Chapter 834: The Photograph
Prrrp.
The referee got between them and said something to both, and Dann let go, and pointed at the lad’s chest twice on his way past.
The lad said something back. He was 19 and he did not drop his eyes once.
79 minutes.
Jack Grealish, 22, 10 million pounds, 18 minutes on the pitch.
He picked it up in the middle third and there were 3 Bayern shirts in front of him and he went into all 3 of them on purpose.
He was never going past all 3 of them. He was going to get fouled, or he was going to pull all 3 onto him and give it to whoever they had let go.
They did not foul him.
Renato Sanches got a toe on it and Jack Grealish went over the top of it and put both hands out at the referee.
Prrp. Nothing. Play on.
And Grealish got up.
He got up while the ball was still live, with 3 Bayern players stood looking at a referee, and took it back off Sanches 4 yards later.
Tk.
And Eberechi Eze shot from 20 yards.
I have been shouting at him to do that since he was 18. He has spent 2 years not doing it because he always wants 1 more pass.
Top corner. He did not break stride.
[EBERECHI EZE. LONG SHOTS 16. DECISIONS 11.]
Long shots 16. Decisions 11. He has had that ball 200 times in 2 years and he has hit it about 9 times, and every single one of the 9 has gone in or hit the frame.
I have shouted myself hoarse about that for 2 years and it never once worked.
What worked was an 18-year-old goalkeeper standing 2 yards off his line, and a 20-year-old looking up, and seeing it, and believing his own eyes for once in his life.
RRRRAAAAAAAA.
3-2.
Eberechi Eze ran to the corner where the drum was and slid on his knees on an NFL surface in July, and he is going to feel that for a fortnight.
Nya Kirby got over the advertising boards to reach him.
Sarah, next to me, said, "Youth Cup, 2017," and did not say anything else.
88 minutes.
Antoine Semenyo, 18, on for 6 minutes, released by this football club after an 8 week trial when he was 15.
He got it on the right and he did not do anything clever at all. He ran at Chris Richards and Chris Richards is 18 and they both wanted it exactly as much as each other, and Semenyo got half a yard and squared it.
Alexandre Pato put it in from 6 yards with his shin, for the second time in 4 days, and I could not tell you what it came off.
I have watched it back twice and it comes off Semenyo, or it comes off a Bayern defender called Josip Stanisic who is 18 and who I had not heard of that morning, and Pato is stood in the middle of it with his leg out.
Tk. Dnk. Thwack.
Nobody planned any part of that. It went in.
RRRAAAAAA.
4-2.
Pato pointed at Semenyo and then at the Palace corner and shouted something in Portuguese, and 3,000 people who did not understand a word of it shouted it back.
PRRRRP. PRRRRP. PRRRRP.
4-2.
And then a man in a blazer came onto the pitch with 2 other men in blazers, and one of them was carrying a trophy.
I had forgotten about the trophy.
Not forgotten in a clever way, for a book. I mean I had forgotten there was one, and so had every single man on that pitch.
It is not the International Champions Cup. It is a trophy for beating Bayern Munich in a match in New Jersey on the 29th of July, with a plaque on it, engraved before kick off with the winner left blank.
Prrp. A whistle from a steward. Somebody wheeling something.
There was no podium. There was no line of officials. There was no ribbon.
A man handed it to Christian Benteke because Christian Benteke was closest.
He looked at it. Then he looked round for somebody to give it to and there was nobody looking at him.
He got it up to about the height of his own head and put it down again, and it made a noise on that surface.
Tnk.
4 people clapped. 2 of them were the men in blazers.
Ibrahima Konaté had a bootprint on his thigh. Aaron Wan-Bissaka had spent 90 minutes in a position he was shown on Saturday morning. A 16-year-old had run at David Alaba for 68 minutes and then at Juan Bernat for 22 more.
Nobody went near the cup.
Somebody said, "Photo," and 30 men came in off that pitch and off that bench, and got in 2 rows, and put arms round whoever was next to them.
Michael Olise, 16, in the front row on his knees, holding the trophy because Benteke put it in his hands and walked off.
Antoine Semenyo next to him. Nya Kirby. Ellis Cartwright. Eberechi Eze with grass all down one side of him.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka stood at the back with James Tarkowski and Ibrahima Konaté either side of him. None of the 3 of them started the evening there.
Achraf Hakimi came down out of row 4 in a navy suit and stood on the end of the back row and nobody made a thing of it.
Click.
It is on a wall at Beckenham now, outside the canteen, in a frame Sarah bought and put up herself without asking anybody, and nobody in it is looking at the camera except Deano.
Michael Olise is looking at the trophy in his own hands like a lad who has been given something to hold at a wedding.
Christian Benteke is already half turned towards the tunnel. Achraf Hakimi is on the end of the back row in a suit with his hands behind his back, and if you did not know he had signed for us 6 days earlier you would take him for somebody’s brother who had wandered on.
Serge Gnabry found me by the tunnel.
He had a Bayern shirt on and a Palace shirt in his hand, and I did not ask him whose it was.
"Gaffer."
"Serge."
"That was the drill."
"I know it was the drill."
"I did not tell them," he said. "I want you to know that. I did not tell Kovač anything. I just knew where it was going to be."
"Serge, that is worse."
He looked at me for a second and then he laughed, and it went all the way this time.
"I am sorry about the final," he said. "The message. You did not answer it."
"I did answer it."
"You told me to look after my hamstrings."
"And have you?"
"I have been here 8 weeks and I have not pulled anything."
"Then I answered it," I said.
He put his hand out.
"You did not celebrate it."
"No."
"Why not?"
He looked at the floor of that corridor and then at the Palace shirt in his own hand and then somewhere past my shoulder, and he was 22 and he had been carrying it since the 51st minute.
"I do not know," he said. "I thought about it. When it went in I thought about it and then I did not do it and I have been going over it all the way through the second half."
"Right."
"Is that bad? Should I have done it?"
"Serge, I am not going to tell you that."
"You would have told me in February."
"You did not play for Bayern Munich in February," I said.
Clk. Clk. Somebody going past us both with a kit skip.
He stood there with that shirt in his hand for a bit longer.
"Yeah," he said. "All right."
Then he went off down that tunnel and did not look back.
Marcus was waiting at the mouth of that tunnel with a laptop under his arm and no can.
"Boss."
"Go on."
"Højbjerg on 51."
"I know."
"You told him to go late."
"I know what I told him, Marcus."
"I am not saying it was wrong."
"Then what are you saying, Marcus, because I have got a coach at 11."
"I do not know yet." He shifted the laptop and looked at it and did not open it. "That is why I came down. I have got 40 minutes of this and I do not know what half of it is worth and I will not until Wednesday."
"Give me the half you do know."
"City have got Ederson."
"I am aware City have got Ederson."
"You are not." He said it flat. There was no edge on it at all and that was worse than an edge. "You have just watched an 18-year-old stand 2 yards off his line for half an hour. Ederson has got the highest number I have ever put on a goalkeeper’s feet and I have put numbers on 400 goalkeepers.
"None of tonight is going to happen on the 5th. That is all I have got and I am sorry it is not more useful."
Clk. Clk. Clk.
30 pairs of studs coming down a concrete corridor behind me, and somebody laughing about something, and Deano counting a kit skip out loud.
"Right," I said. "Then we have got 7 days."