Chapter 892 - 892: Seven

74 minutes. Rodríguez, 30 yards, one touch, dropped in behind Adam Webster with Niki Mäenpää 4 yards too far off his line.

Cartwright did not shoot. The goalkeeper came and Olise was 8 yards to his left, and he laid it across to him with the outside of his boot while he was still running.

Fsst.

2-1.

Michael Olise, 16 years old, first goal in senior football, in front of 3,000 away supporters who had already sung his name for a throw in.

"OLISE. OLISE. OLISE."

He went to that corner and Cartwright got there 2 seconds behind him and the pair of them did not have anything planned, so they stood in front of 3,000 people with their arms out and did nothing at all until Joel Ward arrived and moved them both off the advertising boards.

89 minutes. Nya Kirby, from 22 yards, into the top corner, and he turned round before it landed.

Bristol City 1 Crystal Palace 3.

Lee Johnson shook my hand and held it.

"My dad managed and I have been round this game since I was 16," he said. "That is the best young side in this country by a distance and I have just had it on my own pitch. We pressed them for 35 minutes and not one of them hid, and the ones who did the damage were 16, 18 and 19."

It was 20 past 11 by the time that car park emptied.

Michael Steele was at the back of the coach with a holdall and a tea in a paper cup. I have not asked him a thing since the 5th of September, and I asked him then.

"Croydon."

"Yes."

"How many times?"

That man has been coaching goalkeepers for 21 years and he answers the question you ask him and nothing either side of it.

"3."

"You said 1."

"I said I would go Wednesday. I went Wednesday." He drank some of the tea. "Then I went again."

"And?"

"First time I sat in a car park at a distribution centre on Purley Way for an hour and 20 and he walked past the car and did not see me. I did not get out."

"Why not?"

"Because I had nothing to say to him yet."

Bzz. Somebody's phone in the dark on the other side of that coach, and 2 of the boys laughing at whatever was on it, and then quiet again.

"Second time was a Sunday. Pitch off Mitcham Road with a rope round it and about 30 people watching. He is in goal for a side called Waddon Rovers who are 3rd bottom of their division."

"Is he any good?"

Michael Steele looked at me for a while.

"He is 18 and nobody has coached him since July 2017, and it is all still in there and none of it works." He put the cup on the wheel arch. "He came for a cross on Sunday that was 2 yards past him. He came for it because when he was 16 somebody in our building taught him to come for those, and nobody has told him anything since."

I looked at the coach wheel for a bit.

"Third time I spoke to him."

"What did he say?"

"He asked me if I was there about the phone call." Steele had the holdall on the tarmac between his feet. "He meant Ron. He put the phone down on Ron in 11 seconds and he has been thinking about it for 3 weeks."

"And you said?"

"I said no."

"That is not true."

"It is not." He did not move his face at all. "I will live with it."

Deano came past with 2 kit skips and a wheel going and said goodnight to both of us.

"He still has the gloves," Steele said.

"Which gloves?"

"Ours. 2017. Initials inside the wrist in marker, which is what they all do at 14 so the kit man does not lose them. He has never bought another pair and he keeps them in a carrier bag under the passenger seat of a Corsa."

Tk.

"Right," I said, and that was all I had.

"Now you want to know what I want."

"Go on."

"Deano's keys to the indoor on a Sunday morning. 7 till half 9, before the under 14s come in. I have asked him, he has said yes, and then he came and told you he had said yes, because that is Deano."

"You do not need me for keys."

"No." Michael Steele picked the tea back up. "The other thing. Do not come down."

"For how long?"

"A month. Maybe longer." He looked out at the far end of that car park. "The minute he sees you stood at the side of it, it is a trial, and then he has got something to lose again. He had that once and he was 17, and it took him 13 months to learn to put a phone down in 11 seconds.

"Let him be bad at it with nobody watching."

21 years of coaching goalkeepers and 15 months in a building with me, and that is the first thing that man has ever asked me for.

"Alright."

"Alright." He picked the holdall up. "You are stood in front of my seat and you have been stood in front of it for 10 minutes."

Bild ran a double page on the Thursday under a photograph of Olise with his arms out at Ashton Gate, and there was a translation of it on my desk before 8.

DIE JÜNGSTEN. The youngest ones. 2 columns of it about a football club in south London with the youngest squad in England, and a line near the bottom that Marcus read out twice.

