Chapter 889 - 889: Aftermath

Michael Cooke came in at 9 o'clock because he said he would.

He did not sit down and he did not take his coat off, and he put a single sheet on my desk with 14 names on it, which is every 18 to 23-year-old in this building who is out of contract in June.

"I have had that sheet since the 1st of August. I was going to bring it to you in April, the way I always do."

"And now?"

"Now I have sat in row 9 of block 126 and watched 1 of them score." He put his cap on. "There are 3 on there I am not sure about, and I have never been not sure about anybody in September in my life."

Marcus had 40 pages on that desk by 20 past 7 and had been up since 4 doing them. I read 6 and told him to give me the rest stood up.

"It has stopped being an English story."

"Go on."

"Gazzetta have put you on the front."

"The back."

"The front, boss." He had it in his hand. "It is a pink newspaper that sells 400,000 copies a day, it is printed in Milan, and this morning a man from Croydon is on the front of it above the fold."

"Saying what?"

"LONDRA. That is the whole headline. 1 word, all capitals, and a photograph of Ivan with his back to the away end." He turned the page round. "Then 3 paragraphs about Inter and 2 about us, and the last line of it says Spalletti had 40 seconds with him before kick off and nobody knows what was said."

"Corriere?"

"Corriere have gone at Spalletti and Tuttosport have gone at the board, because Tuttosport are in Turin and this is a free hit for them." He put it down. "The Italians are not writing about Crystal Palace. They are writing about Internazionale and we are the instrument."

"Spain."

"Marca ran 900 words at midnight called the club that beat us 5-0 has now beaten Inter, and 700 of the 900 are about Real Madrid and not about us. AS put you in a photograph next to Lopetegui with a line between them." He kept going. "El Chiringuito did 26 minutes on it at half past midnight and Nathan has the clip. 4 men shouting over each other at a table with the score on the wall behind them, and 1 of them has got a Palace shirt in his hands."

"Why has he got a shirt?"

"Because it is a show where a man holds a shirt up, boss. It has 900,000 people watching at 1 in the morning."

Tk.

"And the Germans have been the politest and the worst. Bild did Dortmund and put a photograph of you in it. Kicker rang Nathan at half 6 this morning to ask whether you speak German."

"Why would they ask that?"

"They did not say," Marcus said, and he did not say it either, and he had 1 page left in his hand that he had not put down.

"There is 1 more and it is the only 1 that matters. I put it on top on purpose."

Real Madrid drew at Athletic Bilbao on Saturday. They have taken 1 point from their last 2 and they did not look like scoring in either.

Marca ran a second piece at 6 in the morning and it is 1,200 words and Crystal Palace are not in it. It is a list of every manager Florentino Pérez has sacked since 2000 and how long each of them lasted.

There are 12 of them. The shortest lasted 6 months.

Julen Lopetegui has been in that job 14 weeks.

"They are going to sack him," Marcus said.

"In October."

"How do you know it is October?"

"Because Roy Keane said it out loud on a television programme in August and I stood in a canteen in this building and listened to him do it."

Rrrrr.

They all knew. 31 telephones and every one of them had been on since 6, and there is a version of that Wednesday where a football club does 40 minutes of nothing and spends the rest of it reading about itself in 4 languages.

Rebecca had them in at half 10 and out at 10 to 12 and it was the hardest Wednesday since July. Hakimi finished with the under 23s because he came off that pitch on Tuesday with more left in him than anybody, and Rebecca will not have a man walking about.

At 5 to 12 Sarah stood in front of 31 footballers and read 4 lines off a sheet.

"Bournemouth away, Saturday, 3 o'clock. Eddie Howe has been in that job 6 years, which is longer than our manager has been in any job, and they have beaten us twice in 3 years at that ground and 6 of you were here for the second one.

"On the 3rd of October you go to Dortmund and stand in front of 25,000 people who do not sit down for 90 minutes.

"There are 11 days between those 2 things and the 11 days start now."

Clk. She put the sheet down.

"That is all of it. Go and eat."

31 men went and ate and nobody in that canteen said the word Internazionale.

Nathan got me at 2 with a laptop and the thing I had not thought about at all.

