Chapter 915 - 915: Proving Grounds

2-0 at half time. Kovačić took the ice off and put it back on again.

"Luka is 33," he said, to nobody. "Look at him. He runs like he is 22. He runs for everybody."

Luka Modrić was stood on the halfway line on the screen with his hands on his hips, looking up at the scoreboard.

Marcelo got 1 back after the break. Rodríguez was up off the table with both fists before it had hit the net, shouting something in Spanish I did not catch, and Kovačić grabbed his arm, and the 2 of them stood there in front of the television holding on to each other.

Modrić hit the post.

Kovačić put both hands on his head.

Then Suárez got above Varane and headed the 3rd.

Rodríguez sat down. Kovačić stayed standing a second longer and then sat down next to him.

Suárez scored the 4th 8 minutes later and neither of them moved at all.

When Arturo Vidal came off the bench and made it 5, Rodríguez picked up his pasta, looked at it, and put it down again.

"Messi is not even playing," he said. "His arm is broken. He is at home with his arm."

"Tomorrow, Julen," Kovačić said.

"Tomorrow."

"He was good to me. In the summer, when I wanted to leave, he was good about it."

"He rang me when I went," Rodríguez said. "He had been my coach 3 weeks. He did not have to ring me."

They sat and watched the Barcelona players go round the pitch applauding their own crowd. After a while Rodríguez turned his head and looked at me, sitting there with my coffee.

"Boss." He did not take his eyes off the screen. "On Sunday, when they sang about your father. Did you think about going? Leaving this?"

"No."

"Good," James Rodríguez said, and picked the pasta up again, and this time he ate it.

Real Madrid sacked Julen Lopetegui the next afternoon. It came up on my phone in the car park. 30 seconds later James came out of the gym and saw my face. He nodded once and went back in.

The silver Astra came in through the gate at 20 past 8 on Tuesday morning.

Michael Cooke was driving. There was a lad in the passenger seat in a black tracksuit with a Hampton and Richmond Borough kit bag on his knees, holding it with both arms. Ron had the barrier up before the car reached it, and the lad got out on his own before Cooke could get round to open his door.

He was taller than the photograph in his file. He looked at the building, and at the pitches behind it, and at me.

[DION ASARE. CA 96. PA 152.]

Ellis Cartwright, who had scored at Old Trafford 9 days before, reads 148.

"Morning, Dion," I said.

"Morning." He shifted the bag on his shoulder. "Where do I go?"

"With Michael."

He went with Michael, round the back of the building towards pitch 3, and Gary Issott came out of the academy block with a mug in his hand and walked with them without a word, and did not look at me once.

Ron shut the barrier behind the Astra.

"That is the 33rd," he said.

"That is him."

"Taller than I thought." Ron picked his flask up off the ledge. "They always are, when they come back."

2 hours later I was on the 10.30 out of King's Cross with 18 footballers and a cup to defend, and Bray had the team sheet on the table between us with his pen on it and was not happy.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Krul. Ward, Sakho, Konaté, Mitchell. McArthur, Kirby, Olise. Bowen, Blake, Semenyo.

Bench: Fletcher, Tuanzebe, Højbjerg, Grealish, Townsend, Cartwright, Eze.

"Kids," he said, tapping it.

"Footballers. McArthur has been in this league 8 seasons. Sakho has played for France. Krul was at a World Cup."

"And Kirby is 17 and Olise is 16 and Semenyo is 18."

"Kirby scored at Bristol City. Olise made 2 against Newcastle." I turned the sheet round to face him. "Every one of those has trained with the first team every day since August, Bray. If they cannot go to the Riverside in the cup and play, I have been lying to them since the summer."

Bray looked at it for a long time.

"Pulis," he said.

"I know."

"He will put 7 foot of centre half on Nya Kirby and kick the ball at him for 90 minutes."

"Then Nya will find out what that is like," I said, "on a Wednesday in October in the Carabao Cup, and not in February in the Champions League."

2 tables down, Nya Kirby had his headphones on and was asleep against the window with his mouth open.

