Chapter 899 - 899: The Walk

Mateo Kovačić went back on grass on Thursday afternoon for the first time in 8 weeks.

The brace came off at the end of September and the sheet said no ball until October, and October started on Monday, and he has been waiting on that word since the 11th of August. He did 20 minutes on his own with a physio and a rebound board at the far end of pitch 3, in a woolly hat, passing at a wooden wall and taking it back on the half turn.

Dnk. Dnk. Dnk.

That is a noise you can hear across 3 pitches and everybody who walked past pretended they were not looking at him.

He is 24 and he can turn with 2 men on him, and there are exactly 2 players at this football club who can do that, and 1 of the 2 touched a football 30 times in Germany on Wednesday night.

"How long?"

"The board says 3 weeks," the physio said. "He says 2."

"What does Rebecca say?"

"Rebecca says 3 weeks and she has written it down."

Mateo Kovačić put one off the board, took it away on the half turn with his back to me and put it straight back where it came from without lifting his head.

Then he said the first thing I have heard him say in 8 weeks.

"24th of October."

That is PSV at home. Matchday 3.

"You have not kicked a ball since August."

"24th," he said, and hit another one.

I told Rúben Neves on Thursday evening, before Bray, before Sarah, before it went anywhere near a board.

He was the last one in that building, which he usually is, and he had a bag on his shoulder and one hand on a door.

"Sit down 2 minutes."

"I am fine standing."

"Sit down 2 minutes."

He sat on the edge of the treatment bed with the bag still on.

"How many touches did you have on Wednesday?"

"30."

He did not even have to think. He had counted them, the way Achraf counted balls at half time at Wembley in September, because they all count and none of them ever says so.

"Do you know what Witsel ran?"

"No."

"11.2 kilometres. And Favre made 3 changes and never thought about taking him off, because standing 6 feet from you cost that man nothing all night." I sat on the physio's stool. "On Saturday it is Chelsea and Sarri has got N'Golo Kanté, and Kanté does that better than anybody alive. In November it is San Siro and it is Brozović, and James told me that would happen 3 weeks ago before we had played a minute of it."

"So what do we do."

"There are 4 things we can do and Bray wants 3 of them, and we will do those as well." I put my hands on my knees. "I want to talk about the 5th one, and you are going to hate it, and I am telling you first because you are the one who pays for it."

"Go on."

"Stop trying to get on the ball."

Rúben Neves looked at me the way a 21-year-old looks at a man who has just said something stupid, and he is entitled to, because I have spent 15 months telling every person in that building that the thing we do is give him the ball.

"That is the whole thing I do."

"I know."

"That is what you paid for."

"I know that as well."

Clnk. Somebody dropped a weight 2 rooms away and neither of us moved.

"If Kanté is on you and you keep coming to get it, you are doing his job for him. He stands where you are and the match happens somewhere else." I picked a ball off the floor and put it between my feet. "So do not come and get it. Go and stand somewhere he does not want to be, and make him come with you, and keep going until there is a hole where he was.

"Then Pierre plays in the hole. Or Achraf runs into it, the way he ran into the one Witsel left on Wednesday.

"Your job on Saturday is to take N'Golo Kanté for a walk."

He looked at the floor between his boots for a while.

"My numbers get worse."

"Your numbers get much worse."

"On the television I have a bad game."

"On the television you have a bad game and the man on Sky says Rúben Neves was quiet." I did not dress that up for him. "And 5 or 6 people who actually look will know what happened, and 2 of them are on that bench, and none of that is worth anything to you when you are 21."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you play it the way you have played it for 15 months and I will pick you anyway, and we will do Bray's 3 things and try to win the match."

He was quiet for longer than I had allowed for, and the bag was still on his shoulder, and he had not once looked at the door.

"Who tells Pierre?"

Bray disagreed with me on Friday morning at 20 past 8 with a mug in his hand and he was right to.

"You cannot do it for 6 weeks."

"I am not asking for 6 weeks."

"You are asking for Saturday, then United, then PSV, then San Siro. That is 6 weeks." He put the mug down on the desk. "Boss. A passer who stops asking for the ball stops being a passer. I have seen it. I had a lad at Palace under 21s who was the best 6 in that age group in London, and somebody told him to sit in, and 18 months later he could not receive on the half turn because he had stopped doing it."

"He was 19."

"Rúben is 21."

"Rúben has played 140 senior matches and he is 21, and since August there has not been a better one in this division, and the 2 best coaches he has faced have both worked out that 1 man deletes him." I had the board behind me and I did not turn round to it, because a board is where this argument gets lost. "What do you want to do?"

"Build with 3. Drop Tarko out, get a spare man in the first line, and then the marker is standing next to a bloke who does not need the ball."

"And when Chelsea push the winger on to Tarko?"

"Then we are 1 against 1 all over the pitch and I will take that against anybody."

Sarah had been stood inside that door for 4 minutes without saying anything.

"You are both right."

"Go on."

"If you build with 3, you get out. Every time. The numbers say you get out." She had the 1 sheet she always has. "You also lose about 2 and a half seconds in their half every time you come out, because the ball takes 2 extra passes to get there. Across a match that is 4 minutes of football you do not get to play, and against Chelsea 4 minutes is a goal."

"And the walk?"

"The walk is 3 matches of nothing and then something," Sarah said. "I cannot tell you which 3."

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.