Glory Of The Football Manager System

Pope. Krul.

I put the pen on Wan-Bissaka and moved it down. Hakimi. Ward. Dann. Tarkowski. Konaté. Sakho. Tuanzebe. Chilwell.

Every name had a night attached to it.

Ward at right back against Cardiff on Boxing Day. Tarkowski at Wembley a fortnight ago with Troy Deeney looking for his ankles all afternoon. Sakho putting his arm round Konaté’s neck and shouting in French before a City corner had even been taken.

I could have told you a night for every 1 of them without looking anything up, and none of those nights got anybody off a list.

Neves. Kovačić. Højbjerg.

The pen stopped there.

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg had come on in both legs of the semi-final. On Wednesday night, in the last minute, he had headed Eze’s corner straight back into City’s box when everybody else was too tired to jump. He was still the man I sent on with 10 minutes left.

I went on down. McArthur, Grealish, Rodríguez, Olise, Eze. Zaha, Townsend.

Perišić.

Ivan Perišić had been on Rebecca’s hamstring sheet since the autumn, with a number at the top of it that went up and down every Monday. He played when it was green.

When it was amber he sat on the bench and watched it go green again. Madrid was in 27 days. I did not know what colour it would be on the 20th of February. Neither did Rebecca, and I had asked her.

I put a small mark in the margin by each of them, the size of a full stop, and I put the cap back on the pen.

Sarah came back at 10 to 9 with 2 coffees. She looked at the marks before she looked at me.

”Neither of them is locally trained,” she said, after a while. ”So the 8 stays 8, and nobody has to ring UEFA and ask what happens if it does not.”

I said I knew.

”I know you know. I am saying it so it is written down somewhere that I checked.” She put my coffee on the corner of the desk, away from the list. ”You will tell them yourself.”

I was already standing up.

Wayne Hennessey was 32 that day.

I did not know that until I opened the door of the goalkeepers’ room and found a chocolate muffin from the canteen on the table with a candle stuck in it and Michael Steele trying to light the candle with the last match in a book of matches from a hotel in Manchester.

Fft.

It took.

Hennessey was sat on the bench with his gloves in his lap looking at it.

I told him he was on List A, Madrid and Wembley and every round after that, as the third goalkeeper. He knew it was coming. Steele had told him on the 7th. He still put the gloves down on the bench next to him to hear it properly.

”Happy birthday to me,” he said, and blew the candle out.

Steele cut the muffin into 3 with a plastic knife and gave me the smallest piece without asking whether I wanted it.

Højbjerg was in the gym on the rowing machine. He stopped rowing when he saw my face in the mirror.

I told him anyway. 2 lines on, 2 lines off, and his was 1 of the 2. I told him why. I needed a third goalkeeper, and I needed Dion for the right side, and the 2 lines had to come from somewhere.

He sat on the seat with the handle still in his hands.

He asked about the league. I told him the league was the same.

”And Sunday?”

I had not decided about Sunday until he asked. Then I had.

”You start Sunday.”

He let go of the handle. It went back along the rail on its wire and hit the stop.

Clack.

”Is that so I feel better?”

”No. Kane is injured, so Llorente will be up front for them, and I want somebody in front of our back 4 who will go up and head the first ball every time. That is you.”

He looked at me in the mirror for a while, then he put his feet back in the straps and started rowing again, harder than before, and I went to find Perišić.

Ivan was face down on a bed in the treatment room with a physio’s thumbs in the back of his left thigh. He turned his head on the towel when I came in. The physio took her hands off him and went out without being asked.

I told him.

He lay there and listened to all of it, with his cheek on the towel.

”It is the leg,” he said.

I told him it was partly the leg.

”In 3 weeks the leg is fine.”

”Ivan, I cannot put the leg on a list and find out in Madrid.”

He turned his face back into the towel. For a long time he did not say anything, and I stood there and waited for him.

”OK,” he said, into the towel. ”Then I play the league. All of it. Every week, when it is green.”

”When it is green.”

”You tell her I said this.” He lifted 1 hand off the bed and pointed it at the door, where Rebecca had been an hour before. ”You tell her I want green.”

I said I would tell her. When I went out the physio was in the corridor with her back against the wall, and she went back in, and I heard Ivan say something to her in Croatian and her laugh.

Sarah had the 2 new names typed by 11. She did not send it. UEFA could wait for the end of the window, she said, in case the world fell in between now and then, and she put the list in the folder and the folder in her drawer and locked it.

That night was the second lesson.

While Chelsea and Spurs were kicking off at Stamford Bridge, I was in a church hall in Herne Hill putting my phone face down on a plastic chair by the door. The teacher watched me do it and nodded once.

The radiator was going again. Clang. The CD player was on the same trestle table with the same CD in it.

We did the box step for 20 minutes. I did not count. She counted for both of us, and I stood on Emma 3 times instead of every time, and on the third time the teacher said ”Better,” and went on counting.

Then she asked us what we were dancing to in June.

Emma looked at me. I looked at Emma.

”You have not chosen,” the teacher said. ”Good. Nobody chooses. Then they choose something in 4/4 with a key change and come back to me in May in tears.”

Emma said she had a song. She had had it for a while. Moon River.

The teacher made a small noise of approval and went to the CD player without another word. She had it. She put it on, and it came out of that speaker small and thin and filled the hall anyway.

Click.

”It is a waltz,” she said. ”1, 2, 3. The box step was made for it.”

I said I had a suggestion as well.

They both waited.

I said, ”Glad All Over.”

Emma put her face in both hands. The teacher looked at me over her glasses for a long time.

”You cannot box step to that,” she said. ”Nobody can box step to that. Off you go. Moon River.”

We did Moon River 6 times. By the fifth time I was not looking at my feet, and on the sixth Emma was not looking at hers either, and the teacher stopped counting about halfway through and let the song do it.

When I turned my phone over at the door there was 1 message, from Sarah.

Chelsea. 4-2 on pens.

So it was Chelsea at Wembley on the 24th of February.

I thought about JJ in that shootout. Had he taken 1? Missed 1? I did not know, and I did not want to ring him to find out on the night he went out.

In the morning Marcus told me Spurs had sent 4 and scored 2, and JJ had not been 1 of the 4. He had played the whole match on the left.

”He will play on Sunday as well,” Marcus said. ”Pochettino will change most of them. JJ he will not change. He is the 1 who is fit.”

On Friday morning Rebecca’s card for Sunday was mostly red again.

She had circled 3 names in green. Wan-Bissaka, 60 minutes. Eze, 65. Grealish, 75. Under them, in her small writing, she had put KRUL ONLY IF STEELE SAYS SO, because of the shootout on Wednesday night.

Steele said so.

Bray had Llorente on his iPad. He had a man picked for every Spurs corner, and he wanted Højbjerg on the near post for all of them. I told him Højbjerg was starting. He wrote it down before I had finished saying it.

Marcus had a white dot for every touch JJ made at Stamford Bridge on his laptop. 71 of them. 40 on the left touchline, then the rest all over the pitch in the last 20 minutes, chasing.