"Boss, I need 10 minutes and you are not going to enjoy any of it."

41,000 new followers in 18 hours, which is more than this club added in the whole of 2016. The Cartwright shirt gone in 3 sizes by lunchtime, and we do not hold stock of a squad number 40, because nobody at this football club has ever needed one.

The Dortmund ticket page had 8,900 registrations on the night of the draw. It went through 14,000 on Wednesday morning for 3,000 tickets.

"That is the good half. Here is the other one." He turned the screen. "Ivan's goal has done 31 million views and about a third of that is Italian. Ellis's has done 19 million and about a third of that is not football at all, it is people who have read the line about a released 18-year-old and never watched a match in their lives.

"There is a thread on Reddit with 14,000 comments on it and the top comment is a man explaining the UEFA List B regulation to 9,000 people."

"Is he right?"

"He is right," Nathan said, "and he has got 3 replies underneath telling him he is wrong, and Sarah could settle the whole thing in 1 line and I am not letting her near it."

FYP put out an emergency podcast at 1 in the morning on Wednesday and it is 2 hours and 11 minutes long and 4 people recorded it in somebody's front room in Thornton Heath. Nathan says 40,000 people have listened to it.

The first 9 minutes of that recording is 4 grown men not being able to start it.

Holmesdale.net has a thread called I NEED SOMEBODY TO TELL ME THAT HAPPENED and it is 61 pages deep and the fourth post on it is a man saying he was in the away end at Torquay in 1998.

And the Holmesdale Fanatics put 1 photograph out on Wednesday morning and nothing else.

It is their banner from Tuesday, folded, on the floor of a van. 113 YEARS. WE NEVER STOPPED. No caption.

They started that group in December 2005 and in 2010 they stood outside Selhurst Park with banners while this football club was in administration and Steve Parish was in a room with 4 other men and a lawyer working out whether he could pay the ground staff in March.

8 years.

Ron did his second Wednesday at 2 o'clock with a flask and a list and got through 9 names in 3 hours, which is 2 fewer than the week before, and the reason is that 4 of the 9 wanted to talk about Tuesday.

"1 of them asked me if it was really him." Ron had his glasses off. "He meant Ellis. Same age group, plays Saturday mornings in Beckenham now. He did not believe the name on the television was a boy he used to get changed next to."

He put the list in his coat.

"I told him it was. He went quiet for a bit and then he said good, and he meant it, and he is the only 1 of the 20 I have rung who has asked me a single thing about this football club."

The away corner had the last word and it took them a day.

Curva Nord Milano put a statement out on Wednesday evening. It is 4 lines long, it is in Italian, and Marcus had it translated by half 7.

3 of the 4 lines are about their own board.

The fourth line says that Ivan Perišić played 4 seasons in that shirt, that he was sold against the wishes of people who are still at that club, and that the Curva applauded him at Wembley on purpose and would do it again.

Bravo, Ivan. 31,000 likes on Tuesday night. 140,000 by Thursday.

Sky cleared the 7 o'clock. I watched it in the analysts' room on my own with the sound up, the way I have watched the other 3 this year. Marcus leaves that television on and I have never asked him to stop.

David Jones had his sleeves down and did not bother with an introduction.

"8 matches since the 5th of August. 8 wins. 2 trophies. And on Tuesday night Crystal Palace played the first Champions League match in their 113 year history and won it 2-0 without their best player scoring. I have 1 question and I am going to ask it badly on purpose."

Tap.

CAN CRYSTAL PALACE WIN THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE?

"No," Jamie Carragher said.

"That was quick."

"It was quick because 4 months ago I said no about the Europa League and I was wrong about it in public, so I want to be careful about the reason." Both hands on the desk. "It is not quality. It is 4 away nights in February and March against clubs who have done it 40 times. Ask Tottenham. Ask Atlético. Ask Paris, who have bought 3 teams and have not been past a quarter final. There is a thing that happens to a club the first time it reaches a last 16."

"What is the thing, Jamie?"

"Nobody has ever been able to tell me."

Tap.

PALACE XI v INTER: AVERAGE AGE 24.1. INTERNAZIONALE: 28.4.

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Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.