said that at 71 and I gave you 15.” She did not lower the board. ”He has got 1 hamstring left in him and there is a Real Madrid on the 15th. Sit down, Danny.”

I sat down.

RRRAAAAAAA.

”CHRIS-TIAN! CHRIS-TIAN!”

He came off to the loudest noise I have ever heard given to a man who had not scored.

He got 4 yards from that touchline and stopped and turned round and clapped them back. He has not done that in 2 years at this football club.

Then he came the rest of the way, and I put my hand out, and he went past it and put both arms round Rebecca instead.

She had told him at 59 minutes he had 6 left. She got him 27.

And then, 88 minutes, at 3-2, in a match we could have shut down and gone home with, we did the thing this football club has been doing since April 2017.

We went and got another one.

Jesús Navas got it on the right touchline with Fabian Delph in front of him and about 4 men behind him, and every single person in that stadium including me expected him to put it in the corner and let the clock run.

He looked up.

shhk.

He went outside Delph.

32 years old. 26 minutes on the clock. On a pitch that had been baked all afternoon, in his 3rd sprint in 4 minutes, against a full back who had been on the pitch for 8 minutes and had fresh legs and knew exactly what was coming.

To the byline. Again. Head up. Again.

And he pulled it back to the penalty spot for a boy who had been on the pitch for 6 minutes.

Michael Olise. 16 years old.

He has been at this football club since he was 9. His mother has driven him from Hammersmith 4 nights a week since he was 11 and nobody at that club asked her about it for 5 years. He was 15 last season and he played 40 minutes of a Youth Cup quarter-final at Stamford Bridge and got kicked from one end of it to the other and played all 40 of them.

He came onto that ball from 20 yards behind it.

Vincent Kompany saw him at about 12 yards and Vincent Kompany has been reading these for 15 years and he still could not get there, because a 32-year-old centre-half cannot get to a 16-year-old who started running before the ball did.

And everything went slow again.

I saw Olise’s head go down. I saw Bravo take a half step to his right, because everything that arrives at a penalty spot from a right byline gets hit across goal, and every professional on that pitch knew it.

He did not hit it across goal.

THWACK.

Near post. Right foot, first time, no backlift I could see, into the ground and up off the inside of that post and in.

Dnk.

Claudio Bravo did not get a hand within 3 feet of it.

RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

It did not come back off the arch that time. There was no room left up there for it to come back into.

”WHO IS HE? WHO IS HE?” A man on the front row of the lower tier, both arms out, to a steward, who did not know either.

A club that was 14th in this division 18 months ago, and 5 points off going down, stood up in a bowl at Wembley and made that noise for a 16-year-old none of them had heard of in May.

4-2.

I did not move.

I have thought about that a lot since and the truth is that I could not. Bray had to put a hand between my shoulder blades and push me 2 steps forward so a television camera could get me in a shot.

The oldest man on that pitch had set up the youngest.

At Wembley Stadium, on the 5th of August, to win a football trophy.

Michael Olise ran to the corner where the drum is with no idea at all what to do with his own arms, and he got about 30 yards before 8 men landed on him, and 3 of them had come off our bench and had no business being on that pitch at all.

Jesús Navas got there last. Walking.

He stood behind that pile with his hands on his hips and let a 16-year-old have it, and he did not go into it, and when Jon Moss started shouting he was the first man to turn round and jog back.

On our bench, Nya Kirby was stood on the advertising boards with both arms above his head.

Ellis Cartwright had both hands flat over his own face.

Deano was counting something.

And Sarah was stood up with that folder shut under her arm and she was not looking at the pitch either.

She was looking at the 16-year-old, and she had the face of a woman doing arithmetic.

In Block 122, Terry Dolan had a shoe in one hand and a stranger round the neck with the other, and he was not shouting, and the lad next to him was crying.

There are 4 photographs of that corner of Wembley Stadium on the internet and I have looked at all 4 of them more times than I am going to write down.

Prrrrp. Prrrrp. Prrrrp.

RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Full time.

Crystal Palace 4 Manchester City 2.