Chapter 896 - 896: Second Ball

Borussia Dortmund 0 Crystal Palace 0.

12 shots to 0.

Not 1 bad shot. Not a header over. Not a free kick into a wall.

Mamadou Sakho came through that door first and he was talking before he got near a seat.

"Their 10 is dropping in. Every time. James, if you do not follow him I have to come out of the middle, and if I come out of the middle Philipp is in behind Tarko."

"So I follow him."

"You follow him."

"Then Witsel has got Rúben on his own," James Rodríguez said.

"Witsel has got Rúben anyway," Rúben Neves said, and the room went up at that, including him, and Bray had to get over the top of it.

I did not make a speech and I did not get to the front of the room.

Bray got the board out instead and put Tuesday night on it. The north end routine he drilled at 10 past 7 in the evening on an empty pitch in front of an empty away section while 4 groundsmen stood in a tunnel mouth and watched every minute of it. Every man in that room had done it 6 times in the dark 24 hours earlier.

"Same corner. Same post. It is the end our lot are in."

"Their near post man went early on Tuesday," Tarkowski said.

"Their near post man is Diallo and he goes early every week. I have got 11 of them."

Sarah had 1 sheet and she said the number out loud so the room got it instead of me.

Sancho has carried inside 5 times. He has lost it 5 times.

Nobody cheered at that. Nick Pope said "good" with his head down and his tape in his hands, and that was all it got and all it needed.

I walked past Aaron Wan-Bissaka twice on my way to that door.

He looked up the second time.

I kept walking.

PRRRRP.

48 minutes. Raphaël Guerreiro hit the bar from 20 yards.

DNNK.

The noise that came off that bar was not a roar. It was 66,000 people making the same short sound at the same time and then a second of nothing, and in that second you could hear one man in the away corner shouting a single word and 2,900 people answering him.

53 minutes. Witsel from 25. Pope tipped it over with 1 hand and landed on his back and made it look like a pass back.

Bray had Højbjerg by the shoulder at that corner, pointing at the edge of our own box.

"Pierre. Second ball. You are going to the first one every time and Delaney is eating the drop."

"He is 6 yards behind me."

"Then be 6 yards behind him," Bray said, and Pierre-Emile Højbjerg went and stood 6 yards behind him, and Thomas Delaney did not win another one of those all night.

Down the touchline in front of that terrace, Ben Chilwell, Axel Tuanzebe, Eberechi Eze and Connor Blake were warming up with a bib each and a ball between them, 4 feet from 9,000 people who whistled every single touch any of them took for 20 minutes. Eze dragged a ball back through his own legs at one point and they whistled that for about 15 seconds on its own.

Michael Steele made them do the whole routine twice.

58 minutes. Piszczek got round the outside of Perišić and put one flat across our 6 yard box that nobody got a touch on, and the intake of breath off that stand was as loud as a shout, and you felt it on the back of your neck from a technical area 60 yards away.

60 minutes.

Lucien Favre sent a man to the fourth official and the board went up, and the Südtribüne made the loudest noise it had made all night, and it was not for a goal and it was not for a tackle.

Paco Alcácer.

5 weeks ago he was at Barcelona. Dortmund have borrowed him until the summer, they have not paid a fee, they do not have to decide until November, and in those 5 weeks he has come off that bench and scored at a rate nobody in Europe is near.

9,000 people in chairs stood up for a substitute and the man with the megaphone did not have to ask them.

Bray came down the line.

"Boss."

"I know."

"He goes across the front man. Tarko's shoulder, every time."

"Tell Mamadou."

Christian Benteke held one up on the left touchline at 62 with Akanji leaning on his back and kept it for 11 seconds, which does not sound like anything and is the only 11 seconds that back 4 got to breathe in the whole of the second half.

Then we got a corner off it.

64 minutes.

North end. Our end.

Bray put his hand in the air and 2,900 people who had been stood up for 64 minutes made a noise like a lid coming off a pan.

Christian Benteke went to the near post and took Akanji and Diallo with him, because Christian Benteke going to a near post is a thing 2 centre halves have to deal with whether he wants the ball or not.

He did not want the ball.

Rúben Neves had been followed round a football pitch for 64 minutes by a Belgian international and had not been let near the game once. He put it 2 yards behind Benteke's shoulder.

Boom.

James Tarkowski, 6 yards, forehead, into the ground and up.

