Chapter 893 - 893: Extra Minutes

Deano would not get on the plane.

He has not flown with the kit since 2011, when a hold got opened in Copenhagen and 3 shirt boxes came off the belt wet, so he went out of Beckenham on a lorry at 6 o'clock on Monday morning with a lad from the laundry and did Dover, Calais and Belgium.

He rang Nathan from the stadium car park at half 8 on Tuesday.

"Tell him the shirts are up."

"Anything else?"

"They have put my skips under a stand with a hosepipe over them," Deano said. "I am dealing with it."

Hnnn.

We went out of Gatwick at 10 past 11 and it is 1 hour 20 minutes in the air. Ellis Cartwright worked out on the runway that it is less time than the coach to Wembley on a Saturday, and told Connor Blake, and Connor Blake told the plane.

Dortmund Airport is about 8 miles east of the city and it is small and new and there were 2 police motorcycles waiting on the apron who did not need to be there and were plainly delighted to be there.

Ssshhh.

Air brakes at every set of lights, the whole way in, and a coach driver called Wolfgang who had done Bayern in April and wanted us to know it.

There is a lot of red brick. There are winding towers standing in the middle of nothing, the ones that used to sit on top of a shaft, painted and lit and open to the public on a Sunday.

Ron was in the seat behind mine with his cap on his knee.

"Gaffer. Is that a pit?"

"It was."

"They have kept the wheel on it."

Wolfgang had the mirror.

"Zollern," he said. "Closed 1966. My grandfather, 31 years."

"Ours went in 1984," Ron said, and then remembered the man was driving and said it louder. "Ours went in 1984."

"And the tower?"

"Gone. Flats."

Wolfgang made a noise at that and did not say anything else for 4 miles.

Ron watched that wheel until the road bent and took it out of the window, and I sat and looked at the back of a seat. I was born in Moss Side in 1989 and my mother's front room faces a road with nothing at the end of it, and I did not say a word to anybody for 25 minutes.

There were about 30 Crystal Palace supporters outside that hotel at 4 o'clock. Not a crowd. 30 of them on a pavement in Dortmund on a Tuesday afternoon, and Nathan went out and stood with them for 20 minutes, because Nathan always does.

Clk.

One had asked for me by name, so I went out at 20 past 4, and the one who had asked for me by name was 24 and had a Corsa in that car park with a Croydon residents permit still in the window.

"You drove."

"Flights went to 340 quid in an hour, gaffer. Me and my brother did Dover and then up through Belgium."

"How long?"

"11 hours. He did Belgium. I cannot do the right hand side of the road."

Rrp. A carrier bag with 4 cans in it that he had not opened, because it was 20 past 4 in the afternoon.

"What is the question?"

"It is not a question." He got something out of the bag. "My dad died in March. He had this on his wall since 1990 and I have been carrying it round since Lyon and I still do not know what to do with it."

A programme from the 1990 FA Cup final. Palace and Manchester United, 3-3, and then a replay we lost 1-0 five days later.

I have been handed about 400 things by supporters in 15 months. Shirts, photographs, a christening card, and once an urn, which I gave back.

"Do you want me to have it?"

"No." He put it under his arm. "I want you to tell me whether it is stupid that I brought it to Germany."

"It is not stupid."

"Right," he said. "That is all I wanted."

Deano got a bag of last season's training tops out of the lorry and gave them to 4 of that 30 and told nobody, and I only know because a groundsman said it to Bray 4 hours later.

Christian Benteke caught me in a corridor at half 5 with a cup of tea he had made himself in a room with a kettle in it.

"Can I have the under 23s Thursday. 20 minutes."

"On what?"

"Heading." He did not sit down. "Not attacking headers. Defending corners. Connor cannot do it and Ellis cannot do it and nobody is ever going to teach them, because everybody spends their life teaching a forward how to score."

He has scored in 6 of the last 8. He asked me for that the way a man asks for a morning off.

I said yes.

A UEFA venue officer met us at the players' entrance at 7 with a laminate round her neck and a clipboard she did not look at once.

"You have the hour. You are the away team, so you had the choice of the slot and you have taken 19:10." She walked backwards up the tunnel while she said it. "The first 15 minutes are open. You cannot close them and I cannot help you. After 15 minutes I take them out myself."

