Chapter 867: Shifting Lines
I said 4 things in that dressing room and the whole of it took 90 seconds.
"Nothing changes. Not the shape, not the line, not 1 instruction.
"They are going to come out and throw everything they have got at us for 10 minutes because that is what a club like that does, and the 10 minutes after that is when they stop believing it.
"Achraf. You have got 46 to 91 and Rebecca has the clock, not me.
"Aaron, you have done your job and you are coming off and I will tell you why on the plane."
Aaron Wan-Bissaka nodded and started taking his shin pads out.
Rebecca was at the door with the tablet.
"Christian goes at 65 and that is not a discussion, and if you leave him on for 70 you are naming Pato on Saturday."
[HALF TIME. REAL MADRID 0 CRYSTAL PALACE 3.] [SUBSTITUTIONS USED: 0 OF 3.]
Lilleküla. They call it the A. Le Coq Arena for 51 weeks a year after a brewery in Tartu, and UEFA make them take the name off the outside of it for the week of a final.
It opened in 2001. It is 2 kilometres south of a medieval old town in a district of low houses and allotments, and there is a road behind the north stand that you can hear from the centre circle.
It is the home of Flora Tallinn and it is the home of the Estonian national team, and it is the biggest football ground in this country.
On a league Tuesday, Flora get about 1,000 people in it.
The national side get 4,000 for a qualifier and they were pleased with 8,000 when Belgium came.
They put temporary seating down both ends in July to get it to 13,000 for Wednesday, and 12,424 came, and 41 per cent of the entire country watched it on a television.
There is 1 more thing about it and I did not know it until Kadri told me on Tuesday.
Estonia was occupied for 50 years. Flora Tallinn was founded in 1990, before this country was independent, by men who wanted a club that was theirs.
That is 28 years ago. That is younger than Christian Benteke.
And on Wednesday night the champions of Europe walked out at their ground and 4 minutes into it they were losing.
PRRRRRRP.
Achraf Hakimi came on for the restart.
Here is why I bought him and it is the only reason.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka is the best tackler in England. Somebody offered 55 million pounds for him 10 days ago and Steve Parish said no in 25 minutes, and he has not been beaten 1 against 1 in a league match since December, and he will be England’s right back for 10 years.
He defends. That is what he is, it is worth every penny, and I would not change a hair on his head.
Achraf Hakimi is a weapon.
In Russia I put him in a back 4 that sat 40 yards deep for 6 weeks and told him to stay in it, and he did, and every single time we won that ball back he went 70 yards in a straight line and took the last defender with him.
He got to the byline twice against Spain. He got there against Portugal on 22 minutes with 2 men on him and pulled it back low and hard across the 6. Against England I let him off the leash on 61 and Kyle Walker had to come 15 yards inside to help, and that is the yard Sofyan scored in.
Real Madrid had that boy from 14 years old. They put him on a bench, gave him a handful of competitive minutes in 2 years, and sold him to Crystal Palace in July for 15 million and 5 in add-ons, because they have Carvajal and Carvajal is 26 and is going nowhere.
They never found out what he was.
I had 45 minutes of a European final to show them.
He went out at the top of that tunnel and stood on the touchline for 4 seconds looking at the far end.
Sergio Ramos put a hand out. Hakimi shook it. Neither of them said a word.
Here is what 3-0 up feels like in a European final and nobody ever writes it down.
It feels like standing on a chair.
3-1 in 4 minutes and that ground turns. Everybody in football knows it, and every man in a white shirt on that pitch had done it to somebody.
So I did the other thing.
"HIGHER. ACHRAF, HIGHER."
3-0 up in a European final against the champions of Europe, 45 minutes to hold, and I took my best defender off, put a 19-year-old on, and shoved the whole thing 15 yards up the pitch.
Bray looked at me. Sarah did not look up from the folder.
Rrrrrr.
46 minutes. Kroos took the kick off, Modrić dropped in to start it, and we pressed their halfway line with 7 men inside the first 40 seconds of a half we were 3 goals up in.
48 minutes. Marcelo went forward out of 9 years of habit and Hakimi was in the ground behind him inside 3 seconds. Nacho had to go 20 yards wide to cover a boy his own club sold in July.
51 minutes. Benzema turned Tarkowski and hit it early and Krul went down to his right and held it, and I had both hands on the back of my own neck before he was up with it.
That is the last shot Real Madrid had for 19 minutes.
52 minutes. Lopetegui moved Gareth Bale to the left.
That is a manager doing his job. It took him about 5 minutes to see it and most men in that dugout would have taken 20.
Bale went and stood 10 yards in front of Achraf Hakimi, and the message was the oldest one in football. You want to go forward. Now there is a Welshman behind you who cost 85 million pounds.
It worked for 4 minutes.
Hakimi stayed. He is 19 and he did the right thing and he stayed, and the second he stayed we were a back 4 sat 30 yards deep again and Modrić had the middle back.
"RÚBEN. RIGHT. RÚBEN."
I moved Rúben Neves 8 yards to his right and I told James McArthur to take the middle on his own.
That is the whole adjustment. 8 yards.
It means when Hakimi goes there is a 21-year-old Portuguese international stood in the hole he leaves, and it means Bale has to make a choice, and Gareth Bale has spent 5 years at a club where he does not have to make that choice.
He made it once. He went with Hakimi.
Then he stopped.
53 minutes. Hakimi got to the byline. Not near it. On it, a yard off the flag, round the outside of Marcelo with Bale 12 yards behind him, and he pulled it back low and hard across that 6 yard box and Pato was 4 yards away and could not get his foot to it.
"OOOOOOH."
55 minutes. He did it again. Same side, same yard of grass, and Nacho got a boot on it and put it behind.
And here is what happened to that football match at 55 minutes, and it is not what people think happened.
They did not collapse. Nobody made a mistake and nobody stopped trying.
They went backwards. All of them, together, about 12 yards, in about 40 seconds, because a 19-year-old had been on their byline twice in 3 minutes and Marcelo had stopped going forward on 34 and now Nacho had stopped too.
The champions of Europe dropped their line against Crystal Palace.
And the second they did it Rúben Neves had 30 yards of grass to stand in with nobody within 15 of him, and we had the ball for the next 6 minutes, and the noise in that ground changed with it. "AND IT’S GLAD ALL OVER."
3,000 people started it again at 55 minutes and the north stand joined in for the second half of it, because they had heard it twice now and they had worked out the tune.
Sarah said this on the touchline at 28 minutes with a folder in her hand.
"If we keep sending Wilf at him on that side he walks by 60."
We kept sending Wilf at him on that side, and on 58 minutes Zaha got it 35 yards out on the left with Ramos ahead of him and Marcelo behind him, and he did the thing he has done since he was 15 in Croydon.
He knocked it past a man and went and got it.
He knocked it past Sergio Ramos.
Ramos is 32. 4 European Cups. 160 caps. He has been sent off more times than any footballer in the history of Spanish football, and he was 3-0 down at a European final in front of 12,000 people with 32 minutes left.
He put an arm across him.
Prrp.
Marciniak did not run. He walked about 15 yards, and he had the yellow out of his pocket before he got there, and everybody in that stadium knew what was in the other pocket.
I did not move.
Bray came off that bench and I put an arm across him without looking at him, because there are about 4 things you can do to make a referee change his mind and every one of them is worse than doing nothing.
Sergio Ramos stood with both hands on top of his head.
"OFF. OFF. OFF."
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Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.