Chapter 772: The Job
They had been outside the hotel since 4 in the morning.
I know because I could hear them at 4 in the morning, and at half 5, and at 7, and when I finally gave up on the ceiling and pulled the curtain back at half 8 they were still there and there were 3 times as many of them.
Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom.
["WAAALSH! WAAALSH!"]
One drum. One man with one drum, bare arms, a green flag knotted round his neck like a cape, and he had been beating that thing for 5 hours and he had another 2 days in him.
Below him, filling the road, a crowd that had decided that the way to spend the Friday before a World Cup final was standing on a pavement in Moscow looking up at a window in case a man came near it.
A woman at the front had a baby against her shoulder in a green shirt about 8 sizes too big for it. There was a lad up on his father’s back with a sign, and the sign said something in Arabic on one side and, on the other, in English, in marker pen, WALSH IS OUR SON.
I stood behind that curtain for a bit and I did not go near the glass.
Because in 40 minutes I had to go downstairs and tell a goalkeeper who had just beaten England that he was not playing in the World Cup final.
That is the job. Not the drum, not the sign, not the wall in Casablanca with my face on it. This. A folded team sheet in my inside pocket and a man 2 floors down who does not know yet.
I did it to Munir Mohamedi once already, in a locked room in June. Took the shirt off him and gave it to Bounou and told him why to his face, and he took it like a man and waited a month and never sulked in front of the group.
Then Bounou emptied himself over 120 minutes and a shootout against Croatia, so I gave Munir the shirt back for the semi-final, and he walked out in front of 78,000 people who whistled his first touch, and he kept us in it.
And now I had to take it off him again.
Ding. The lift. The doors went back on the 3rd floor and the noise of the hotel came in at me all at once.
Somebody’s phone going somewhere down the corridor. A vacuum cleaner 2 doors along, hnnnnnn, a Russian lad in a maroon waistcoat pushing it back and forward and not looking up. A breakfast trolley, one wheel gone, tk-tk-squeak, tk-tk-squeak.
And under the lot of it, coming up through the building from the road outside, that drum.
Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom.
You cannot get away from it. There is nowhere in that hotel you could stand on that Friday and not hear it.
Rebecca came out of the treatment room and pulled the door to behind her with her back, quick, the way you close a door you do not want anybody looking through.
"He’s been on it since 7," she said, low. "On his own. He didn’t tell me. I came down and he was 20 minutes into a session I never wrote."
"And?"
"And he ran. Straight lines, no pain, chest out." She folded her arms. "He ran like a man auditioning, because that is what he was doing."
"Give me the truth, not the audition."
She glanced back at the door.
"Straight lines were never the problem. It is the turn. The change of direction off that left side, and he cannot do it at full pelt, and he knows he cannot.
"If I put him out there for 90 minutes against Varane and Umtiti, he pulls it off the bone inside an hour."
"An hour."
"Maybe. Maybe 20 minutes. Maybe he gets away with it and I look like a fool, and I will happily be the fool." She let out a breath. "I cannot give you the number you want. Nobody can."
Youssef En-Nesyri. 5 goals in this tournament. My best finisher, on a leg that would hold for an hour, in the biggest match this continent has ever played.
4 people on earth knew. Me, Rebecca, the doctor, and the lad.
"Nobody else hears it."
"Nobody has." Her mouth went tight. "He came to me, not the other way round, and asked me not to tell you how bad it was.
"I told him I work for you and I would tell you everything. And he said good. Because he did not want to lie to you. He just did not want to be the one to say it out loud."
Behind her, through the door, I could hear a rowing machine going. Ssshk. Ssshk. Ssshk. Steady as a clock. Somebody in there working, at 9 in the morning, 2 days out, on a leg with a hole in it.
"Right," I said. "10 o’clock, everyone in."
Munir was in the games room with the telly on mute and a cup of coffee going cold, doing the thing keepers do, staring at a wall and watching crosses come into it.