"How many clubs use the whole hour?"

"This season, from 4 visits." She thought about it. "One."

Then we came out of the tunnel and I stopped walking.

Rrrrrr.

The floodlights came up one bank at a time and there was a man on a mower at the far end who did not stop for us, and the whole south end of that stadium had 11 men in high visibility jackets on it and a pallet crane parked on the running track.

They were putting the chairs in.

I have walked into 6 empty stadiums this year and not one of them has made me stand still.

Bray got level with me.

"What are they doing?"

"Bolting seats into the Yellow Wall."

We watched it for about a minute. The crane was lifting a pallet of yellow plastic up to the fourth row and 2 of them were walking it along a gangway on their shoulders, and there was a drill going somewhere in the middle of it and the sound came all the way down the pitch and back.

Vvt. Vvt-vvt.

Marcus went over to the hoarding and got talking to the one who was not carrying anything, and then he waved me down.

The man is called Bernd. He is 58. He has done every European night in that stadium since they finished rebuilding it in 2002, and he had a flask on the hoarding and a pencil behind his ear and he was in no hurry whatsoever.

"You are the English."

"We are."

"UEFA does not allow standing." He said it like a man reading a sign he has read 200 times. "So Tuesday we put them in, Thursday we take them out, and Saturday 24,454 people stand up there again and none of them knows we were here."

"How many seats?"

"9,000 and some." He got the pencil out and did not write anything with it. "The whole ground is 81,365 on a Saturday. Tomorrow it is 66,099. That is 15,266 people we have taken out of this building with a drill."

"How long does it take?"

"2 days, 11 men." Bernd put the pencil back. "The tribune is 100 metres long and 40 high and it is one tier. Nothing else in Europe is one tier like that."

"Is it quieter with them in?"

He looked at Marcus, and Marcus put both hands up and did not answer for him.

"For 20 minutes," Bernd said. "They are standing anyway. A man stands up in front of a chair and the chair is not there. What they cannot do is the cards."

"The display."

"9,000 seats means nobody is where they are supposed to be. So no cards, or bad cards." He picked the flask up. "In 2013 they did it to Madrid. 30 seconds before kick off, everybody holds one up, and the visitors look at it instead of at the match. 4 minutes gone and 1-0."

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, no cards." Bernd shrugged one shoulder and turned round to look at his own stand. "Tomorrow they will just shout."

They did not stop working for the whole hour we were out there, and they were still on it when we went in, and Bray reckons he heard a drill going at 10 to 9.

We did 50 minutes. The cameras got their 15 and the venue officer walked them out herself at 25 past.

Bray did 20 minutes on set pieces at the north end, in front of the section where 2,900 of ours are going, and 4 groundsmen watched every second of it from a tunnel mouth with their arms folded and did not pretend they were doing anything else.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka stayed out afterwards and did 20 minutes on the right hand side doing nothing but turning. Sarah stayed out with him. Neither of them asked me.

I went over at about 10 to 8. It had gone dark, the lights were down to a quarter, and you could hear a bin lorry working somewhere outside the ground.

"That is enough, Aaron."

"2 more."

Thk. Thk.

He did 2 more.

"What is it you are actually doing?"

"Turning on the wrong foot." He was breathing through his nose and not his mouth, which Rebecca has spent a year getting into him. "Sancho comes inside. Everybody says he goes outside because that is what he did at City. He does not. He comes inside 7 times out of 10 and he does it on his left.

"So I turn on the wrong foot until it is not the wrong foot."

"How long have you been at that?"

"Since the draw." He put a ball under his arm. "20 minutes after every session. Sarah has stood in for all of them."

15 months in this job and I did not know.

"Does anybody else?"

"Rebecca. She has to sign the extra minutes off." He started walking. "I did not want it turning into a thing, gaffer."

Ellis Cartwright and Connor Blake came out of that tunnel and stopped about 4 feet from me and did not see me at all.

"Con. How many is that?"

"24,000. It is on the board."

"There were 41 at Bouknadel."

Blake said something back that I did not catch and the pair of them went and got a ball off the rack.

Clk. Clk.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.