Chapter 887 - 887: Four Seconds

Rúben Neves was still looking at me when I turned round and drew a square on the whiteboard.

20 yards across, the one Marcus had put on a tablet in a corridor 90 seconds earlier. I put a cross through it.

"Radja Nainggolan has run 6.1 kilometres tonight and 4.4 of them are in there. He has been stood on your shoulder for 45 minutes because you keep walking back into the 1 place he is allowed to stand.

"So do not go in there. Not once. Not for a throw in, not to help Pierre, not because it feels wrong."

"And if he comes with me?"

"Then he is running again, and he has already run 6.1."

That was 2 of the 4 things I had coming down that tunnel.

The third was at the end of the bench doing his laces, and he had not said a word since the whistle.

"Achraf. Bray wanted that ball with you 6 times in the first half."

"It got there 4."

"You counted."

"Of course I counted."

"Then make it 10."

The fourth one I kept, because the fourth one was Ivan Perišić coming on at 58 minutes, and there is nothing to be gained by telling Jarrod Bowen at half time that his night finishes in 13.

PRRRRRRP.

46 minutes. Neves took the first ball of the half 15 yards left of where he had taken every ball of the first half.

Radja Nainggolan went 4 steps after him and stopped.

[RADJA NAINGGOLAN. CONDITION 71%.]

That number has sat in the corner of whatever this is for 17 months, going down all night for 22 men at once, and it has never once told me a thing I could use. At 46 minutes on Tuesday it told me a 30-year-old was at 71, and the 22-year-old stood 10 yards from him, who had run 5.4 kilometres, was at 88.

Tk.

48 minutes. Same again. 4 steps and a stop, and this time Nainggolan put a hand up at Matías Vecino and pointed at the space Neves had walked out of.

51 minutes. Vecino went instead.

That is what Spalletti wanted and it is the whole point, because Vecino follows the ball and Nainggolan follows the man.

So for the first time all night there were 20 yards in the middle of Wembley Stadium with nobody stood in them, and Pierre-Emile Højbjerg walked into the gap and had 4 seconds on the ball.

4 seconds.

"THAT IS IT. PIERRE. AGAIN. AGAIN."

I was 4 yards off that line with both arms going and the fourth official came and stood beside me without saying anything, the way they do when they have already warned you once.

Bray got to my shoulder 20 seconds later.

"You moved him."

"Ivan moved him."

"Then Ivan was right and I was wrong," Bray said, "and I will say that again on Thursday when it is no use to anybody," and he went back to his cones.

Here is what a stadium does on a night it has waited 113 years for.

52 minutes. Mamadou Sakho headed a Vrsaljko cross 40 yards up the pitch and out for a throw, and 60,000 people roared at it like it had gone in.

53 minutes. Ben Chilwell took a throw in and they roared at the throw in.

They cheered Nick Pope catching a ball. They cheered James Tarkowski putting one into row 12. When Wan-Bissaka got up off that bench at 55 to go and warm up, 3,000 people behind that goal sang his name at the back of his head for the length of the touchline.

54 minutes. Højbjerg found Hakimi on the outside for the 6th time in 8 minutes.

Zaha had gone infield and taken D'Ambrosio with him, and D'Ambrosio had to decide, and he decided wrong, and that is the whole conversation we had in a dressing room at 7 o'clock.

Hakimi stood it up. Benteke got in front of Škriniar and headed it 2 feet wide.

"RRRRRAAAAA."

They stayed up for that as well. Both drums going in the Holmesdale end, and 60,000 people had worked out in about 8 minutes that something had changed without a single one of them being able to say what.

Corner on 56. Bray called 6. Handanović came and got it, and they booed him for catching it.

On 57 Icardi got a yard on Sakho for the first time in 20 minutes and put it over from 12, and 4,200 people in the north east corner groaned as one thing.

I made the change at 57 and a half.

