Chapter 862: The Badge
Hnnn. Hnnn.
There were 9 vans on Copers Cope Road at 7 in the morning and Ron stood in front of a Sky truck with his arms down by his sides.
He is 71.
By half 7 there were 2 police officers out there doing the exact job Ron had been doing on his own for 40 minutes.
I came in the back gate off the service road at 06:52 and did not see a single camera.
Bzzz.
MARCUS: 06:04. It is on the front of 4 of them and the back of all 6.
MARCUS: The FA put a statement out at 5 past 11 last night.
MARCUS: Boss, stay off the internet today.
Bzzz.
MARCUS: And we beat Fulham 5-0 away yesterday and it is on page 9 of 1 of them.
The papers were spread across the middle table in the canteen and Deano had put them there, and every one of them said the same thing in a different font.
We won 5-0 at Craven Cottage on Saturday afternoon. Biggest away win of the opening weekend in this division and the biggest score anywhere in it.
Christian Benteke scored 2 and Rúben Neves hit one off the bar from 25 yards and a 16-year-old set the 5th one up 7 minutes after coming on.
I counted the words about that match across 6 newspapers on Sunday morning and got to about 400.
THE SUN: FA REJECTED WORLD CUP MASTERMIND FOR U15 ROLE
DAILY MAIL: THE 2015 SNUB THAT COST ENGLAND THE WORLD CUP
THE TIMES: Bureaucracy Over Brilliance. How the FA Missed Danny Walsh
18 hours before that, this football club went to Craven Cottage on the opening Saturday of a season and beat a promoted side 5-0, away, without a 29-year-old winger, a 22-year-old midfielder and a 32-year-old who is in Seville.
Benteke got 2. Zaha scored 1 and made 1. Rúben Neves hit one off the underside of the bar from 25 yards and jogged back to the halfway line like a man who had taken a throw-in.
You had to get to page 4 of 1 of those papers to find it.
30 men won 5-0 away on the first Saturday of a season, came in on a Sunday morning to 9 vans and a hashtag with my name in it, and every single one of them walked past both of those things and got changed.
Marcus had #WalshFA at 240,000 by 8 o’clock. He sent me 3 of them.
@PalaceStat: the FA turned down a man who took Morocco to a World Cup final for a regional u15 job because of a piece of paper. absolute clowns
@UtdView: Danny Walsh was stacking shelves on a night shift while the FA gave the jobs to the boys. now he is not returning their calls. levels
@FootyAcc: england looking at 4 trophies in 8 months knowing they binned his CV for the under 15s. you love to see it
Christian Benteke came past that table at 8 o’clock, looked at all 6 of them, and did not stop walking.
Bray did stop.
"He got 2 on Saturday," he said, to a newspaper, to nobody.
"He did."
"He has got 2 lines in the Mail and 1 of them spells him wrong."
"Bray."
"I am not moaning for me, I am moaning for him." He put it back on the pile. "That is all."
Clk.
Sarah read the FA statement out loud in my office at 7 o’clock. She tells me what I need to know once and then it is done.
The role in 2015 attracted 312 applicants. Shortlisting was carried out against the coaching qualifications held at the time of application. Mr Walsh did not hold the UEFA B licence required for the position.
"Is it true?"
"Every word of it."
"Right." She shut the folder. "Then it is finished and we are doing Real Madrid."
The FA told the truth.
I did not have the badge. You cannot coach a regional under 15s in this country without a UEFA B, and in April 2015 I had 40 hours of a county league side, a name nobody could spell, and nothing on paper at all.
I got the letter on a Tuesday.
Rrrsh.
A shutter going up on a stockroom at 6 in the morning, and me stood under it with an envelope and a hi-vis on.
Then I found out what the badge cost.
It was more than I had. So it was 11 months of Saturdays, 2 weeks of a holiday I did not take, and about 800 quid off a wage of 8 pound something an hour, and I passed it in the March.
I have never filled a form in for Crystal Palace in my life.
Brr. Brr.
Somebody rang me.
They had watched that county league side and they had watched it more than once, and the man on the other end asked me 1 question before he asked me anything else.
Have you got your B?
I had had it 6 weeks.
If that letter lands 11 months later I am not on that telephone. If I keep the 800 quid, the job goes to somebody else and I am still on a night shift.
I have never found out who watched us. I have never asked.
[UEFA SUPER CUP. REAL MADRID. TALLINN. 3 DAYS.]
Splash.
Recovery at 10. 14 of them in the pool, 8 on bikes, 3 in with Rebecca, and 61 journalists on a road outside a gate that a 71-year-old would not open.
Rebecca put the medical sheet on my desk before I had sat down.
"Perišić is out. Grealish is 9 days into 14 and he is staying in London. Kovačić stays in London until October and I want that in your head now and not on Tuesday morning."
