Chapter 881 - 881: Champions League

BT Sport had the draw. Sky cleared the 6 o'clock and put 4 men and a presenter round a desk with our group table on the wall behind them, and when Marcus turned that screen round, David Jones was already saying our name.

"Group B. Crystal Palace, Borussia Dortmund, PSV Eindhoven, Internazionale. Gary, I will start where the bookmakers have started. They have made Palace favourites to win that group. Are they right?"

"Yes."

"That is it?"

"That is it. And I want to be careful, because there is a version of tonight where everybody talks about Crystal Palace like it is a nice story." Gary Neville had a pen out and was already using it on the desk.

"It is not a nice story. That is the best team in England on this season's evidence. Top of the league, 10 scored, 1 conceded, and 15 days ago they beat Real Madrid 5-0 in a European final in Tallinn and also 4-2 win against City in the Community Shield. If you put that side in Group B with a different badge on the shirt, nobody at this table hesitates."

"Jamie."

"Favourites, and I will go further than Gary." Carragher had both hands going.

"Everybody keeps saying Palace have never played in this competition. Neither have Inter Milan. Not for 6 years. There is not a man in that Inter dressing room who has played a Champions League group game for that club, and they have got to come to Wembley and work out how to do it against a side that won a European trophy 3 months ago."

"Thierry, you are shaking your head."

"Not at the group." Henry put a hand up. "The group they win. I want to talk about Dortmund, because everybody in England hears Dortmund and says, ah, good, Dortmund play football, we like this."

"And that is wrong?"

"That is completely wrong." He put the hand flat and pushed it forward across the desk. "Dortmund run. All of them, forward, every time. Palace press very high and they press together and it is the best thing about them, and in that stadium you cannot hear the man 4 yards from you. I have played there. You lose 1 press and it is 2 against 4 and it is finished."

He sat back. "They will still win the group. But that is the night where they find out something about themselves, and I want to watch it."

"Roy. Favourites?"

"Favourites." Keane had his arms folded and had not moved for 4 minutes. "That is not the question."

"Then what is?"

"63 games." He unfolded his arms, which for him is a speech.

"Premier League, Champions League, both cups, and they are top of all of it in August. That squad list is due on Monday and it is 25 names, and there are more than 25 footballers at that club who have won something this year."

He looked down the desk. "Somebody very good is going to be told on Monday that he is not playing in Europe. That is where it goes wrong for teams like this. It has never gone wrong on the pitch. It goes wrong in a corridor on a Tuesday."

"You think he handles that badly?"

"I think he is 29," Roy Keane said, "and I have never seen him have to do it before."

Sarah had come back in with her coat still on and watched the last of it over my shoulder.

"That is the only thing anybody has said all night that is worth writing down."

"I know."

"I have got 25 names and a fixture list with 63 games on it." She put the folder on the table. "Monday is going to be the hardest hour you have had here and it will not be about football."

Neville had drawn something on the desk by then and Jones had a camera on it.

"Talk me through it."

"Right, this is the bit I actually care about." Neville was doing the thing with the pen. "Palace play a 4-3-3 and it starts with Rúben Neves. He takes it off the back 4, he turns, and he plays forward. He is 21 and he is the best in this league at it and it is not close." He drew 2 circles. "Now. Dortmund will put Witsel on him and Inter will put Brozović on him, and Brozović is horrible in the best possible way. So the ball has to come out somewhere else."

"And it does not?"

"It does. That is my point." He tapped the second circle.

"It comes out through Achraf Hakimi. That boy is 19, he won the Golden Ball at a World Cup 6 weeks ago, and he plays right back for Crystal Palace, and if you take Neves away all you have done is give Hakimi 40 yards of grass. Dortmund know that better than anybody, because Dortmund had him signed in June and he changed his mind."

"He did what?"

"Loan agreed. He rang them and said no." Neville put the pen down. "That is not a fairytale either. That is a 19-year-old picking the club he thinks is going further."

Bzz.

"Boss." Marcus had his phone up. "That last bit is already clipped. 300,000 views in 6 minutes and it is climbing."

"Which bit?"

"The bit where he says Achraf chose us over Dortmund. It has gone out in Germany with subtitles."

He turned the middle screen round.

"Number 1 in the United Kingdom. 3rd worldwide, above the draw itself. 41,000 a minute with our name in it and it has not come down since the second ball. Our post is at 90,000 in 14 minutes."

"Saying what?"

"Mostly working out flights. There is a thread on ours called SAN SIRO that is 40 pages deep and the draw finished 11 minutes ago." He scrolled. "Inter have posted a photograph of Ivan in a black and blue shirt with no caption on it. 40,000 likes. Dortmund have posted the group and Wir sehen uns im September."

"Which is?"

"See you in September."

Ivan Perišić was 6 feet away and did not look up from his phone.

"And the odds?"

"That is the bit." Marcus turned the third screen round. "Palace 5 to 6 to win the group. Dortmund 15 to 8, Inter 4s, PSV 20s. And they have shortened us to 16s for the whole thing."

"16s to win it."

"16s to win it, boss, in our first season, in August." He put the phone face down. "In March 2017 you could get 500 to 1 on this club winning a domestic cup."

Nathan came over with his own phone out. "8,900 registrations for Dortmund away in 70 minutes. Site went down for 4 of them. Memberships are 1,400 since 5 o'clock, and that is an hour, not a season."

Steve Parish rang at 5 to 6 from a room with 400 people in it.

"Did you see it? You saw it."

"I saw you sat 2 off Pérez."

"Danny, listen. Listen." He was somewhere with a hard floor and I could hear heels going past. "Rummenigge came over. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge came across a carpet in front of 60 photographers and shook my hand, and do you know what he said? He said we watched the Super Cup at the training ground and my players did not enjoy it. That is what he said. To me."

"Steve."

"No, hang on, because..." He stopped. "2010. I was in a room with 4 other men and a lawyer and we were working out whether this club could pay its ground staff in March. March. And they have just put our badge on a screen next to Barcelona's and read 4 trophies out."

"Steve."

"Sorry. You are busy. Are the lads alright?"

"They are fine. Sakho got them up on their feet."

"Course he did," he said, and hung up on the word.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.