Chapter 801: Grace
Somewhere in the 4th hour the phone went in his pocket, and he came back down the deck and stood next to me and did not say anything for a while.
We had not spoken properly since the dressing room in Moscow.
He had not stopped talking since Salé and now he had stopped.
"Coach."
"Achraf."
"They are not shouting about the 92nd minute."
"No."
"I thought they would be." He was still looking out. "I have been thinking about it since Sunday. On the plane I thought, when we land they will look at me and they will think about the space."
RRRAAAAAA.
"Nobody is thinking about the space," I said.
"No." He put his hand back up at them. "You did that. I know what you did.
"I am still angry with you about it."
"Good."
"I will be angry with you for a long time."
"That is allowed."
"Yes." And then, after about 20 seconds. "Thank you, though."
And he was gone back down the rail before I got my mouth open.
Banoun was at the front on his own for most of it. The only man in that squad who has never left. The one who did not go.
I went up and stood next to him after that, and neither of us said anything, because you could not have heard it anyway.
He leaned over eventually and got his mouth by my ear.
"My cousin is here," he shouted. "From Fez. 200 kilometres. He is somewhere in this."
"You will not find him."
"I know." He was still looking out at it. "Coach. Do you know what you have done here?"
"Badr."
"No. You do not." He shook his head. "You have not lived here. You cannot."
Rebecca had her arm up at a balcony for so long I told her she was going to do her shoulder in.
"Danny, there is a woman up there with a baby."
"I can see her."
"She has been holding that baby up at us for 10 minutes." Rebecca’s voice went. "What do I do? What do you do about that?"
"You wave at her."
"I am waving at her."
Marcus took about 400 photographs and then stopped, put the phone in his pocket, and just watched. I saw him do it and I know exactly why.
Michael Steele, who gets through 9 words in a day, stood in the middle of that deck looking straight up at a block with 6 floors of people hanging off it.
"Bloody hell, Danny."
3 words. In 2 years I have had about 40 out of him and 3 of them were on that bus.
The route went square to square and every one was worse than the last.
You could hear the next one coming before you got to it. The drums would find each other 300 metres ahead and by the time the bus nosed in, the whole square would go at once, like a lid coming off.
RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
Nordin Amrabat stood on the bench seat at one of them with both arms out and his tie round his head, and the entire square did it back at him.
"NORDIN." Boussoufa was pulling at his trousers. "Nordin, get down, you will go over."
"I will not go over."
"You will go over and I will have to explain it."
Crack. Crack-crack.
Fireworks at 4 in the afternoon, in daylight, which never works.
It did not matter to one person on that road.
Ole, ole, ole, ole. Maghrib! Maghrib!
The sun came round and went low somewhere past the last square, and everything turned that colour it goes on that coast in the evening, and the flare smoke sat in it in bands over the whole boulevard.
Every window on the west side of that road went orange at once.
At the top of the last avenue the motorbikes came off us.
They peeled away left and right in one movement, 30 of them, and for about 4 seconds there was nothing round that bus at all.
That is when the horses came out.
Clop. Clop. Clop. Clop.
The Royal Guard. 2 files of them, red tunics and white gloves, riding out of a side street at walking pace and closing on the bus from both sides until they had us boxed, and the crowd noise did something I have never heard a crowd do.
It did not stop. It changed key.
Ooooooooohhh.
A whole city making the sound you make in a cathedral.
The horses did not care about any of it. They came in at a walk, in step, hooves on tarmac under 5 hours of drums, and they walked that bus the last 800 metres to the gates of the palace of Rabat.
Nobody on that top deck said one word for the whole 800 metres.
Sofyan Amrabat, 21 years old, out of a front room in Huizen, stood at the rail with a carnation in his hand and his mouth open, watching a mounted guard escort a bus he was stood on.
"Boss." Harit, quietly, for the first time all day. "Boss, is this for us?"
"Yes, Amine."
"We lost."
"I know."
At 20 past 7 in the evening, in broad daylight, with about an hour of it still to come, the horses drew off and there were gates in front of us.
Krrr. Chnk.
5 hours of that. And then nothing.
Gardens. Water somewhere. Men in uniform down a drive at intervals. 23 players and 9 staff coming off a bus onto gravel in shoes that were not made for it.
Shk. Shk. Shk.
My ears rang in the quiet.
Ziyech was stood by the bus with his tie in his hand, looking back at the gate we had just come through.
"Hakim."
"They are still out there," he said.
You could hear them. Through the wall, through the gardens, muffled the way a party is muffled through a wall, and it was not going anywhere.
Dima Maghrib. Dima Maghrib.
He had a flower in the other hand and he had not noticed he was holding it.
"Coach, I have been trying to work it out all afternoon," he said. "What we won today. Because we did not win anything on Sunday."
"No."
"So what is that?" He put his chin at the gate. "What is that noise?"
"I do not know, Hakim."
"You are the coach."
"I know."
He waited.
We went to Russia to win a cup and we did not win the cup.
And we came back to a country that shut itself down, put a mounted guard round a bus, and stood in the sun for 9 hours to sing the name of an English manager who had just told the world he lost them a final.
We lost the cup. Somewhere between Kaliningrad and that gate, without any of us noticing it happen, we won the world.
Nadia came down the steps with a folder against her chest and a face on her I have seen twice.
"Coach. Before we go in."
"Nadia, I have got sunburn and I cannot hear properly."
"Listen to me." She got closer than she stands. "There is a room off the main hall. They have put your name on the door of it."
"For what?"
"For after. 20 minutes on the running order, and it is not on the sheet that went to the press."
"Who is in it?"
She looked at that palace, and then at me.
"Coach," she said. "You are not going to want to be surprised by this."