In Dortmund we say we are the club that gives boys the ball. On Wednesday we will find out who says it and who does it.

Lucien Favre got asked about Ellis Cartwright at a press conference in Brackel on the Thursday and did not give them the answer they wanted.

"You are asking me about 1 player," he said. "They played on Tuesday with a team of children and they won 3-1 away at a Championship club who pressed them, and they have not lost a football match since July. I am not preparing for 1 player."

Kicker put us 3rd in their European power rankings. Ruhr Nachrichten ran a piece counting how many of the 25 we registered with UEFA came through our own building, and got the number right, which nobody in England has bothered to do.

Bournemouth was the hardest of the 3.

11,364 at the Vitality, which is fewer people than we take to some away grounds, and Eddie Howe has coached that side longer than I have coached anybody, and they do not sit in and they never have. Fraser, Wilson, Brooks, straight at us.

Ryan Fraser went outside Ben Chilwell on 34, which about 4 men in this division have managed all season, and put it low across the 6 yard box. Callum Wilson let it run. Steve Cook did not.

Fsst. 0-1.

First time this club has been behind in a league match this season, in the 34th minute of the 7th one, and nobody on that pitch put a head down.

Sarah put a line in front of me at 46.

Fraser has done 6.2km. He has never gone past 10.4 in a match.

51 minutes. Zaha got it on the left with Adam Smith in front of him and 40 yards of grass behind, and he went at him the way he could not go at Kenedy, because there was nobody stood where he was going.

shhk. shhk.

Past Smith. Past Nathan Aké coming across. Asmir Begović got a hand on it and could not hold it, and Christian Benteke was 4 yards away, because he has been arriving in that yard of grass since 2016.

1-1.

Fraser came off on 71 with 9.9 kilometres on him, and Sarah did not say anything and did not need to.

77 minutes. Perišić took it to the byline and put his left foot through it from a yard off the line, flat and hard and about head height, and Benteke got across Cook and headed it down into the ground, which is the hardest ball in football for a goalkeeper and which about a third of centre forwards can do at all.

Dnk.

Up off the turf and into the roof of the net.

Bournemouth 1 Crystal Palace 2.

9 goals in 10 matches and nobody in this country is writing a word about him.

He said 1 thing on that coach and he said it to Rebecca instead of me, and she gave it to me on the Monday.

"Tell him I can do Wednesday."

P7 W7. 19 goals, 2 conceded, 21 points. Manchester City beat Brighton 2-0 and have won 7 out of 7 as well, and they are above us on goals scored by 2.

Ron did his third Wednesday with a flask and the list and got through 9, which takes him to 29 of the 40.

"4 of them asked me about Tuesday before I could ask them anything," he said. "One of them was at Ashton Gate. Paid for his own ticket, went on the train, stood in that corner and sang, and he did not tell anybody in the away end who he was."

"Did he tell you?"

"Only because I rang him." Ron screwed the lid back on the flask. "He said he wanted to watch the ones he came through with. Then he asked me whether Ellis was coping with all of it, and he is the second lad to ask me that, and neither of them has asked me one question about himself."

Marcus got me in the analysts' room on Saturday night before half that coach had emptied.

"2 things and then you are rid of me until Monday. Jadon Sancho is 18, he left Manchester City in August last year because they would not promise him minutes, he has 4 assists in 6, and there is not a defender in England who has played against him."

"And ours is 20."

"Ours is 20 with 34 senior matches, and that is Aaron against Sancho for 90 minutes in front of 81,000 people." He had the second screen up already. "Second thing, and nobody over here has looked at it, because everybody has spent a fortnight on us. Dortmund have played 6, won 6, scored 19."

"That is more than us."

"That is more than us, they are top of the Bundesliga, and on Wednesday they are at home in front of 81,000 with 25,000 of them stood behind a goal."

I sat with that.

"Marcus. How long would it take you to get me every set piece Benítez used on Saturday?"

He had it up before I finished the sentence, and then he worked out why I was asking and stopped being pleased with himself.

"20 minutes, boss." He took his hand off the mouse. "If I can do it in 20 minutes, so can Lucien Favre."

At 7 o'clock on Sunday morning Michael Steele let himself into the indoor pitch with Deano's keys and put a bag of balls down, and I do not know one thing about what happened in there and I am not going to.