Chapter 897 - 897: Serious

83 minutes.

Delaney put one over the top and James Tarkowski was half a stride behind Alcácer, and he took it on his chest 8 yards out with Pope coming and hit it with his laces.

DNNK.

Off the bar.

66,000 people were in the air on the way up and had to come down on top of that sound, and the roar turned into something else about a third of the way through it, a groan with a scream still inside it, and the rattles all went at once like somebody had dropped a box of bones down a staircase.

The ball came down on the 6 yard line. Mamadou Sakho hammered it into the second tier and then walked back and stood over Paco Alcácer with his hand flat on his own chest and said something to him.

The Südtribüne had 7 minutes and they used every one. Nobody up there sat down and nobody stopped, and Bernd told me on Tuesday that a man stands up in front of a chair and the chair is not there, and he was right about that as well.

87 minutes.

Sancho got it on our right byline with 3 minutes to go and Dortmund 2 down, and he went at Aaron Wan-Bissaka for the 12th time.

He came inside.

Thk.

Aaron took it off him on his own byline, on his left foot, turning into a corner flag with nowhere to go.

Then he went.

70 yards. Up the line and then off it, inside, past Delaney, who has 25 years and 3 leagues on him and could not get across, and the away corner was up before he had done 30 of the 70 because they could see what was in front of him.

Diallo came. Akanji came.

He did not shoot.

He put his head up 14 yards out with 2 men on him and rolled it square, flat and slow, 6 yards.

Ellis Cartwright. First time. Right foot. Roof of the net.

0-3.

RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

That corner of a German stadium lost its mind. There were men on the barriers. There was a bloke about 50 with his shirt off in October in Germany being held up by 3 other people. The steward line in front of them just stood there and let all of it happen because there is nothing you can do about 2,900 people at 0-3 in the 87th minute.

Ellis Cartwright ran at them with his arms down by his sides, the way a boy runs when he has not planned anything, and Michael Olise came off that bench and beat everybody to him and put him into the hoardings, and Eberechi Eze and Connor Blake arrived on top and Joel Ward came 40 yards to pull 3 of them off the pile because somebody always has to think about ankles.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka arrived last and did not join in.

He stood 4 yards clear of it with his hands on the top of his shorts, blowing, looking at nothing at all, and Sarah was at the edge of that technical area and she was not watching the pile either.

88 minutes. Eberechi Eze for James Rodríguez.

Rodríguez came off to 2,900 people and shook Eze's hand at the line and said something to him, and Eze put both hands over 20 seconds of the ball in the corner in stoppage time like a man who had been told exactly what to do with it.

PRRRRP. PRRRRP. PRRRRP.

Borussia Dortmund 0 Crystal Palace 3.

[QUEST: SURVIVE THE ELITE TABLE. 2 OF 6. WON.]

Nobody in the Südtribüne moved.

They do a thing here after every match, win or lose, where that team walks the length of the pitch and stands in front of that terrace and takes whatever is coming. They did it on Wednesday. Marco Reus took his captain's armband off and went over with Bürki and Witsel and Akanji, and 9,000 people who had just been beaten 3-0 at home sang at them for 90 seconds and did not whistle a single one of them.

Then the man on the platform turned round on that box.

He turned his back on his own team and he faced the pitch, and he put an arm in the air, and 9,000 people came round with him.

They were not looking at Dortmund any more.

"WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII."

9,000 people whistling, and the rattles going, and it came at us across an empty penalty area and it did not stop for 3 minutes.

That is not a crowd that hates you. A crowd that hates you is 8,000 people at Wembley for 11 seconds about a 0-0. This was colder than that and it was aimed with both hands. I have wanted this football club taken seriously for 15 months, and on Wednesday night in Dortmund I found out what taken seriously sounds like.

Scott Dann did not play a minute of it. He came down that touchline in a tracksuit, got 4 of them by the sleeve and turned them round to face it.

"Do not clap it," he said. "Do not do anything to it. Just stand there and take it, because you have earned every bit of it."

