The Captain
[Beckenham. Tuesday May 22. 07:58 BST.]
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Olise was out on the training pitch on his own at two minutes to eight, hamring a ball against the side wall of the dical building, when the whole squad was ant to be inside sitting down.
Thunk.
"Oi! Michael! Inside! You’re sixteen, not invisible. I can see you!"
Thunk.
One more, because he’s sixteen and the last one is always free. Then he caught it dead, tucked it under his arm and jogged in grinning like he’d not heard the first three shouts.
Skhh went his boots on the wet tarmac.
It had rained in the night. Grey May morning that could not decide what month it was. The grass slled the way grass slls after rain, which is the one sll I have ever properly loved, and I stood in the car park for a second and had it before I went in to talk about Arsenal.
The video room was full. Twenty-eight chairs, twenty-eight lads. Starting Thursday, benched Thursday, suited in the stand Thursday. Mateo at the back with his leg out over two chairs and the crutch on the floor. Bray at the front with the projector. Marcus Reid, the scout, off to the side with a folder he had been building for a fortnight.
Bzzt. A phone on a desk.
"Whoever that is, off. We’re on a European final, not your group chat."
"It’s my mum," said Connor.
"Your mum can wait ninety minutes. Off."
Tk. Off.
I clapped once. "Right. Arsenal. Bray, take us through them. By the ti you’re on that coach Thursday you’ll know this lot better than they know themselves. Go on."
[The Manager.]
Tk. First slide. An old man in a long coat on a touchline.
"Arsène Wenger," said Bray. "Twenty-two years. Three titles. Seven FA Cups. The Invincibles. He told the world last month he’s leaving. Thursday’s the last match he ever manages."
The room went still. Even Pato.
"Twenty-two years," Bray said, "and he has never won a European trophy. Not one. Got to a single European final his whole career and lost it. He’s sixty-eight, and Thursday night in Lyon is the last ninety minutes of a life in football, and he wants the exact thing we want. Difference is he’s wanted it for twenty-two years and we’ve wanted it for one."
"So he’s not coming for a day out," said Mama.
"He is not coming for a day out."
[Their Threat.]
Bray moved fast through the back of them. Ospina in goal, doesn’t fancy a high ball into a crowded six. Bellerín at right-back, proper quick, leaves space behind him, that’s Wilf’s afternoon. Koscielny thirty-two with an Achilles held together by tape, spin him and make him chase. Mustafi who steps out of the line and leaves a hole where a centre-half should be.
"How is he still in the team," said three lads at once, because Sky had said it Sunday and the whole room had watched the sa show.
"Funny," said Bray, flat, and pushed on, and then he clicked to the slide that ends every defensive briefing, and the laughing stopped.
Tk.
Yellow boots. A ball over the top. A man already gone.
"Pierre-Erick Aubayang. January, club record, from Dortmund. Twenty-eight. Fastest centre-forward in Europe and it’s not close. He does one thing better than any man alive." Tk.
"He runs the channel. The gap between your centre-half and your full-back. Tis it off the last man, gone before the ball’s kicked, and when he gets there he doesn’t look up. One touch. Decided before it arrives. You get one look at him. The first look is the only one you get."
Nobody had a joke for Aubayang.
"Four knockout gas," Bray said. "Eleven runs down the right channel. Five goals. The right channel." He looked at . "Aaron’s side, gaffer."
I stood up.
"Aaron."
Wan-Bissaka, front row. He never moves much. He didn’t move much now.
"Good news, lad. There’s nobody on this earth I’d rather have on Aubayang than you. That channel run only works if he steals a yard on the full-back. You don’t give yards. You’re the best one-against-one defender in this league and I’m not saying it to swell your head, it’s true, the Telegraph printed it and your old man’s got it frad."
"Above the radiator," said Aaron. First words all morning.
The room laughed.
"So you take him. All night. Touch-tight when the ball’s in front of him so he can’t spin you. When it goes long, you drop, you don’t dive in, you stay goal-side and you usher him wide onto your left foot. Onto Mama. Because here’s the rest of it, and it’s not being clever, it’s and Mama on the phone twice this weekend."
