Chapter 777: Final Stand
The dressing room at the Luzhniki is not special. That is the thing nobody tells you. It is a room with hooks and a bench and a floor that has been mopped, and somebody had put a small green and red flag above each peg because Mustapha had been in there for an hour and a half doing it himself.
The shirts were hung with the numbers facing out. Mustapha does that too.
The room smelled of wintergreen and wet grass and the bleach off the floor. Sssst. Somebody’s aerosol. Rip. Tape coming off a roll, and then again, and then again, because Saïss does his own ankles and takes 10 minutes over it.
I did not give a team talk at 5 past 6. I had said everything I had on Friday and Saturday and there is a point where a manager talking is just a manager frightened.
I went round the room instead. One at a time, quiet, a hand on the back of a neck.
Saïss, who plays for Wolverhampton and whose entire family had driven from Béthune. Fajr, dropped, warming up anyway like he was starting. Da Costa. Aït Bennasser.
Sofyan Amrabat, 21 years old, sat with his boots in his hands and his knee going.
"You alright?"
"Yes, coach."
"You are lying. That is fine."
He laughed, once, and it came out wrong, and he shook his head at himself.
Then the buzzer went in the corridor, brrrrp, and 23 men stood up at the same time, and the room filled with the sound of studs coming off tiles and going onto rubber.
The trophy stood on a plinth in the tunnel at chest height, 4 feet from my left hand, and there was a man in a blazer whose entire job was to stand next to it and make sure nobody touched it.
18 inches of gold on a black base. Smaller than you think. Everybody says that and everybody is right.
Click. Click-click. A photographer on one knee at the mouth of it, shooting the trophy and the line of us behind it, over and over.
Hakimi looked at it. Hakimi is 19 and he looked at it the way a lad looks at a girl across a room, straight on, no shame in it at all.
Ziyech did not look. Boussoufa did not look, and Boussoufa is 33 and has played 400 games in places nobody films and would not give it the satisfaction.
Benatia looked at it a long time.
And Youssef En-Nesyri looked at it, and put his weight down on the bad side and took it off again, quick, the way you test a floorboard you already know is rotten.
Rebecca was 3 feet behind him and saw him do it. Neither of us said a word.
Tk-tk-tk. Tk-tk-tk. Studs on tile. 22 men shifting their weight in a corridor, and the sound going nowhere.
A strip light buzzing over our heads, zzzt, the one thing in that tunnel that did not care what night it was.
Behind us a Frenchman banging a ball off a wall, one touch, over and over, pok, pok, pok, and nobody told him to stop.
In a cubicle at the back of our line somebody was being sick. Everybody heard it. Nobody looked round, and if you want to know what a dressing room is, it is 22 men agreeing at the same instant to have heard nothing.
2 children in FIFA tabards came down the line handing out the flags they carry out.
At the head of the other line, Didier Deschamps. Hands in his pockets. Grey suit. Not looking at his players or mine or the trophy, a man waiting for a train he has caught 100 times.
He turned his head, found me, and gave me a nod. One. Not warm and not cold. The nod you give a professional.
I gave it back.
Then the official lifted his hand, and Néstor Pitana went out in front of us with the ball on a tray like a waiter carrying something on fire, and 22 men walked out into the last football match of the 2018 World Cup.
WHRRRRRROOOOOOAAAAAAAR.
It came down on me like a wave coming over a sea wall. Not a sound. A pressure. It got into my chest and pushed and my ears popped, and for 3 or 4 seconds I could not hear Bray shouting something at me from 2 feet away and I watched his mouth do it twice.
78,000. Half blue, half green and red, and flags in the green half from countries that had no business being there. Senegal. Nigeria. Egypt. Ghana. Algeria, and I still cannot properly explain the Algeria flags.
Fsss. A flare in the corner of the green end and the smoke rolling flat and orange along the front rows, and 20 seconds later I could taste it at the back of my throat, that sulphur taste that gets into everything.
The drums came up through the floor of the technical area and into the soles of my feet. Boom. Boom-boom. Boom. You do not hear that part. You stand in it.
The banner came out. The handshakes, a line of men in blazers and a woman from FIFA and a man I did not recognise, all of us shaking hands in front of 4 billion people, and I have no memory of one face.
And it started to rain.
Nothing at first. You could only see it landing, little dark coins appearing on the shoulders of Nordin Amrabat’s shirt.
Then the anthems, and the whole ground dropped into that half-quiet a full stadium makes when it is asked to be still, 78,000 people breathing.
Hnnnnn. The PA hummed before the music came, that dead second where a stadium holds its breath.
They played ours first and 40,000 sang it and about 20,000 neutrals who had learned it off the internet that week sang it too, badly, and it was the best thing I have ever heard done badly.
My players stood in a line with their arms round each other. Benatia in the middle. Bounou at the end, eyes shut, lips going.
Sofyan Amrabat sang it with his chin up and his eyes streaming and did not wipe his face once.
I stood on the white line 10 yards away with my hands behind my back and I did not sing.
Then the Marseillaise, and 38,000 French voices took the roof off, and Deschamps sang every word with his hands still in his pockets.
I looked up at the rail behind our bench, the way I have before every match in this tournament.
He was there. The old man. Cap in both hands, held against his chest. He has stood on that rail in 4 cities and I have never seen him sit down.
He was not watching the pitch. He was watching me.
Down to my right, front row of the lower tier, a bedsheet gone furry from 6 weeks of rain and washing.
SELHURST ON TOUR.
40 South Londoners who followed me here from Beckenham and have been in the green end since the group stage. English lads, in a stadium where 38,000 Englishmen sang JUDAS at me 5 days ago.
Behind Bounou’s goal, second row, a boy of about 11 in goalkeeper gloves 4 sizes too big for him. He has had them since Bounou threw them to him after the Russia game and he has not taken them off since.
And row 9. The coat. Hair up because of the rain.
She did not wave. Emma does not wave.
FWEEEEEET!
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Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.