So 11 men and 7 substitutes stood in front of the largest terrace in Europe with their hands by their sides and let 9,000 Germans whistle at them for 3 minutes.

Achraf Hakimi stood on the end of that line and did not move a muscle.

Then they went to our own corner, all of them, the ones who had not played as well, and 2,900 people who had driven Corsas and queued for ferries and spent Tuesday night in a bar off the Strobelallee learning a German song sang until the police made them stop.

Lucien Favre was by the touchline with his hands in his coat.

"Your right back."

"Aaron."

"How old?"

"20."

He nodded and he did not work anything out on his fingers the way Rafael Benítez did at Wembley.

"I have Sancho, who is the best 18-year-old in Europe, and I put him on that side for 90 minutes because I had gone through your team and decided it was the easiest part of it." Favre looked back at the pitch. "It was the hardest part of my night. I have watched a lot of full backs. That was not a young player having a good evening. That was prepared."

"He has done 20 minutes on his own after every session since the 30th of August."

Lucien Favre took that in.

"Then that is your answer," he said. "Nobody will print it. They will all write about the goals."

Nathan found The Unity in a stairwell on the way out, the 2 he had spent Tuesday night with, and one of them had a hand out and used it.

"Tuesday was good. Tuesday was for the first time." He was not angry when he said it and Nathan says that was the part that got him. "There is no second first time. On the 12th of December we come to London and we are bringing 4,000, and we have already started."

"Started what?"

"A flag with your name on it," the man said. "You are on the list now. Bayern, Schalke, and you."

Deano heard all of that from 10 feet away with a skip in front of him and told me at the airport, and Deano has been in football since 1994 and he was not laughing about it.

"They mean it, gaffer."

"I know they do."

"No." He pushed the skip up the ramp. "Nobody has ever meant it about us."

I found Achraf Hakimi in the mouth of that tunnel at 10 past 10 with his shirt in his hand and his boots still on.

"Right. After."

"After," he agreed.

"What did he say?"

Hakimi looked down that corridor for a while, at the same 40 metres of concrete the pair of us had walked up 2 hours earlier.

"He said, we could have had you for a year."

Tk.

"That is it?"

"That is all of it, coach. 6 words." He put the shirt over his shoulder. "And there was nothing in it. He was not trying to put anything on me. He said it the way you say a true thing to somebody you are fond of."

"And what did you say to him?"

"Nothing, then. Just now, out on the pitch." He had his eyes on the floor of that corridor. "I told him my sister started her school in September. In Croydon. And that it is not for a year."

I did not have a word for that.

"He shook my hand," Hakimi said. "He said he was pleased and he meant it. That man has not lied to me one time since the day he met me and he did not start tonight."

Then he asked me something in the way you ask a manager you have had at 2 clubs and 1 country, which is a way nobody else in that building has with me.

"Coach. The photograph on Friday."

"What about it?"

"Rachid puts 41 boys in it every week and I have looked at every one since August." He got his phone out of the back of his shorts and did not turn it on. "Ellis gets it too. He told me on the plane over."

"I know he does."

"The one on the 14th of September, third row," Hakimi said. "The small one on the end with his socks down. He is from 2 streets from my mother."

Then he went and got changed.

Marcus had the group on a phone before I was off the grass.

CRYSTAL PALACE 6. DORTMUND 3. INTERNAZIONALE 3. PSV 0.

"Inter beat PSV 2-1 at San Siro." He turned it round. "Top of Group B. First time in the history of this football club."

Terry Dolan sent Nathan 1 line from a coach park at 25 past 10.

"Tell Ron I found his gateman. 74. Been on that gate since 1971. He wants a photograph of Selhurst and I am going to send him one."

At half past 8 on Thursday morning, with our coach still 20 minutes from the airport, Bernd and his 11 went back into the Südtribüne with the drills and started taking 9,000 chairs out of it again, and on Saturday afternoon 24,454 people will stand in there and not one of them will know he was ever there.

Some of them will be making a flag.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.