Glory Of The Football Manager System

Chapter 748: The Last Four

I stood outside that dressing room door for a long time with my hand flat on it.

40 men were singing on the other side of it. I could hear Ziyech in there. I could hear Mustapha, who cannot sing and has never let it stop him.

And 40 feet down the corridor, in a room with no windows and a stranger and a bottle of water, a boy of 20 was waiting for permission to go and be a national hero.

I took my hand off the door.

I did not tell him. Not that night. I stood there with the tape in my pocket and the truth in my mouth and I gave him his night, and I have never been able to decide whether that was kindness or cowardice, and I do not think it matters, because I would do it again.

He got 6 hours.

I took it off him at half 7 the next morning.

Sunday. The 8th of July.

The phone had been going since 4 in the morning and I had not answered it once.

I lay on a hotel duvet in yesterday’s shirt with mud dried into the cuffs and watched the thing crawl across the bedside table on its own vibration. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. All the way to the edge. Then back.

4,162 unread.

Numbers I did not know. Numbers I did know and had not heard from in 6 years. 2 lads I played non-league with at Sutton, one of whom still owes me 40 quid.

An email at 06:14 from the sporting director of a Premier League club, and I am not telling you which, and it was not a congratulations.

And MUM.

I answered that one on the 2nd ring, because I do not care what has happened in the world, and I do not care if the world has ended. You pick up the phone to your mother.

She did not say hello and she did not say congratulations.

"Have you eaten?"

"Mum."

"You’ve not eaten. I can hear it in your voice."

"I’ve eaten."

"You’ve had a coffee." A pause, and then the kettle going on, 2,000 miles away, because she has never once in her life had a conversation without putting a kettle on. "I watched it."

That stopped me dead.

She has never watched a football match in her life. Not one. Not mine, not anybody’s. When I was 11 she used to sit in the car outside the pitch on a Sunday with a crossword and the heater on, and she would come and get me at the end and she would never once ask the score.

"All of it?"

"All of it. Every minute. And the bit at the end with the penalties, which went on for about a fortnight."

"Why?"

And she went quiet.

"Because you were in it, love."

She did not tell me she was proud of me. She has not said that in 29 years, and I have never needed her to, and I think if she said it now I would have to sit down.

What she said was, "You looked cold."

And then, "And I never knew you could shout like that."

I put the phone down and I sat on the edge of a hotel bed in Moscow and did not move for about 3 minutes.

I got Youssef at half 7, before anybody was up.

He came down in flip-flops and a hoodie with his hair flattened on one side, grinning, and said "Gaffer!" like it was Christmas morning, and I have never felt worse walking into a room.

"Sit down, son."

The grin came off his face like somebody had taken a cloth to it.

"Your leg."

"It’s fine."

"Youssef."

"It is stiff, gaffer. Everybody is stiff."

"It went as you hit it. Rebecca has it on tape. You were on the floor before the ball hit the net."

He stopped.

And he did not argue.

He looked at the wall for a long time, and then he said it quietly, and not to me.

"I know."

I did not understand him.

"I felt it," he said. He tapped the inside of his own thigh, twice, like a man checking a wall for a stud. "Here. Before the ball left my foot. I felt it go."

He looked up.

"I knew when I was on the ground."

I have thought about that a great deal since.

Because I stood on that touchline and watched a 20-year-old lying face-down in the mud with his shoulders going, and I thought the same thing every other soul in that stadium thought.

Look at him. He cannot believe it.

He could believe it.

He was lying in that mud knowing his tournament was finished.

He scored the penalty that put his country in a World Cup semi-final, and he knew, before he saw it go in, that he would never play in one.

That is what 80,000 people were crying at. And not one of us knew.

Adductor. Grade 2. 3 to 4 weeks.

He walks. He trains on a bike. He sits on the bench in a tracksuit and he is in the photograph.

He does not kick another ball in Russia.

And here is the bit I have never said out loud to anybody, and I am only saying it now because there is no point in a book like this if you are going to be a coward in it.

He went 4th.

I put him 4th. He asked me for early and I gave him 4th, and we won it on the 4th kick, and Sofyan never walked at all.

If I had put him 5th, that boy is fit today.

He would have stood in that circle with his arms round 2 other men and watched somebody else win it and gone home with his groin in one piece and a World Cup semi-final in front of him.

I have run that back more times than I have run back the goal.

And the worst of it, the thing that will not leave me alone, is that he asked me for it. He looked at me with his eyes red raw and said early, not last, and I gave him what he asked for, and it cost him the tournament.

We are both to blame and neither of us is, and that is the kind of thing you carry.

He got up to go. And as he turned, the number came up in the corner of my eye whether I wanted it or not.

[YOUSSEF EN-NESYRI. AGE 20.]

[CA 141 / PA 176.]

I know what that used to say.

I have looked at that card every day for 6 weeks and I know what the second number used to say, and the gift does not explain itself, and it does not apologise, and it does not tell you whether the thing it has just shown you is permanent.

It shows you. And then it folds its arms.

He limped out of that room to go and be a national hero, and I sat in a plastic chair on my own for 10 minutes.

Marcus had Sky on in the breakfast room, and by the time I got down there half my squad was stood round it in their pants.

Ziyech with his forearms folded on the back of a chair. Bounou holding a plate of eggs going cold. Benatia at the back in a compression top with his jaw set, because he does not sit down in front of a television any more than he sits down on a football pitch.

And Youssef En-Nesyri, in the armchair by the window, with his leg up on a stool and an ice wrap round the top of his thigh.

6 hours a national hero. 40 minutes since I took it off him.

Nobody else in that room knew a thing.

"Turn it off," I said.

Nobody moved. Marcus looked at me and did not move either.

So I stood at the back with a coffee going cold in my hand and watched it with them for 25 minutes like an idiot, and I have thought about that morning more than I have thought about the match.

David Jones was in the chair.

He had 4 of them, 2 either side, which they do not do. Sky do not put 4 pundits out on a Sunday morning for a quarter-final, and I knew the size of the thing before a word was said.

Carragher on his left, already forward on his elbows with a grin he was not bothering to hide, the look of a man who has been waiting since 11 o’clock last night to be let off a lead.

Neville next to him. Sat back. Arms folded. Not smiling.

Roy Keane on the right in a grey suit, doing the thing Keane does where he looks like he has been brought in against his will and has not ruled out leaving.

And on the end, in a black polo, Thierry Henry.

The graphic behind the 4 of them was 4 flags in a row.

THE LAST 4.

France. Belgium. England.

And Morocco.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support