Chapter 894 - 894: Permanent

Bouknadel is 1,400 miles from that pitch. 41 boys, 60 beds, 11 of them who had never slept in a room on their own, and it opened on the 11th of August and 2 went home inside 9 days because they were 11 years old and they wanted their mothers.

I got Michael Cooke on the way in.

"Does Ellis know about Bouknadel?"

"He gets the photograph."

"What photograph?"

Tk. Cooke turned his cap over in his hands.

"Rachid sends one every Friday. Me and Gary have had it since August." He put the cap back on. "I put it in the under 23s group about 8 weeks ago, because Connor asked me what the Morocco thing was, and 14 lads have had a picture of 41 Moroccan boys land every Friday since, and I did not think it needed mentioning to you."

"It did not."

"No." He looked down the pitch at the 2 of them. "But he has been looking at it for 7 weeks, and tonight he is stood in front of the biggest terrace in Europe and the number in his head is 41."

Dinner was at 9 in a room with the chairs too close together, and Deano had got something off a steward and had been sat on it for 3 hours.

"There is a prison in this stadium."

"There is not."

"There is a prison in this stadium," Deano said, "with cells, underneath, and there is one for the home and one for the away."

"Why are there 2?"

"Because they built it in 1974 and they were not stupid."

Michael Olise is 16 and he wanted to know whether anybody has ever actually been put in it.

Nya Kirby wanted to know whether you get let out at full time or whether you miss the trains.

Alexandre Pato said something in Portuguese, laughed at it on his own for a while and would not translate it, and I have asked him twice since.

James Rodríguez put a fork down.

"In Colombia the prison is for the referee."

That went round the room and came back twice, and Deano spent the rest of the meal insisting he had never said the word dungeon.

The press conference is not optional. It is in the regulations, the head coach and one player, the day before, and it was at half 8 in a room with a black and yellow wall behind the table and a jug of water nobody touched.

Lucien Favre went first and did 11 minutes. He had Mönchengladbach for 4 years and Nice for 2 and he has been in this job since May, and he answers a question the way a man gives evidence, in order, looking at the person who asked it.

I did 20. 6 came in German through a translator, 4 of the 6 were about Ellis Cartwright, and one was from a man from Bild.

"Is it true that Crystal Palace employs somebody to telephone released players?"

"It is true."

"Who?"

"A member of staff."

"What does it cost the club?"

"3 hours a week," I said, and the room laughed, and that is the first time in 15 months I have made a press room laugh and I was not trying to.

The last question came from a man at the back who had not written anything down all night.

"Mr Walsh. Borussia Dortmund were 4 weeks from bankruptcy in 2005."

"I know."

"Crystal Palace went into administration in 2010."

"We did."

"Both clubs are top of their league in October 2018." He had a pen he had not used. "Is there something clubs like ours know that Bayern Munich does not?"

Tk.

I have been asked about 900 questions in press conferences and about 6 of them have been good ones.

"I do not know that it is something you know," I said. "I think it is something you cannot forget.

"There will be people in that stand tomorrow who put money in a bucket in 2005. There are people at Selhurst Park who did the same in 2010. They are the same people, they are 400 miles apart, and neither lot has ever believed a football club is a permanent object.

"I do not know whether that makes you better at football. It makes you louder."

He wrote it down. It is the only thing he wrote down all night.

Nathan came into the hotel lobby at 10 with 2 Germans and a cardboard box.

He had been in a bar off the Strobelallee for an hour, the one where about 400 of ours had got to at 6 and where they normally do 40 people on a Tuesday, and 20 of The Unity had turned up at half 8 with a crate and had stayed.

The 2 in the lobby were about 30. One of them had a bag of scarves.

"For the players. 300 made. No money."

"That is a lot of scarves."

"We had 4 weeks." He got one out. Both badges on it, an eagle one end, and the year on the back was 1905 and 1909, which is theirs and ours, and somebody had checked. "One thing. Can I ask you a thing."

"Go on."

"Your supporters tomorrow. What did they pay?"

"42 pounds."

He said something to the other one in German and the other one pulled a face.

"That is about 47 euros. We pay 16 to stand." He was not annoyed with me and he made sure I knew it. "We have been arguing with our own board for 15 years about this and we do not stop arguing because it is a European week. If your people were charged badly by anybody, we will say so tomorrow on the tribune, in front of 66,000, and it will be in the newspapers on Thursday."

"UEFA set it. Not us and not you."

"Then we put UEFA on the banner." He put the scarf back in the box. "Better for everybody."

Terry Dolan came through that lobby at 20 past 10 with a scarf round his neck he had owned for 90 minutes, on his way to a room 4 streets away, and Nathan got 9 words out of him and put all 9 in the email.

"They have got a gateman who is 74. Tell Ron."

I ate at half 10 with Sarah and Rebecca in a restaurant with 9 tables and 3 of them used.

Rebecca had her list. 4 men amber, nobody red, Grealish cleared for an hour.

Sarah had the referee, the arrival window, the anthem protocol, and a note that the tunnel there is 40 metres long and comes out at the corner, which is 25 seconds of walking in front of a crowd before anybody gets near a ball.

"How long have you had this hotel?"

"June."

"We did not know the group in June."

"We knew there would be one, and a group has 3 away matches, and 3 away matches need beds." She moved a glass. "I let 2 go in September."

"And Milan?"

"Milan is 5 hotels and I am not discussing Milan."

Then for about 40 minutes neither of them said one word about football. Rebecca's sister has had a baby and it is called Nell and there are 31 photographs of her on a phone and we looked at most of them. Sarah has been reading a book about the Ruhr since the draw came out and had 3 things in it that neither of us knew, one of which is that the lights on those winding towers were an art project in 1998 and the city hated it for about a year.

I sat in a restaurant in Germany at 11 at night with the 2 people who have run my working life for 15 months and we talked about a baby called Nell.

Tim Krul was in the lobby afterwards with a coffee and no reason to be there.

"You are up late."

"I do not sleep before matches I am not in." He had his feet on the bar of the chair. "I have been like that since I was 24 and it is worse than playing."

"Do you want to be in it?"

He thought about it properly, which is why I asked.

"I want Nick to have a bad 20 minutes and then a good 70. That is the honest answer, every second goalkeeper in Europe would give you the same one, and about 4 of them would say it out loud."

He drank some of it.

"Can I say something about the boy at right back."

"Go on."

"He has been out on his own after every session for 5 weeks and I have watched about 12 of them from a window." Krul put the cup on the arm of the chair. "Do not say anything to him tomorrow. Not a word about Sancho and not a word about that stand.

"There is nothing left you can give him, and if you give him something now he will think you are worried."

I went up at 20 past 11 in a lift that stopped at every floor because somebody had leaned on it.

Bzz.

Emma. 23:19.

Aisha made me do a whole hour on Dortmund today and I did not have to leave the room once, because you are not a Palace story tonight, you are a Dortmund story.

I have talked about your football match on national radio for 60 minutes and it was completely legal and I am furious that it took a German football club to let me do it.

I read that 3 times.

You have got 24,000 people in chairs. It will be quieter than they are telling you for 20 minutes.

Then it will not be.