Chapter 735: Quarter-Finals I: Croatia
The wait ended the way waiting always ends. All at once, with a knock on a hotel door at 7 in the morning and Nadia’s voice coming through the wood. "Bags, gaffer. We fly in an hour."
Sochi came up green and gold under the plane, the Black Sea flat as a plate, and the heat met us on the airbridge like a hand laid on the face. A different Russia to the grey one up north. This one had palm trees along the road and old women selling peaches at the lights.
By Saturday evening the coach was nosing through a tide of people towards a stadium that sat right on the water, white and vast and lit against the dark. The closer we got, the quieter the bus went.
Ziyech stopped talking, which I had not seen happen the whole trip. Sofyan had his headphones on and his eyes shut and his lips moving round words I could not hear.
Emma had said go and win it, and it was still on me the whole way down, tucked under the tracksuit like a vest I would not take off.
Then the belly of the place swallowed the coach, the noise came down through the concrete to find us, and there was nothing left to wait for.
The tunnel smelled of cut grass and the sea.
Ziyech bounced on his toes in front of me, chewing his gum like it had wronged him. He caught me watching and grinned. "Relax, Gaffer. We already put one lot of Europeans out this week."
"Different lot," I said.
"Same wink." He did it, quick, then jerked his head back at En-Nesyri. Youssef stared through the two of us at nothing. He has not smiled since Portugal took a goal off him that was never offside.
Bounou was behind him, banging his gloves together, muttering to himself in 3 languages.
A hand landed on my shoulder from behind, and I knew the grip before I turned. 6 months of it, on a wet training pitch in Beckenham.
"Gaffer."
Mateo Kovačić. I took him on loan in January when Madrid had stopped returning his calls, and I made him mine for keeps 9 days ago with 25 million of Steve Parish’s money. And here he stood in a white shirt, getting ready to knock me out of a World Cup.
"You’re on the wrong bench," I said.
"I know." That half smile, the one he wore the day he signed. "My mother would bury me if I sat on yours today."
"How is she?"
"Loud. She says beat us, then come to dinner." The smile went honest on him. "It is strange, boss. Playing against you."
"Don’t score," I said. "I pay your wages now. That is an order."
He gripped my shoulder once, the way he does before I send him on, and jogged off towards his own lads. "I’ll try not to, Gaffer."
Benatia watched him go, then looked at me. "Your boy."
"My boy," I said.
At the front of the white line stood Modrić, gumshield in, small and grey, reading the light off the water like it had words in it.
Benatia stepped level with me. I put my hand flat on his chest and felt it going. "90 minutes," I said. "They’ve the legs we have, no more."
"No," he said. "We have better." And he walked.
The referee lifted a hand and the 2 lines shuffled up to the paint. A mascot the size of a fire hydrant held Benatia’s finger and would not let go, and Benatia, who man-marks Mandžukić for a living, crouched down and sorted the kid’s collar for him.
Down the line Modrić shook every Moroccan hand without looking at one of the faces, saving himself, counting something only he could see.
Then the ramp mouth opened and the noise came down the throat of it to meet us, the sea wind riding in on top, and Fisht stood up as one.
roar.
It was not a crowd. It was a country that had emptied itself onto the shore of the Black Sea and painted it red and green to the roof.
Flags the size of bedsheets went hand over hand across the tiers. Behind the far goal, the big drums started.
boom. boom. boom-boom-boom.
Then 40,000 found the same word at once. Dima Maghrib. Always Morocco, always Morocco. The women threw their heads back and let the old cry go, lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu, and the tier behind our bench shook so hard it came up my shins.
We had never been here. Morocco. Not once in the whole life of the country. The first quarter-final it had ever had, and every soul under that roof knew it, and they had come to move the earth for it.
Off to the left a knot of young lads with Brussels in their voices held a bedsheet reading ATLAS LIONS IN THE LAND OF THE TSARS, hoarse already, arms round each other, jumping as one man.
Behind our bench the old man had both fists on the rail and was leaning out over the drop. 32 years he had waited on this lot. He was not about to blink now.
The Palace 40 were up in the gods with their bedsheet already over the lip, SELHURST TO SOCHI, the paint run to nothing. One of them had his top off. It was blowing a gale off the Black Sea and he had his top off, whirling it round his head.
Down in the green end a lad no more than 8 sat up on his dad’s shoulders with a drum, and every few seconds he hit it, boom, and a whole block answered him.
I found Emma in row 9 without meaning to. She did not wave. She put her palm flat on her own chest, once, and held my eye. Beside her Jessica was totting up the directors’ boxes until Emma grabbed her wrist and made her stop.
The anthems went up. Ours came back off the green end like a fist closing.
I made myself look at the man in the middle of it all.
LUKA MODRIĆ. AGE 32. CA 181 / PA 184.
My stomach did a thing I had not asked it to. I looked away first. You do not get to lose a staring match with a number where your players can watch your face.
whistle.
The noise did not settle when the game kicked off. It changed gear. Green shirt on the ball, roar. White shirt on the ball, wheeeee, 40,000 whistles at once. And under all of it, never once stopping, boom. boom. boom.
We went straight at them from the off. Not the ball. Them.
Sofyan got up the nose of Rakitić inside 10 seconds and would not get off it. Rakitić checked, turned, looked for the easy angle, found Sofyan still there, and rolled it backwards with a face on him. A World Cup winner, giving it to his keeper in the first minute, chewing air.
"AGAIN," I was shouting, out on the paint. "SAME. DON’T LET HIM SETTLE."
3rd minute, Hakimi tore off down the right and won a throw off Strinić, and 40,000 voices went up for a throw-in like it was a cup final, because they could see what I could see, that the boy was quicker than everything Croatia had. Strinić dragged his socks up and glared at his bench. He knew it too.
6th minute, they had their first go. Modrić bent one over the top for Perišić and Saïss got across to nod it back to Bounou, and the pair of them, keeper and centre half, stood there roaring at each other about who should have called it. Benatia jogged in and put a hand on each chest. Enough. Play.
Modrić kept coming looking for it, deeper each time. Croatia got a breath and he drifted into a yard nobody had handed him, and the game slid to whatever speed he fancied.
Marcus said it low in my ear. "He drops till he finds room. Every time."
"Then we go the other way the second we win it," I said. "Straight through them."
***
Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.
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