Ivan Perišić stood at that board with his top off for 90 seconds, and I watched Luciano Spalletti see him get up. Spalletti turned and said something to a coach, and the coach wrote it down.

"PERIŠIĆ. PERIŠIĆ."

60,000 people who have watched that man play 6 matches for this club sang his name onto the pitch, and 4,200 who watched him play 4 seasons for theirs whistled every second of it.

There is a flag in that corner with his face on it. They made it in 2017, they brought it to London in September 2018, they hung it up anyway, and at 58 minutes they were stood underneath it whistling at him.

He signed on the 9th of August. 40 days.

61 minutes.

Neves 15 yards left of where he is supposed to be. Nainggolan 8 yards off him, stood still, looking at Vecino.

Tk.

Neves to Højbjerg in the 20 yards nobody was in. Højbjerg turned and had nobody on him for the second time in 4 minutes.

And Christian Benteke did not move.

He has stood in that spot on pitch 2 about 300 times since July with Bray shouting at him, and he stood in it now with Milan Škriniar in front of him and Stefan de Vrij 4 yards off, and he did not chase a thing, and both of those men stayed exactly where he was.

Zaha pulled D'Ambrosio 12 yards infield.

12 yards of grass on the Inter right with 1 man in it.

Everything went slow.

I saw Højbjerg's head come up. I saw Škriniar point at it 3 tenths of a second too late, because he was pointing over the top of a man who had not moved. I saw Ivan Perišić, who played 4 seasons in that shirt and knows exactly how Milan Škriniar points at things, start running before the ball left Højbjerg's boot.

shhk.

He took it in his stride at the angle of the box with Handanović coming. He did not go round him and he did not chip him. He hit it across him from 14 yards with his left foot, low and hard, the way he has hit that shot 400 times in a career, and the goalkeeper he trained with for 4 years got a hand 6 inches from it.

Fsst.

1-0.

RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

60,000 people came off their seats at once, and the noise off the top tier of that stadium arrived about half a second after the noise off the bottom, so you get all of it twice.

Then, for the first time in 113 years, they played Glad All Over at a European Cup match.

"AND I'M FEELIN'..."

"PALACE!"

"...GLAD ALL OVER."

"PALACE!"

They did not sit down when it finished. Not the top tier, not the bottom, not for 9 minutes.

Ivan Perišić did not celebrate it. He got the ball out of the net and carried it back to the halfway line and put it on the spot and did not look at that corner once.

Christian Benteke got to him and put both hands on the back of his head and said something into his ear, and I asked him on the Thursday what it was.

"I told him 3 men came," Benteke said.

63 minutes. Spalletti went to his bench, and the away corner saw him do it and made a noise about it, because an away end knows what a substitution at 63 means before the board goes up.

Borja Valero took his top off.

"OOOOOH."

I watched Luciano Spalletti stand on a white line for 90 seconds with a decision in his hands, and I knew exactly what it was, because I have made it about 20 times and it is the worst one there is. Take the captain off at 1-0 down and tell an away end and 11 tired men the plan has gone. Or leave him on and hope a 30-year-old finds 25 minutes he has not got.

65 minutes. Radja Nainggolan came off.

Ivan Perišić said he is finished at 65 in a corridor 20 minutes before it happened.

Borja Valero is 33, and Inter had 25 minutes, and they came, and it was the best football they played all night.

And 60,000 people defended with 11 men for every second of it.

I have never heard anything like the last 25 minutes of that match. Politano hit the outside of the post from 20 on 69 and the roar that went up was for the post. Sakho got in front of Icardi on 71 and put it into the crowd and they gave him the whole stadium for it. On 73 Icardi got his head on a Vrsaljko cross at the near post and Pope got a glove to it going the wrong way.

Thwack.

"POOOOOPE. POOOOOPE."

Brozović hit one from 25 on 78 and Pope held it at the second attempt, and Wembley made a noise that was half relief and half something I have only ever heard in Lyon.

I have not sat down in a technical area since April 2017 and I did not sit down for any of it.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.