Chapter 738: The Longest Night I
They came in a wave and would not stop.
For 10 minutes after they levelled, my team did the one thing I had begged them not to do. Chase. Turn. Chase. Backpedal on legs with nothing left in them, while Modrić stood in the middle of it all and moved us about like furniture.
"In front of you," I was screaming, hoarse, out on the paint. "Let them have it in front."
They could not hear me. Nobody could hear anything. 40,000 of my own were making a noise that ate every word before it cleared my teeth.
Somewhere under the din a drum kept time, boom boom boom, steady as a pulse beneath the chaos, and I hung onto it the way a man in the sea hangs onto a spar.
And away to my right, up in their corner, the answer to it.
Smaller than our end, maybe 3,000, and twice as hard. Red and white checks packed tight, and where mine sang, theirs stamped, a chant coming up slow and heavy, ai-mo, ai-mo, ai-mo. A red flare bloomed in the middle of them and hung its smoke over their heads.
Through it they roared their old heroes on, because Croatia had stood on this ledge before, back in ’98, and every soul in that corner knew this golden lot were the last of their kind.
Then Perišić nearly ended us.
Modrić hung a ball to the back post. Perišić climbed over the top of Hakimi and met it clean, a header thumped down from 6 yards, angled back inside the post. It was in. Every soul in the ground had it in, and the white corner was up before it arrived.
Bounou came across his line like something fired from a bow. He got down to his right, threw an open hand at the bottom corner, and the ball cracked off his palm and flew up over the bar.
smack.
He landed on the point of his shoulder. Cried out. Got up anyway, because there is no lying down at 2-2 in a World Cup quarter-final, and stood there roaring his back four awake with grass down his front.
Steeley had both fists over his head by the post. "THAT’S my keeper. THAT is my keeper."
And then, for a moment, nothing.
The ball went dead. Both teams stood with their hands on their hips and their chests going, and for the length of one long breath the whole thing just stopped. 22 wrecked men sucking down the sea air while 40,000 people sang over the top of them.
I took the half second the dead ball gave me and did the thing you are meant to do with it. I looked.
Up on the black curve of the roof the tournament’s name burned in letters 10 feet tall. Below it a bowl of red and green light. Beyond it, gantries and satellite dishes throwing us out to more human beings than live in most countries on the map.
This was the World Cup. The actual thing, the one I watched on a settee in Moss Side with my dad, and here it was going on under my own two feet.
And I could not spare it a second, because the number was sat over the little maestro in the corner of my eye whether I asked for it or not.
LUKA MODRIĆ. MATCH RATING: 9.2.
Best on the grass by a distance, and climbing. All the gift ever shows me is the fire. It has never once shown me the water.
So I did the manager’s thing instead. Shoved Sofyan 5 yards tighter, sent El Ahmadi to sit on the space in front of him, and got back to reading the next wave before it broke.
I looked down my bench. Marcus would not meet my eye. Rebecca was already crouched over somebody’s shin. None of us said the thing all 3 of us were thinking, which was that this could not keep going at this speed, and would have to, for another half hour at the least.
Sofyan jogged past to take a throw. Grey. Soaked through. He caught my eye and jutted his chin the way he does. Still here, that chin said. Don’t you dare.
First I had to stop the bleeding down our left. Every Croatian move came through the same channel, Modrić rolling it to the runner behind Mendyl, and Mendyl was cooked and turning too early on it every time.
"BRAY." I dragged him close. "Nordin drops in alongside him. Double the side up. Force it back inside onto Mehdi." He semaphored it out across the din, and 2 phases later the flood down that flank slowed to a trickle. You take the small wins on a night like this. They are the only ones going.
We took the game back the only way we had left, which was to run at old legs until they went.
Ziyech started it, standing Vrsaljko up and winning the corner that put the joy back in the crowd. Then he near enough finished it on his own. 30 yards out, onto that left foot, a ball bending away from the keeper and into the top corner until Subašić threw a hand up and touched it onto the bar.
clang.
The ground was up before it came down. It dropped off the woodwork, Lovren hoofed it clear, and 40,000 people let go the same groan in the same second. Ziyech stood with his hands laced behind his head, staring at the sky like it owed him money.
We kept coming. En-Nesyri got in behind, and Youssef does not miss those twice, and he opened his body and lashed it low for the corner.
Subašić got down to it. 33 years old, no right to reach it, and he reached it, a hand thrown low and hard, the ball cannoning off his palm and round the post.
smack.
He stayed down a second. Then he was up on his feet, jabbing a finger at his own temple, telling his men to think. En-Nesyri stood over the 6-yard line with his hands on his head, staring at him. I filed that save somewhere cold. Did not look yet at why.
Across the halfway line Modrić stood with his hands on his knees for the first time all night, blowing hard, 32 years old and feeling every one of them at last.
He looked up, caught my eye by accident, and dipped his head half an inch. Maestro to nobody from Moss Side. Then he turned and went again, the way men like him always go again.
The war took its first casualty with 15 minutes of normal time left.
El Ahmadi went down and stayed down, both hands wrapped round a cramping calf, and Rebecca was on before I waved her.
I had the board half up in my hand, his number ready to be pulled. His match rating had slid all night, the way a tired man’s does, and the screen was telling me plain to take him off.
A screen cannot read what was on his face when he dragged himself off that turf. I put the board back down. Some calls the numbers never get to make.
While she worked the knot out of his leg, the whole green end sang his name.
Not a chant. Something slower and older than a chant, 40,000 voices carrying one tired 33-year-old, until he got his feet back under him, lifted a hand to them, and limped back into the fire.
There are nights football stops being a thing you watch and turns into a thing you survive together. This had become one of those. Everyone under that roof knew it, and nobody on either side wanted it to end.
Twice in that spell I caught myself just watching, a punter in a tracksuit, gawping at the best game I had ever seen with my mouth open. Both times I hauled myself back to the touchline by the collar, because the job does not stop so the man doing it can enjoy the view.
It nearly ended twice in the last 5 minutes, once at each end, and a heart stopped both times.
First Modrić stood a free kick onto Mandžukić’s head. Bounou got a glove up, could not hold it, and it dropped to Rebić 6 yards out with the goal gaping.
He snatched at it. Sliced it wide.
Up in their corner 3,000 checks who had been on their feet with the goal already given sank back down as one, a groan with real hurt in it. Rebić stayed on his knees, both hands over his face.
Down our end the Moroccans breathed again, and the old man kissed his own hand and pressed it up at the sky.
Then, up the other end, we should have won it. Boutaïb squared it, En-Nesyri had the whole net in front of him, and Subašić came off his line and spread himself and got a thigh in the way, and Vrsaljko booted the rebound into row 20.
The whistle went for 90 minutes. Both teams dropped where they stood.
***
Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.
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