Chapter 879 - 879: Pot One

[Beckenham. Thursday 30 August 2018.]

Crystal Palace have played 15 matches in Europe and won a trophy at the end of them, and not 1 minute of any of it was in this competition.

4 trophies in 15 months, and not 1 of them puts you in the European Cup. Finishing 2nd behind Manchester City is what puts you in it. Lyon in May is what gets you seeded once you are there.

At 6 minutes past 5 on Thursday afternoon, in a canteen with 4 long tables and a television bolted above the hot counter, this football club found out who it plays first.

Before that there was a Thursday morning, and Southampton.

Prrrp.

Mark Hughes has 1 point from 3 and he has been beaten by Everton and Leicester inside a fortnight, so on Saturday he will put 5 across the edge of his own box and make us play through a wall for 70 minutes. Bray had the whole morning on it: 11 against 8 in a 40 yard box, the 8 told to sit and the 11 told to break them. The laminated card never came out of his back pocket, because there is nothing on it for this.

"Christian. Christian. You do not move."

"I did not."

"You went 3 yards."

"Because nobody..." Benteke put both hands out. "Nobody comes. I stand, I stand, I stand, nobody comes, so I go and look for it. What do you want?"

"I want you stood still."

"Then tell them to run."

He went back and stood in the exact spot, and did not look at anybody, and Bray rolled another ball in. They did that for 55 minutes. It was awful to watch and it will win us a match in October.

Nya Kirby had 20 minutes with Sarah at the side of it, on where to stand when the ball goes into Benteke's feet. He was wrong 4 times at Vicarage Road and 2 of the 4 were on the television.

"You are watching the ball again."

"Yeah, because..."

"Go on."

"No, I know. I know." He had his hands on his head. "It is just, when it comes in, I look at it. Everyone looks at it."

"Watch his back foot."

"His foot."

"His back foot. Wherever that foot is pointing, that is where it is going, and it points about half a second before it goes."

"Half a second."

"Half a second is a long time," Sarah said. "Ask Christian how long it is."

Aaron Wan-Bissaka has 2 matches of a 3 match ban left, and he did every rep of a session he cannot play in, then 20 minutes of crossing with Bray on his own. The schools are not back until Monday. There were 30 kids on the fence, and he put the last 1 in off the far post, and they made a noise like a crowd.

Rebecca took Ivan Perišić off at 55 minutes with a hand up, which is not a request. That hamstring has been managed since the 9th of August, and she has a written veto over my selection.

Clk.

Deano started carrying chairs in from the boot room at half 4.

"47."

"Right."

"No, hold on." He went back out and came in again. "49. It was 49. It is still not enough."

3 weeks ago Jesús Navas stood behind those same tables with a Europa League on 1 of them.

By 10 to 5 there were 31 players in that room, about 20 staff, 2 women from the kitchen who had stopped serving to watch, and Ron, who had shut the barrier at the bottom of the drive and walked up for the first time in 19 years.

Nathan had the arrivals feed open on a laptop on the end table, and 9 or 10 of them were stood round it before the ceremony had started.

The Grimaldi Forum has a carpet outside it and about 60 photographers on a rail, and UEFA park the cars so that everybody walks the last 40 yards. Steve Parish got out first, in the same navy suit he wears to everything, and stood waiting with his hands in his pockets like a man outside a dentist.

Then Dougie Freedman got out behind him.

"Bloody hell," Jarrod Bowen said.

I have known Dougie Freedman for 15 months and I have seen him in a club tracksuit, a club polo, and a coat over a club polo. He came round that car in a charcoal 3 piece that had been made for him, with the waistcoat done up, and he stopped and buttoned the jacket before he walked, the way a man does when somebody has told him to.

"Is that Dougie?"

"That is Dougie."

"Who dressed him?"

"His wife," Joel Ward said. "That is a wife suit. My missus did that to me for a christening."

The room enjoyed that for about 40 seconds, and then Karl-Heinz Rummenigge came down the same 40 yards of carpet and stopped, and put a hand out, and held onto Steve Parish's hand while he said something into his ear for a good 6 seconds.

Nobody in the canteen said anything at all.

Clack. Clack-clack.

