Glory Of The Football Manager System

[BVB Stadion Dortmund. Wednesday 3 October 2018.]

Michael Zorc was stood at the top of that tunnel when we came up it, and he was not waiting for me.

That tunnel is 40 metres of grey concrete and it comes out at the corner flag instead of the halfway line, so you walk 25 seconds in front of a full stadium before anybody gets near a football. Sarah put that in a note on Tuesday night. I read it and I did not understand what she was telling me.

Zorc played 463 times for that football club and never once for another one, and he has run it since 1998, and he was stood at the mouth of it in a club coat at 20 to 8 with his hands behind his back.

He let 9 of my players go past him.

Then he put a hand flat on Achraf Hakimi’s shoulder and said 5 or 6 words, and Hakimi stopped, and the pair of them stood in that corridor for about 4 seconds while the rest of us walked round the outside of them.

Hakimi came out of it with nothing on his face at all.

”What was that?”

”Nothing, coach.”

”Achraf.”

”After,” he said.

Then we came out of the corner.

You hear it in your chest before you hear it in your ears. It comes down off the top of that south stand and hits the front of you like somebody has opened an oven, and the advertising hoarding I put my hand on was vibrating under my palm, and I took my hand off it and put it back on to check.

RRRRRRRRRRRR.

Under all of it there is a dry wooden clatter that I did not have a name for until Nathan told me on the coach. Rattles. Hundreds of them, wound by hand, and it does not sound like a football crowd at all. It sounds like a hailstorm on a tin roof underneath 60,000 men shouting.

There is a man on a platform at the front of that terrace facing the wrong way, megaphone in his hand, no interest in the football at all, and everything up there goes through him. Arm up, 9,000 people stop. Arm down, 9,000 people go.

Then the scarves came up.

The whole south end at once, every one of them stood in front of a bolted-in plastic seat with both arms over their head, and they played the song they play in this place and the entire building sang it back, all 4 sides, and it is slow and it takes a long time and it does not let you look anywhere else.

”YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE.”

I have watched that on a television about 20 times.

Nick Pope stopped walking in the middle of the pitch with a bag of gloves in his hand. Connor Blake stood on the touchline with his head all the way back and stayed there until Joel Ward put a hand between his shoulder blades and walked him on.

We had 2,900 in the north east corner and they had been in there since 20 past 6.

Bernd told me on Tuesday that the seats mean no card display, because 9,000 chairs means nobody is stood where they are supposed to be stood, and he was right about that.

So instead of cards, The Unity hung a banner across 4 rows of the fence at 30 seconds to 8, and it was 20 metres long and it was in English.

47 EUROS FOR OUR GUESTS. WE STAND FOR 16. SHAME ON UEFA.

The away corner read it, worked it out, and went up.

They were still applauding it when the south end turned and applauded them back, and for 40 seconds 2 ends of a football ground clapped each other about the price of a ticket while 22 men stood on the halfway line waiting for a referee.

Bernd told me it would be quiet for 20 minutes. Emma texted me the same thing at 19 minutes past 11 on Tuesday night.

It was not quiet for 20 seconds.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Pope. Wan-Bissaka, Tarkowski, Sakho, Hakimi. Neves, Højbjerg, Rodríguez. Zaha, Benteke, Perišić.

Bench: Krul, Dann, Ward, Chilwell, Tuanzebe, Eze, Grealish, Blake, Olise, Cartwright.

Lucien Favre had Bürki behind Piszczek, Akanji, Diallo and Guerreiro, Axel Witsel and Thomas Delaney in front of them, Maximilian Philipp up the middle and Marco Reus off him.

Jacob Bruun Larsen went right.

Jadon Sancho went left.

He has played 6 matches this season and all 6 of them on the right hand side, and Lucien Favre moved him for this one, and there is only 1 reason a manager does that. He had gone through my team and picked a side of it.

Marcus had it off the sheet 40 minutes before kick off and used 4 words.

”He has gone for Aaron.”

PRRRRP.

Axel Witsel went to Rúben Neves in the 4th minute and did not leave him for the rest of the night.

He signed for that club on the 6th of August, he is 29, he has 100 caps, and Favre gave him 1 job and he did it like a man being paid by the hour. Neves had 11 touches in 20 minutes. Twice he came all the way back to stand between his own centre halves to get on the ball, and twice Witsel came with him, and the second time Rúben Neves turned round and said something to him and Witsel did not look at him.

Gary Neville drew that on a desk on a television in August with a pen.

”Take Neves away, and all you have done is give Hakimi 40 yards of grass.”

9 minutes. Sancho got it 30 yards out with Aaron Wan-Bissaka 4 yards off him and the whole of that side to run at.

He came inside. Left foot.

shhk.

Aaron turned on his left and got there.

The rattles went up a gear for that and then came down again.

14 minutes. Same corner of the pitch. Inside again.

Thk.

Throw in, Crystal Palace, and 2,900 people in a corner 80 yards away made a noise about a throw in.

22 minutes. Marco Reus dropped between the lines and pulled Mamadou Sakho 10 yards out of his own back 4, and Sancho came inside for the 5th time in 22 minutes, and Aaron Wan-Bissaka was turning before the boy had touched it.

I did not say 1 word to him.

Tim Krul sat in a hotel lobby in Dortmund at 11 o’clock on Tuesday night with a coffee he did not want and told me there was nothing left I could give that lad, and that if I gave him something now he would think I was worried.

So I stood on a white line with my hands in my pockets and watched a 20-year-old from Croydon do 5 weeks of work in front of the loudest crowd in Europe, and I said nothing, and Sarah stood 3 feet to my left and said nothing either.

26 minutes. Marco Reus hit the inside of the post from 18 yards.

DNK.

That terrace came off the floor as one thing and stayed up, and you could see it moving, an actual ripple going up the yellow of it row by row, and the ball came back across our 6 yard box and James Tarkowski put it into the second tier.

”RRRRAAAAAAAAAAA.”

31 minutes. Delaney, free header, 6 yards, off a Guerreiro corner.

Nick Pope got his standing leg to it.

He had no hand anywhere near it. He had committed the other way and he threw a shin back across his own body and it came off his knee and out for a corner, and Nick Pope got off the floor of a goalmouth in Germany and clapped his own back 4 the way he does on a Tuesday morning at Beckenham.

”POOOOOPE. POOOOOPE.”

2,900 against 63,000 and you could still pick them out.

38 minutes. The only time in that half we got out of our own half properly.

Wilfried Zaha had spent 38 minutes 10 yards in front of his own left back doing a job this football club has never asked him to do, and he had not complained about it once, and Højbjerg put one down the line and Zaha went 40 yards with it on his own before Akanji got across and took it off his toe.

No shot. A corner.

The away end roared at a corner kick in the 38th minute like it had gone in, and Marco Reus turned round on the halfway line and looked over at them.

44 minutes. Bruun Larsen from 12. Pope, near post, both fists, and Ivan Perišić came 30 yards back to clear the second ball off our own line because he has played 60 of these nights and he knew it was coming before it came.

Half time.

Borussia Dortmund 0 Crystal Palace 0.

12 shots to 0.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.