"Mostly Mama," said Mama.
"Mostly Mama. We don’t touch the shape. Four at the back, sa as every week, none of this funny business. What changes is Mama plays half a yard deeper than Konaté. Konaté, you’re the front-foot one. You step, you attack the ball, you head everything that cos. Mama, you stay ho. You’re the spare man. You sweep. Aubayang gets past Aaron, and he won’t, but if he does, you’re the net behind him. You don’t have to be quick, Mama. You have to be where you’ve always been, and you’ve always been there."
"Eleven years," said Mama.
"Eleven years. Navas, when they build down their left you co back all the way. Two of you on Aubayang, you and Aaron, so he never gets it one against one with grass to run into. And Rúben, you sit in front of the four and you read Mkhitaryan’s eyes. The ball goes where he’s looking half a second before he plays it. You take the run away before it starts and the fastest man in Europe can’t run onto a pass that never leaves the boot."
[09:10 BST.]
"And Michael. You’re on the bench."
He didn’t flinch. Good lad.
"You’re sixteen. I’m not throwing you to Arsenal from the first whistle in a European final. That’s not wrapping you in cotton wool because you’re a kid, it’s using you right. Sixty, sixty-five minutes in, Bellerín’s legs are gone because Wilf’s run him into the turf, their left-back’s gone the sa way, and that’s when you co on. Freshest, fastest lad on the pitch against two n who can’t lift their feet. You go at them and you go at them and you win us this final in the last twenty minutes. You’re the thing we keep in the drawer till they’re tired. Yeah?"
"Yeah, gaffer." Then the grin. "Mama already said."
"Course he did."
"On the bus from the Etihad. Said," and Olise dropped into the Mama voice, low and grave, "Michael. You are the knife. They tire, you co, you finish them. Do not let the gaffer pretend it was his idea."
BANG. The room went up. Mama held both hands wide, palms out, a man who has never once in his life taken credit for anything. Konaté looked up from his notebook and did the thing he does instead of smiling, the breath out through the nose.
[The Badge.]
Tk. The Arsenal crest, full screen, and from three rows back Eze made a noise.
A small one. Tsk. Like a man clocking an old enemy across a pub and deciding he can’t be bothered to get up.
The whole room turned, because the whole room knew.
"Don’t," said Eze.
"Ez," said Wilf, already delighted. "Mate. Isn’t this the lot who let you go when you were what, fourteen..."
"Don’t."
"Twice though, weren’t it," said Bowen.
"It was twice," said Pato, and there was no stopping it now, "at THEIR place, the Emirates, January, two goals, sent us to the cup final, and he tried not to celebrate and then he ran the whole length of the pitch and threw himself in with our away end anyway! The lad they said was too small! BOOM! Straight in with the fans!"
BANG. BANG. Two desks. Gone, the lot of them.
Eze had his head in his hands, laughing into them, which is the only reason I let it run.
I let it go a while. Then the hand up, slow.
"All right. Here’s why that matters, and I an it. Eze already beat them. Months ago. At their place. He walked in there carrying a thing he’d carried since he was fourteen, scored twice, put it down on their grass and left it there. So Eze is not nervous about Arsenal. Eze is the calst man in this room about Arsenal."
I looked at him. "Which ans Thursday, when Michael’s shaking in the tunnel and Connor’s shaking, the calm one is you, Ez. You did your storm in January. Thursday you’re the lighthouse. You stand still and the young ones steer off you."
Eze took his hands off his face. Nodded. "Yeah, gaffer."
"He’s only calm ’cause his mum still does everything for him," said Connor.
"Oi."
"His washing cos back ironed! He’s nineteen!"
"Says the lad who lived on canteen pasta till the gaffer felt sorry for him."
"That’s the eting." I was laughing with the rest of them now. Skrrt, skrrt of chairs. "Gym for the ones Rebecca wants, pool for the rest. Out. Go on."
Bang of the door. Twenty-eight lads into a corridor, studs on tile, sobody doing the Pato leap down the hall, sobody telling him to give it a rest.
***
Thank you to Sir nayelus for the support.
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