"I want two more things before you disappear into match prep," she said.
"Elena, the semi-final is tomorrow."
"I know. That’s why I need these now. Ten minutes. Total."
She walked to the first-team pitch. Beckenham was quiet. The afternoon session was over. The players were in recovery or heading ho. The pitches were empty, the January light fading, the grass striped and clean, Terry’s work visible in every perfect line.
Tomás set the cara low, angled upward, the training ground stretching behind through the fra. No music. No narration. No set dressing. Just the question and the answer.
Elena: "Danny. You have a four-year contract at Crystal Palace. What do you want to achieve?"
"I’d like to win a trophy."
Elena: "One trophy in four years?"
"One trophy. A cup. A real, tangible, holdable trophy that the fans can see and the players can lift and the club can put in a cabinet that has been empty for too long."
Elena: "And if you do that? If you win a trophy in the first four years? What next?"
I smiled. The real one. Not the press conference. Not the villain. The smile of a boy from Moss Side who had been dreaming since he was six years old.
"Then I’d like to win two."
Elena held the shot. Three seconds. Five. The smile on my face, the empty pitches catching the last of the January light.
"That’s the opening of the film," she said.
"You said Sakho was the opening of the docuntary."
"Sakho is the opening of the story. You’re the opening of the dream. The film intercuts between the two. Your smile and his voice. The ambition and the loyalty. The manager who said ’I need you’ and the defender who ca because nobody had ever said it before."
Then the second thing. She had already pulled aside three players earlier that afternoon, between their interview slots and recovery. Dann. Tomkins. Zaha. The survivors. The n who had been at the club before I arrived. She had asked them one additional question, separate from their main interviews, fild quickly, sa chair, sa backdrop.
Elena: "Describe Crystal Palace before Danny Walsh."
She showed the footage on her monitor.
Dann: "We were a club that survived. That was the ambition. Survive. Stay up. Don’t get relegated. Every season was about the last five matches, the last ten points, the margins. We never talked about what we could achieve. We talked about what we could avoid."
Elena: "And now?"
"Now we talk about the Champions League." He said it and stopped, as though hearing the words surprised him.
"Not as a joke. As a target. I was here when there were seven thousand people at Selhurst Park and the wind blew through the gaps in the stand. Twenty-five thousand people sang about the Champions League on Boxing Day. The anthem. At Selhurst Park. I never imagined hearing those words in this building. Never."
Tomkins: "The training ground was half empty so days. Not physically. Emotionally. The atmosphere was flat. Like a workplace where everyone has accepted that this is as good as it gets. The ceiling was low and nobody was trying to raise it."
Elena: "What changed?"
"Danny walked in and the ceiling disappeared. Not because he’s so genius. Because he refused to accept the ceiling existed. He saw a group of players who were underperforming, not a group fighting relegation. There’s a difference. Relegation fighters accept their level. Underperforrs haven’t found it yet. Danny found it for us."
Zaha, the last, the longest: "I nearly left. Twice. Not because I didn’t love Palace. Because I didn’t believe Palace could match what I wanted to beco. I wanted to play in Europe. And for years, the biggest match at Palace was the derby against Brighton."
He paused. "Danny changed that. Not with money. Not with signings. With belief. He walked in and said: ’Why not us?’ And nobody had an answer. Because there was no answer. There was no reason why not us. Except that nobody had ever asked the question."
Elena: "What does the Champions League an to you?"
Zaha was quiet for a long ti.
"The Champions League anthem at Selhurst Park." He said it slowly, tasting each word.
"Barcelona at Selhurst Park. Real Madrid at Selhurst Park. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what that would sound like? Twenty-five thousand people, the Holsdale, the drums, and then that anthem. The one you hear on Tuesday and Wednesday nights on the television, the one that ans the biggest football in the world, playing at our ground. In South London. At a club that was in a relegation battle twelve months ago."
He shook his head. "If you’d told that two years ago, I would have laughed. I’m not laughing anymore. Nobody is."
I watched the footage in silence. Zaha had tears in his eyes that he was too proud to let fall. Dann had touched the armband he wasn’t wearing. Tomkins had spoken about ceilings with the quiet authority of a man who had lived under one and now lived without one.
Elena closed the laptop. "The film is taking shape, Danny. But it can’t stay inside Beckenham. At so point in the next few weeks, I need to go to Manchester. I need to talk to the people who knew you before any of this. Your mother. Your ntor. The pub. The estate." She paused. "And I want to interview Emma. Separately. Not as your girlfriend. As a person with her own perspective on this story."
"I’ll make the calls when the ti is right," I said. "But they decide. Not . Not you. Them."
"Of course."
"My mum will say yes imdiately and then panic about the state of the flat."
"I’ll send Clara ahead."
"Frankie will say no three tis before saying yes."
"I’ll be persistent."
"Emma will want to see the questions in advance. She’s a journalist."
Elena smiled. "I like her already."
She turned back to her monitors. I walked out, through the corridor with the photographs, past the Wembley image, past the 1990 squad, past the Youth Cup winners.
The semi-final was tomorrow. Arsenal at Selhurst Park. The Netflix caras would be in the dressing room for the first ti during a competitive match. The Walsh Way was taking shape. The story was being told.
And in a few weeks, Elena Vasquez would drive to Moss Side and sit in my mum’s living room and hear stories about a boy who used to sing in the bath after football training. But that was later. That was the first act.
Tomorrow was the second.
Tomorrow was Arsenal.
[January 9th, 2018. Interview day.]
[Netflix: 29 player interviews Danny Walsh (45 mins). Ambition shot fild ("One trophy. Then two."). Transformation interviews: Dann, Tomkins, Zaha. Manchester interviews planned for coming weeks (Mum, Frankie, Emma).]
[Kovačić: first training session. Elite. "That was sixty percent."]
[Carabao Cup semi-final first leg: Arsenal (H), tomorrow, January 10th.]
[The Walsh Way is taking shape.]
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