There was a table-tennis table behind him with a ball sat in the net where somebody had left it mid-game.
He stood up when I came in. He always stands up. I have never been able to break him of it.
"Coach."
"Sit down, Munir."
He sat. And he knew, because keepers always know, and something crossed his face and got put away somewhere I could not see it.
"Bounou plays Sunday."
I do not dress it up. It is worse when you dress it up.
"He has had 5 days. His legs are back, his hands are right. France put 3 crosses a game onto the head of a centre-half who scores from corners, and Yassine has 4 inches on you and 10 years of coming for that ball in a league where they aim at you." I kept my eyes on him.
"It is not about Wednesday. Wednesday you were faultless."
"I know what Wednesday was."
"Then you know this is not about anything you did. It is about what Sunday is."
He turned the cold cup round on the table. Once. Twice.
Boom. Boom. Boom-boom-boom. Through the wall, off the road. Neither of us looked at it.
"May I say something, coach?"
"Say what you like."
"In June you took my shirt and I hated you for 3 days." Flat, no heat in it. "I told my wife you were a boy who did not know football. I said it in this hotel, on the phone, out loud.
"And then you gave it back to me for a World Cup semi-final, and 78,000 people whistled me, and you did not take me off."
"There was no reason to take you off."
"There was every reason. I could hear them, coach. Every touch, for 20 minutes." He looked up. "You left me out there and it stopped. It stops when you do not hide. You gave me that."
I did not have anything for that.
"So." He stood, put the chair back under the table, squared his shoulders, and for a second I thought he was going to say the polite thing.
He did not.
"I think you are wrong," he said. "I think I am the better keeper for the way France cross it. I want you to know I think that, because if I said nothing you would have a man behind you on Sunday who had not been honest with you."
He put his hand out.
"And on Sunday you will not hear one word about it. If Yassine goes down in the 10th minute I will be warm and I will be ready and I will not have one ounce of this in me. Both of those things are true."
I shook his hand, and that was the end of it, and it stayed the end of it.
That is not a small thing, and I want it written down. There was no sulk in that hotel all week. Not one. Not from him, not from any of them.
Then I did it 5 more times. Fajr, who strangled England’s midfield and loses his shirt to a fit-again El Ahmadi. Aït Bennasser. Da Costa, who did not concede a foul all night. Dirar. Carcela.
Every one of them, door shut, my mouth, no message passed down through a coach. That is the coin you pay in. If you do not pay it the group works you out inside a fortnight.
And then Harit, who I had saved for last, and I knew exactly why I had saved him for last, which is the worst way to be a coward.
He was on the end of his bed in a hoodie with the hood up. Phone face down beside him. For a 21-year-old, this week, that tells you everything.
"Amine."
"Coach." Up on his feet.
"Sit down, son. Ziyech starts on Sunday."
I watched him take it. He nodded 4 times too many and looked at the carpet.
"Of course," he said. "Of course. He is Ziyech."
"Look at me."
He looked up, 21 years old, trying so hard to be 30 about it that it was worse than crying.
"I am not going to lie and tell you it was close. Ziyech is one of the best footballers at this tournament, he has had 5 days’ rest, and he takes a set-piece better than anybody left in it.
"France just conceded a header from a corner to win a semi-final. That is the whole reason. Football, not favours."
"Yes, coach."
"But you will sit in that meeting in an hour and hear a lot about how good France are, and I want one thing in your head while you do."
I waited until I had his eyes properly.
"There is a boy in Casablanca watching your goal on his phone right now for the 40th time. That happened. Nobody can go back and unhappen it.
"It is yours for the rest of your life, and it does not get smaller because you start on a bench."
He breathed out, shaky.
"And you are coming on. You know when? When France are 70 minutes into chasing a game and their legs are full of sand, and I put on a 21-year-old who has spent all night watching where the gaps are.
"That is not a consolation. That is a weapon, and I am not wasting it in the 1st minute."
He got his jaw back under control.
"Then I will be ready."
***
Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.