Chapter 906 - 906: Reading Material

On fourteen minutes, Jack Grealish and Andros Townsend both went at him on the edge of the centre circle. He let the first one come, rolled it under his right foot, went around the second on the half-turn, and played it thirty yards into Connor Blake's feet with his head down.

Fwip.

"Oh, come on," Grealish said to the sky, and then turned round and said it to Scott Dann. "Scotty. Foul. He dragged it."

Prrrp.

"Free kick to yellows. You spoke to the referee."

"I was talking to God, Scotty!"

"God isn't on this pitch, Jack. I am."

Kovačić got the ball back off Tuanzebe two minutes later and did it again, to Kirby this time. Kirby just stood there with his hands on his head and laughed at him.

The last ten minutes were the reason I had put the tape down.

Townsend went down on the edge of the yellows' box with Sakho across him. It was a foul, and Scott Dann waved play on. I was out of my box and three yards up the touchline before I even realised my legs were moving.

Prrrp.

Scott Dann was pointing at the penalty spot at the other end.

"Out of the box, gaffer."

"It was a foul."

"It was a foul, and I've given a penalty against you, and you're still standing there." He didn't smile. "Get back in."

Sixteen players stood on Pitch 2 and watched me walk three yards backwards onto a strip of white tape. Christian Benteke put the penalty in off the post and nobody celebrated. Rebecca wrote something down.

In the car park, Dann handed Bray the whistle back.

"Same again tomorrow?"

"You're suspended, not injured," Bray said. "You're doing the running tomorrow."

"I know." He had his keys out. "Put me on the whistle for the last ten, though. I want to watch him try to get out of that box again."

Clnk. The barrier going up at twenty to nine on Tuesday.

Beep. Nick Pope and Ben Chilwell came through it in Chilwell's car, twelve hours out of Seville, where England had been three up at half-time against Spain and hung on to win 3-2. Pope had sat on a bench for both matches in Rijeka in a stadium with nobody in it, and in Seville in one that was full.

Krul met him at the canteen door with the Telegraph.

"I've got something to read you."

"Tim, I've been awake since three."

"It takes one minute." Krul read it. Then he read it again, slower, with the name at the end said very loud. Pope stood there with a bag on each shoulder and let him finish.

"Is that it?"

"I'm doing it again at lunch."

Ivan Perišić got Chilwell before Chilwell even had his coat off. Rebecca had rung the Croatian federation on the 7th with a hamstring on a card and 27, 90, 90 minutes written beside it. Croatia had played England behind closed doors on Friday night without him, and he had watched it on the canteen television with Deano.

"Rijeka. Tell me."

"It was weird, Ivan."

"I know it was weird. Tell me what it sounded like. The television doesn't capture the sound."

"You could hear Modrić." Chilwell pulled one arm out of his coat. "Every time he wanted the ball he said a name, quiet, only the name, and it went to him."

Perišić thought about that with his arms folded.

"He does that at home too," he said. "In the kitchen. When he wants the salt."

Then he went and got Chilwell a tea without being asked.

Rúben Neves came in last with his hood up, exactly the way he had gone out.

He read Dortmund, and the Newcastle diagram, and he stood at Chelsea for a long time with his hands in his pockets. Then he walked to the end of the wall in front of the Mail and the three of us in a row.

He found Marcus at the laptop.

"Why is Chelsea empty?"

"Because nobody got it right."

"Everyone wrote something."

"Everyone wrote that you were quiet." Marcus turned the laptop round to show him. "The first one who writes what you were actually doing goes up there, Rúben. It's for you. It's not for them."

Neves looked at the empty space again from across the room.

"And ours?" He pointed at the end. "The red cards. Who's that one for?"

"Ask the gaffer."

He came and asked me. I was at the hatch with a plate.

"It's for me," I said. "I went twelve yards out of my area and said three things to Michael Oliver in front of 83,000 people. If I do it at Old Trafford, I'll sit in the stand for the next one too. The lads can read it. But it's mine."

"Okay." Neves thought about it. "And yesterday you stood in tape."

"Who told you that?"

"Scott sent a video to the group chat." He already had his phone out. Eleven seconds of me walking backwards up Pitch 2 with sixteen men watching, and at the end of it, Kirby saying penalty in a deep voice. "Everyone in Portugal has seen it, boss. My mother has seen it."

Bang. The fire door came off its latch.

Nathan walked through it at twenty past eleven with his phone raised.

"The FA just charged Mourinho."

The entire canteen turned around.

"For what?"

"Language. After the Newcastle match on the 6th, into a camera, in Portuguese. They announced it at eleven." He held the screen out at arm's length so the room could see a statement none of them could actually read from there. "He has until six o'clock on Friday to answer it."

"Friday is his press conference."

"Friday is his press conference, and Sunday you're twenty yards apart with a letter each off the same building." Nathan put the phone away. "So nobody here says a word about it to anybody with a microphone. Anybody. That includes you, boss."

"OHHHHHHHH."

Fourteen footballers reacted at once. Grealish banged the table with the flat of his hand. Deano came to the kit room door to see what the noise was, then went back in.

Rebecca came in at twelve with her card turned around to face me.

"James lands Thursday."

"Thursday."

"He played in Tampa on the 11th and he plays again in America tonight. Then he's on an overnight flight that gets into Heathrow at twenty past six on Thursday morning. That's the Atlantic twice and six hours of clock each way inside nine days." She tapped a finger on his line. "And he wants to start at Old Trafford."

"Did he say that?"

"He texted me at four this morning, his time." She clicked her pen. "Thirty minutes off the bench. If you start him, I'll write down that you started him, and I'll put the date next to it."

Achraf Hakimi landed at seven on Wednesday from two matches against Comoros, the first of them a 1-0 in Morocco, and came in wearing the tracksuit he had flown in.

He read the Dortmund section for a minute and then took one page down the Kicker piece, two columns of German and a photograph of Jadon Sancho on the grass with Aaron Wan-Bissaka standing over him, Sarah's translation stapled beneath. He carried the whole thing the length of the canteen and put it face-up on the table in front of Aaron, who was eating toast again.

"You didn't read it."

"I don't read them."

"Read this one." Hakimi put a finger on the last paragraph. "Only the end."

Aaron read the end with the toast in his other hand.

"What does it say?" Olise asked from the next table.

"It says Favre moved Sancho to the left to go at me." Aaron folded the paper in half. "And he won't do it again."

He put it in the pocket of his top and didn't take it out again all morning. Hakimi went and read the Mail at the end of the wall, his bag still on his shoulder.

"You were sent off too," he said to me, as if I might not have heard.

"I was, Achraf."

"In Morocco, when the manager gets sent off, the federation doesn't fine him." He considered it. "They make him do the press conference."