Glory Of The Football Manager System

Nathan came in at nine o’clock with his laptop open, resting it on his forearm like a waiter carrying a tray of expensive drinks.

”Right. Do you want it or not?”

”Go on.”

He put it on the table between the cereal bowls and cranked the volume. It was a radio phone-in from the Monday morning commute, a man called Gary from Sale, and he came on the line already shouting.

”...grew up round the corner, his dad was a season ticket holder for God’s sake, this club wrote to him, and he gets on a coach to London and stands in our ground like he owns it! And his player puts four fingers up at the Stretford End! Four fingers, and I am telling you...”

”This is the good bit,” Nathan said, pointing at the speaker.

”...and I am telling you, it is a disgrace! And what do we do? We lose 4-1 at home to him. At home! We spent eighty-nine million quid on a midfielder who will not run for the manager, the manager will not talk to the midfielder, the board will not back the manager, and a lad from Moss Side walks in with half his own academy on the pitch and does us 4-1!”

The presenter tried to interrupt.

”No, no, let me finish. Let me finish. Walsh is a Judas. Fine. But he is a Judas with a Champions League group he is currently top of, and what have we got? We have got Juventus on Tuesday and I would not put money on us scoring a single goal. That is not Walsh. That is five years of Ed Woodward, and I have been saying it since...”

Nathan hit the spacebar and stopped it.

”That is six minutes long,” he said. ”He mentions you four times in the first forty seconds and never again.”

Mamadou Sakho was stood behind him holding a black coffee.

”He is right about the Pogba,” Sakho said.

”Mamadou.”

”I only say, he is right. The structure is completely gone.”

There was more. Nathan went through it with the laptop on his arm, standing up, reading it out in punchy headlines the way he always does.

The Manchester Evening News had the banner on its website, the stencilled one, and underneath it were four thousand comments.

By page three they had stopped talking about me and were viciously arguing with each other about Woodward’s transfer policy.

A United fan channel had a video up called WALSH: THE JUDAS FROM MOSS SIDE with a thumbnail of me in my coat. It had been watched more than a million times. The most liked comment under it said: Hate him all you want, name one player at our club he would pick.

”That one is going round Twitter as well,” Nathan said. ”Somebody tried to answer it with De Gea. Nobody else has managed it yet.”

”Do we say anything?”

”No.” I stood up and took my empty plate to the kitchen hatch. ”Nobody in this building says a word about Manchester United. Not about the banner, not about the fingers, not about the 4-1.”

”The Mail want a line on your dad.”

”They can have absolutely nothing.”

”And James?”

Rodríguez turned round from his cereal, spoon still in his hand.

”James says it was Rebecca’s minutes,” I said. ”And he says it exactly once, on Wednesday, if anybody asks him directly. And then he says it is a very good photograph.”

”It is a very good photograph,” Rodríguez agreed.

On Tuesday night we were in the team hotel at Wembley by seven o’clock, and the private bar had United against Juventus on a screen the size of a garage door.

Nobody had organized a viewing party. But by half past eight, there were fifteen of my players sitting in that bar in their club tracksuits with glasses of orange juice, and Bray stood at the back pretending to read a room service menu.

”CRISTIANO RONALDO.”

The stadium announcer at Old Trafford read the Juventus team out over the feed, and when he got to number seven, Old Trafford stood up and clapped. A long, warm, rolling round of applause, the whole ground on its feet for a man in a white shirt who had left them for Madrid in 2009.

Zaha put his glass down on a coaster.

”They clap him,” he said.

”He won them three leagues,” Højbjerg said from an armchair.

”He left them for Madrid.” Zaha pointed at the screen with the condensation on his glass. ”He left. They clap him. The gaffer says no to a letter, and they make a twenty-foot banner about his dead dad.”

Nobody said anything to that. On the screen, Ronaldo put his hand up to the Stretford End, and the Stretford End roared its love back at him.

Seventeen minutes in, Paulo Dybala hit a cross on the half volley at the far post, and Old Trafford went completely silent the way it had gone silent for Rúben Neves. Front rows first, then the whole stadium suffocated.

1-0 Juventus.

United did not score.

At the final whistle, the camera found Mourinho with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, walking alone down the tunnel. The camera stayed on him, tracking his exit, and a few of my players turned to watch my face. I got up, left my water on the table, and went to bed.

Tk tk.

Rebecca’s pen tapped on the heavy wood of room 214 at ten past ten.

She came in with the medical card and held it up in front of my face before she said a word. Under Mateo Kovačić’s name, the ’25’ had a vicious red line drawn through it, and next to it she had written ’24’ in the same ink.

”I was wrong by one day,” she said. ”He gets twenty minutes. Not twenty-one.”

”Does he know?”

”I told him in the corridor.” She put the card away in her pocket. ”He said the twenty-fourth four times out loud, and then shook my hand.”

The team sheet came off Sarah’s printer at twenty to seven on the Wednesday, rrp, in a concrete dressing room deep under Wembley Stadium.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Pope. Hakimi, Dann, Tuanzebe, Ward. Neves, Højbjerg, Grealish. Townsend, Cartwright, Zaha. Bench: Krul, Wan-Bissaka, Tarkowski, Kovačić, Eze, Benteke, Olise.

Scott Dann read his name on the sheet taped to the wall and did not say anything. He folded his massive arms and read it a second time.

”First one back,” Bray said to him, slapping him on the shoulder.

”Last one gone,” Dann said, deadpan. ”Is that the joke?”

”There is no joke, Scotty. Go and warm up.”

PSV had filled the entire east end of Wembley in a sea of red and white, and they had been bouncing on the concrete since seven o’clock. ”P-S-V. P-S-V.”

The Holmesdale lot had brought their giant flags up the Jubilee Line in black bin bags and hung them over the front of the lower tier.

By the time the Champions League anthem started playing, there were two ends of that stadium actively trying to shout over a string section. The air smelled of damp coats and cordite from a flare let off outside the turnstiles.

Mark van Bommel was stood on the touchline in a sharp black coat with his arms folded. He has played in Champions League finals and won one, and his PSV team had not lost a single domestic league match all season.

PRRRRP.

They pressed from the first whistle like a pack of dogs. Luuk de Jong ran aggressively at Tuanzebe, Hirving Lozano sprinted at Hakimi, and for fifteen brutal minutes, we could not get out of our own defensive third.

”HOLD IT!” Bray was on the edge of our box. ”Rúben! Hold it, show for it!”

”P-S-V. P-S-V. P-S-V.”

Lozano went past Hakimi on the outside in the eleventh minute. He drove into the box, but Nick Pope came rushing out and smothered the ball bravely at his feet. The whole PSV end groaned and then instantly started bouncing again, louder this time.

Then Wilfried Zaha took the ball.

Denzel Dumfries is six foot two and built like a middleweight boxer, and in the twentieth minute, he stood Zaha up on the edge of the PSV penalty area. Zaha went to go outside, dropping his shoulder.

Dumfries shifted his weight. Zaha stopped dead. He went back inside, chopped it, stopped dead again.

Dumfries’s boots tangled, and the massive Dutchman was flat on the floor before Zaha had even moved the ball a yard forward. Wilf hit it with his right foot, whipping it across Jeroen Zoet and burying it into the far corner of the net.

1-0.