Glory Of The Football Manager System

22 minutes. Asensio shifts it onto his left from 25 and hits the side netting.

”OOOOOOH.”

Then from the same corner, half a second later, 1 voice over the top of all of it.

”IT’S GONE WIDE. IT’S GONE WIDE, YOU MUPPETS.”

Hahahaha.

That is a Palace away end. 22 minutes of Real Madrid taking a door off its hinges, and a bloke in row 9 telling 3,000 people to sit down and getting a laugh out of them.

Behind the other goal, 2,000 Spaniards have gone quiet.

They are not sulking. They are working. That is what a Real Madrid away end does at 1-0 down after 20 minutes of pressure. They stop singing and they start watching, and they wait, because they have watched this team come back from worse than this 40 times.

26 minutes.

Marcus leans over my shoulder from the row behind and says 6 words quietly.

”Nobody is holding their back 4.”

Marcelo has gone forward 9 times in 26 minutes. Casemiro has not shifted left once.

For 9 years there was a man on that left who did not come back and every rotation in that side was built round him. He is in Turin. Marcelo is still going as if somebody is on the end of it, Casemiro is still sat where he sat in May, and nobody has changed it because they have not played a competitive match to find it in.

I do not have to tell Zaha. I tap my own temple twice and he sees it.

Neves takes a loose Kroos pass and gives it to him 40 yards out.

He goes inside instead of outside, into the gap between Marcelo jogging back and Varane covering 2 jobs.

Sergio Ramos leaves Benteke and comes across that box.

Deep breath.

Zaha slows for about a third of a second. Ramos puts his right leg out to block it, and the moment that weight goes down Zaha puts the ball through his legs.

Shhk. Shhk.

A nutmeg on Sergio Ramos in a European final.

Ramos takes a handful of the back of that shirt and Zaha goes through it, and Marciniak has the whistle at his mouth and takes it away and throws both arms out for advantage.

Navas comes. Zaha squares it.

Christian Benteke. 6 yards. Nobody within 5 of him.

Fsst.

2-0.

RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

This is where that stadium changes.

The Estonians do not come up for the goal. They come up 2 seconds early, on the nutmeg, before the ball reaches Benteke.

”OOOOOLÉ.”

I want to put this down carefully because it is the most extraordinary thing I have heard on a football pitch.

About 20 seconds after that goal a few hundred Estonians in the north stand start olé-ing Crystal Palace passes.

Then a few hundred more.

By the half hour the whole of that stand is doing it at every red and blue touch. They keep it going for 15 minutes and they are doing it at Toni Kroos.

Benteke walks into the net, picks the ball up with his right hand, tucks it under his arm, carries it back to the halfway line and puts it on the spot.

Sergio Ramos stands 10 yards away and watches him do it.

Prrp.

28 minutes. Yellow card. Ramos. For the shirt, 90 seconds after the advantage ran.

He goes at Marciniak with both hands up. Marciniak turns his back and walks to the halfway line.

Sarah writes 1 line in that folder and turns it round so I can read it stood up.

He is 1 more away from missing a Champions League night.

”If we keep sending Wilf at him on that side he walks by 60,” she says, without looking up.

He has been sent off more times than any player in the history of Spanish football and it has been going against him for 24 minutes.

Lopetegui comes to the edge of his area on 30 and does not sit down again.

There is nothing there to fix. You cannot build a defensive shape at 30 minutes that does not exist, not with 25 days of pre-season, 9 years of habit and your best man in Italy.

34 minutes. Marcelo stops going forward.

Nobody tells him. He works it out on his own, on a pitch, in a final, stood shoulder to shoulder with Varane, and it is the most impressive thing anybody in a white shirt does all half.

The window shuts at 34.

We have 7 minutes left of it.

41 minutes.

Varane rolls a heavy one to Casemiro on the edge of the centre circle and James McArthur goes and takes it off him.

30 years old. 250 appearances. Nobody has ever written a paragraph about him.

He reads Casemiro’s shoulders, closes 10 yards in 2 strides, and has it off his toe before the Brazilian turns. Then he gives it 5 yards sideways to Rúben Neves and runs.

That is his whole career in 1 sentence.

Neves has it 35 yards out. Kroos closing from his left, Modrić from his right, the ball bobbling on grass that has had 3 days of a final walked over it.

He does not take a touch.

Thwack.

And everything goes slow.

I see Keylor Navas set his feet. I see him go to full stretch and get a glove on it. I see that glove buckle backwards.

Dnk.

Underside of the bar. Down over the line. Up into the roof of the net.

3-0.

Neves runs 20 yards, stops dead, puts both arms straight out and stands still, and 10 men in red and blue put him on the floor.

RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

”WE ARE PALACE. WE ARE PALACE. WE ARE PALACE.”

”THREE NIL. THREE NIL. THREE NIL.”

”ARE YOU WATCHING. ARE YOU WATCHING. ARE YOU WATCHING MANCHESTER.”

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

Bray has both hands on top of his own head and he is laughing, because that turnover started 4 yards from where he draws them. Sarah is stood up with a shut folder under her arm and a pen already out. Rebecca is on Benteke’s numbers for half time.

All 12 substitutes come off that bench. 1 of them is 18 and was released by this football club on the 6th of June, and Ellis Cartwright is stood on a plastic chair at a European final with both arms in the air.

And then I look at the other end.

I have thought about why I looked at it and I have not got an answer.

About 2,000 people in white, in a corner of a small ground in Estonia at 20 to 11 at night, and every one of them is stood dead still.

No whistling. No shouting at their own players. Nobody walking out.

A man of about 60 in the front row with both hands on the barrier and his chin down. 2 lads in their 20s with a flag slung between them, still holding it up, both looking at the floor.

3 months ago that end watched their club win a 3rd European Cup in a row in Kyiv. 5 weeks ago the best player any of them will see in their lifetime went to Italy for 100 million euros and nobody was bought to replace him.

On Wednesday night in Tallinn they find out what that means in front of 12,000 people.

It is not anger. It is a room after a funeral.

2 kilometres north, in a square with a church on 1 side and a war memorial on the other, everybody who could not get a ticket is watching it on a screen 12 metres wide.

BOOM.

Somebody lets a flare off in Vabaduse väljak at 20 to 11 at night. There is footage of red and blue smoke going past a 700-year-old spire and a man in an Estonia shirt on somebody’s shoulders with his shirt off.

Marcus told me on Friday that the broadcaster had 41 per cent of the country watching by half time.

41 per cent of a nation, for a match neither of their clubs was in.

44 minutes. Ramos goes through the back of Benteke 30 yards out, takes his legs, gets up and puts both hands in the air.

Marciniak has the whistle at his lips and takes it out. He walks over, stands 2 inches from him and says 4 words.

Sergio Ramos does not answer him. It is the only time all night that man keeps his mouth shut.

45+2. Bale inside Chilwell for the 4th time, low and hard along the edge of the 6 yard box, and Benzema arriving at the back post at an open goal.

Tim Krul goes down, gets a palm under it, pushes it 6 inches past Benzema’s boot.

Thwack.

3,000 people stand up. Michael Steele has both hands in his tracksuit pockets and does not move, because he has watched Tim Krul make that save 400 times on a Tuesday afternoon in Beckenham with a bag of balls and a mannequin.

Kroos takes the corner. James Tarkowski goes up and puts it 40 yards back down the pitch.

PRRRRRRP. PRRRRRRP.