"Hakimi."
"45 minutes." She tapped the sheet twice. "10 days of nothing and 3 days of work, he is 19, and it is the club that sold him. He will run until something goes if you give him a half.
"45. I am telling him myself at half past 2. He will argue and he will lose."
"And Christian?"
"Christian played 86 minutes on Sunday and 90 yesterday. If he starts Wednesday he does not start on the 18th."
"Then he does not start on the 18th."
"Tell him today," Rebecca said. "Not on the coach."
Tk.
Marcus had Real Madrid on the wall at half 11 and there were 6 of us in that room.
"Lopetegui has been in that job 5 weeks. He has taken over a side that has won the last 3 European Cups and lost the best goalscorer any of us will see, and he has not replaced him and he is not going to."
Tap.
"So it is the same shape with a hole in the middle of it, and every man in that front 3 is taking 4 more shots a game than he took last season, because there is nobody left to give it to."
"Weakness?"
"They are 33, 32 and 30 down the spine and it is the 15th of August." He put a can down. "They have played 0 competitive minutes together this season. We have played 180."
Bray had a laptop open and did not wait to be asked.
"9 from corners in 18 months and 7 of them at the near post. Sergio Ramos goes near. He has gone near his whole career and he wins about 80 per cent of it.
"The other 20 per cent is a man arriving late from 12 yards, and I have got a 10th routine for that. I wrote it in June and it has been in a drawer since."
Michael Steele said 6 words in a 40 minute meeting.
"Krul plays. It is a cup."
Everybody in that room looked at me.
That was the arrangement when I signed him and it was the arrangement when I told him in a car park in July, and Tim Krul has waited 3 weeks for a competitive match and it is a European final against Real Madrid.
"Krul plays," I said.
Nathan came in at 1 o’clock with a phone in his hand.
"3 things and I want a decision on all 3."
"Go on."
"Sky want 20 minutes with you on Tuesday before the flight. The FA have asked, through a third party, whether you would take a private call from somebody senior.
"And there is a lad in Wales who has set up a fundraiser to pay for UEFA B licences for coaches in the lower leagues, and he has raised 41,000 pounds since 7 o’clock this morning."
I stood there for a bit.
"Say the last one again."
He said it again.
"No to Sky. No to the FA, and put the no in writing."
I picked my whistle up off the desk.
"The Welsh lad. Find out if he is real. If he is, ring Steve, 20,000 from the club, and it goes in quietly.
"Nobody here puts a word about it on the internet."
Prrrrp.
I took the session at half 2 because Bray had 8 of them on pitch 3 doing near posts.
Wilfried Zaha did 40 minutes and asked me about Wednesday twice.
Michael Olise did the lot, and Sarah told him at 4 o’clock that he is on that plane, and he rang his mother from the car park with his boots still on.
Achraf Hakimi argued with Rebecca at half past 2 about 15 minutes of football and lost in 90 seconds. In July the same argument took him 5 minutes.
I rang Dougie Freedman at 5 o’clock. He told me on Saturday to ring him Monday.
"It is Sunday, son."
"I know what day it is. Give me the Lisbon 1."
There was a pause on that telephone.
"Lisbon is finished," Dougie said. "Benfica started renegotiating that boy’s clause on the 6th and they will have it signed inside a fortnight, and when it is signed it is not 30 million euros any more.
"It is 100. Mendes has told them to take their time because he wants a bigger number and he wants Madrid, and both of those are the same thing."
"And the meeting?"
"There is no meeting. I cancelled it on Friday morning and I did not ring you about it because there was nothing in it for you to decide."
He was right and I told him he was right.
Crystal Palace are not paying 100 million euros for an 18-year-old with 4 first team appearances. We were never going to and we knew it in July, and that is the whole reason there is a 17-year-old in São Paulo with our name on a piece of paper who I cannot pick until next summer.
You do not get 2 goes at a João Félix. You get 1 go at the boy who is 18 months behind him and nobody has noticed yet, and you take it in the week nobody is looking.
"The 4 scouts stay in Portugal," I said.
"The 4 scouts were always staying in Portugal." A drawer went on his end. "Danny, that country turns 1 of them out every 3 years and it has done it since 1960, and the mistake everybody makes is thinking the good one is the 1 in the newspaper.
"We have got 6 names in that folder and 4 of them are 16."
Chk. Chk. Chk.
I left at 20 to 6 and there were 40 of them on that road with cameras.
Ron had a folding chair out of the hut and a flask on the ground next to it and his cloth in his hand, and he had been out there 11 hours.
"Ron. Go home."
"I will go when they go."
"They are not going. They will be here Tuesday."
"Then I will be here Tuesday," Ron said.