Andrea Agnelli did the same thing 20 seconds later, and did not stop to be photographed doing it, which is the part that counts. Then a man I did not recognise, who Marcus said was from Porto, came over and shook Dougie's hand with both of his.

"They are queueing up for him," Marcus said.

"They are queueing up for the 5-0."

"Same thing this week, boss."

Inside, UEFA seat you by pot. So the broadcast cut to the second row and there was Florentino Pérez, and 2 seats along from Pérez was the chairman of Crystal Palace, and 2 along from him was Andrea Agnelli, and every man in that canteen saw it at the same time.

31 professional footballers made a noise at a wide shot of 3 men sitting down.

"He is sat with Pérez."

"He is sat 2 off Pérez."

"Steve is sat 2 off Pérez in a suit from Croydon," Andros Townsend said, and Zaha put a hand on the back of Townsend's neck and shook him.

Then they played the anthem.

BAAAAA. BA-BA-BAAAA.

I have heard that piece of music my entire adult life and I have never once heard it with any claim on it.

They put the montage up over the top of it, the way they do, 90 seconds of last season cut to the crescendo, and it went Messi, Ronaldo, Salah, Modrić, and then it went to Wembley in May with Christian Benteke on his knees, and then Tallinn, and then Lyon, and the last 3 seconds of it were Wilfried Zaha with a Europa League over his head and his eyes shut.

Nobody cheered that. I looked round to see who was watching and every man in that room was watching, and Ron had taken his cap off and was holding it.

Bdd.

The awards took 20 minutes. Real Madrid won all 5. Navas, Ramos, Modrić for the midfielder and then Player of the Year on top of it, and Ronaldo, who was not in the building to collect his.

15 days ago this football club beat that team 5-0 in Tallinn. Nobody in the canteen said a word about it, and I watched Achraf Hakimi not say it hardest of anybody. He played 3 matches with those men last season. He clapped Keylor Navas, and then he looked at the floor for the other 4 and did not clap again.

Then they read the pots out, a club at a time, badge up, honours underneath.

CRYSTAL PALACE.

UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE 2018.

UEFA SUPER CUP 2018.

FA CUP 2018.

EFL CUP 2018.

The room made a noise at its own name on a television.

Joel Ward did not.

He signed here in 2012, out of Portsmouth, in the Championship.

He has been in a relegation fight in 4 separate seasons at this club and played about 250 matches through them.

He sat with both hands flat on the table and read his own club's honours off a screen with his mouth shut, and then he put a hand over the bottom half of his face and left it there.

Nobody went near him. 2 or 3 of the older ones looked over, and then looked away.

Giorgio Marchetti runs that draw, and he has run it for years, and he does it slowly on purpose.

There are 4 bowls on 4 plinths. The bowl is glass. The balls are white and they screw open in the middle. He waits for the ambassador to hand him 1, and he turns it, and it comes apart in 2 halves in his hands, and there is a strip of paper rolled inside it about the size of a cigarette paper. He unrolls it with his thumbs. He reads it to himself first. Then he lifts it, and then he says it.

It is 4 or 5 seconds between the ball coming apart and the name, and there is a camera on his hands for all of it.

Tk-tk.

"Group A."

Bayern Munich came out of pot 1, and Marcus said the rules out loud to the room before Marchetti had finished the sentence, because Marcus had it on a sheet.

"Right, so nobody plays a club from their own country, that is the big one. So no Manchester City for us, no United, no Spurs, no Liverpool. Russians and Ukrainians get kept apart. And UEFA pair the English clubs off for Tuesday and Wednesday telly, which is why they cannot all be in the same half."

"English out. So who is left in pot 2?"

"For us?" He was counting on the sheet with a pen. "Dortmund. Porto. Shakhtar. Benfica. Napoli. Roma. That is it. 6."

"That is not bad."

"It is not bad until you see what comes with it."

Bayern took Porto, and then Lyon, and then Galatasaray, and 2 names came off Marcus's sheet in 9 seconds.

"Group B."

Marchetti took the ball and turned it.

The canteen had been loud for 20 minutes and it stopped being loud, all at once, the way a room does when 51 people decide simultaneously to hear something.

The ball came apart.

He unrolled it. He read it to himself.

"Crystal Palace."

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.