0-1.

RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

One corner of that stadium went off and the rest of it stopped dead, and for about 9 seconds 2,900 people were the only sound in a building holding 66,000, and it did not sound thin. It sounded like a hole had been cut in the night.

James Tarkowski ran 40 yards and stood in front of them with both arms out and let them have him. Mamadou Sakho got him round the neck. Nick Pope came 60 yards up the pitch and Michael Steele had to shout him back. Ivan Perišić was the last one there and he did not celebrate it at all, he got hold of 2 of them and pointed at the clock.

"CRYS-TAL PA-LACE. CRYS-TAL PA-LACE."

Then the man on the platform put his arm up, and the Südtribüne came down on top of that chant and buried it under about 9,000 people and a hundred rattles, and the last 25 minutes started.

67 minutes. Alcácer, 10 yards, Pope, left glove.

70 minutes. Reus over from 6 with nothing in front of him but grass.

[JADON SANCHO. CONDITION 63%.]

17 months of that number sitting at the edge of my eye, dropping a point at a time on men who cannot see it. On Wednesday at 70 minutes it put an 18-year-old who had carried inside 8 times and lost it 8 times on 63, and the 20-year-old stood 4 yards off his shoulder on 81.

Tk.

73 minutes.

Axel Witsel was 6 feet from Rúben Neves, where he had been for 69 minutes.

So the ball did not go to Rúben Neves.

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg took it off Delaney on our own 18 yard line and put it wide and flat, first time, into a full back.

Achraf Hakimi is 19 years old. In June he was in a squad of mine at a World Cup and in July he was the best young player at it, and in that same July a man in a club coat had a shirt number, a flat and a school place for his sister sat ready, all of it for one season, because one season was all Real Madrid were letting anybody have him for.

He took it on the halfway line facing his own goal.

shhk.

He turned Bruun Larsen and he went.

60 yards up the middle of that pitch. The middle, not the touchline. Piszczek came across and could not get a foot near him. Akanji had to choose between him and Benteke and chose Benteke.

James Rodríguez gave him it back 25 yards out, one touch, without breaking stride, and that man has played that pass 40 times for me and not one of them has gone to waste.

Roman Bürki came.

Hakimi did not lift it and he did not try to beat him.

Fsst.

Across him, low, off the inside of the far post.

0-2.

[ACHRAF HAKIMI. CA 162. PA 191.]

He did not celebrate it.

He went in after the ball, dug it out of the stanchion and walked it back to the centre circle on his own while 2,900 people screamed his name at him for 40 seconds, and he kept his eyes on the grass for every one of them.

"ACH-RAF. ACH-RAF. ACH-RAF."

Christian Benteke got to him at the halfway line and said something and got nothing back at all.

I looked up at the directors' box, because I could not stop myself.

Michael Zorc was stood up with both hands on the rail and he was not watching the restart. He was watching the away corner, at 2,900 people singing a boy's name, and he stayed like that for about 10 seconds and then he sat down.

Something changed in that stand at 74 minutes and I felt it happen.

It stopped being noise about their own team.

"SCHEISS ENGLÄNDER."

The whole terrace, all of it, and the man with the megaphone was not leading that one, they had got there on their own.

Nathan told me afterwards that the 2 he had been drinking with on Tuesday night were both in the middle of it.

76 minutes. Wilfried Zaha went back inside his own 18 yard box to head a Guerreiro cross off Akanji's forehead, and the away corner sang his name at him for it, and he put a hand up without turning round.

He has done that 4 times this season. All 4 of them have been in this competition.

78 minutes. Alcácer, 14 yards, over.

80 minutes.

Jack Grealish had 60 minutes on a card from Rebecca and sat through all 90 of them, because the match never once asked me the question he is the answer to. He did not sulk at it and he will not on Thursday either.

Ellis Cartwright for Christian Benteke.

He is 18. On the 6th of June a man in an office told him he was finished here. On the 3rd of October 2,900 people who could not have picked him out in August sang his name in a German stadium while he was still getting his training top over his head.

"NUM-BER FOR-TY."

Ivan Perišić got hold of him at the touchline before he went on, kept him there a second longer than the fourth official wanted and put 3 words into the side of his head, and Ellis Cartwright nodded twice and went.

I asked Perišić on the plane what they were.

"Second ball. Always."