The Riverside was half full on a Wednesday night in the Carabao Cup, and every one of them was making noise. "BORO. BORO. BORO." It came off the East Stand in a flat Teesside roar and bounced round the empty seats.

Tony Pulis came out bareheaded, in a black club tracksuit, and our lot in the corner, 5 hours on a coach to get there, spotted him before the teams were out.

"TONY, TONY, WHERE'S YOUR CAP?"

He stood and let them sing it 3 times. Then he took the cap out of his pocket and put it on, and they cheered him like he still worked for us.

He shook my hand, once, and went back to his area.

PRRRRP.

Pulis teams come at you the way Bray said. Long and early into the channels, George Friend bombing on from left back, and every throw in our half going into the box like a corner. Mamadou Sakho headed everything. He headed it and pointed and shouted in French, and headed the next one, and after 20 minutes the Boro end started booing him every time he went up for one.

"MERCI!" Sakho shouted at them, after the 6th. "MERCI BEAUCOUP!"

Tyrick Mitchell won his first 4 headers against a man 4 inches taller. He lost the 5th. It dropped on the edge of our box, and Lewis Wing met it on the half volley and put it in the top corner past Tim Krul.

1-0.

"BORO. BORO. BORO."

[LEWIS WING. CA 108. PA 129.]

3 seasons ago Lewis Wing was playing for Shildon in the 9th tier. I thought about pitch 3 at Beckenham, and who was on it.

Mitchell came past my area on the way back with his fists clenched.

"My fault."

"You won 4."

"I lost 1."

"Then win the next 4," I said, and he did.

PRRRP. Half time, 1-0 down.

In the dressing room Nya Kirby had his head in a towel.

"Saville is on me every time," he said, through it.

"I know."

"Every time I turn, he is there."

"Then do not turn." I sat down next to him and waited for the towel to come off. "Let him come. Play it back to Jamie first time and go past him on the outside. Jamie gives it straight back." I looked across the room. "Michael. When Nya gets past Saville, where are you?"

Olise was doing his laces up with his tongue out.

"Behind Friend," he said. "He goes up. There is nothing behind him."

"Then be there."

4 minutes into the second half Kirby got it with George Saville coming, and did not turn. He played it back to McArthur first time, went past Saville on the outside, and McArthur put it straight back into his stride. 17 years old on Teesside, 1-0 down in the cup, and 5 minutes later he did it again, and the 2nd time he looked up and Michael Olise was behind Friend.

Olise took it and waited. And waited, with Friend coming back at him, and then slid it into Jarrod Bowen on the right side of the box.

Bowen hit it across Konstantopoulos into the bottom corner.

1-1.

"GLAD ALL OVER." From the corner, over and over, and louder than the whole of the East Stand.

Bowen ran to Olise, not the corner, and picked him up. Olise looked embarrassed about it.

Boro came at us for 30 minutes after that. George Friend put the ball in our net from a scramble and turned away with his arm up, and the whole ground went up, and the referee had already blown for a push on Krul. Ashley Fletcher got his head on a Tavernier cross 6 yards out, and it looped up and over the bar, and the Boro end had their hands on their heads.

"TIM!" Sakho was screaming. "TIM, YOUR BALL, YOUR BALL."

With 3 minutes left Townsend, who had come on for Semenyo, cut inside and hit it low at the near post and Konstantopoulos got down to it.

PRRRP. PRRRP.

No extra time in this competition any more. Straight to penalties, at the south end, in front of the Boro fans.

4 years ago Tim Krul came off the bench at a World Cup for a penalty shootout. He walked to that goal line bouncing on his toes, slapping his gloves together, and talked to every Middlesbrough player on the way past.

The 1st one went left. Krul went left and pushed it round the post, whump.

"KRUUUUUL."

Bowen scored. Boro scored. Olise scored, and walked back as though it was a training pitch. The 3rd Boro one went low to his right, and Krul got his whole body behind it and lay there on top of the ball.

Blake scored. Boro scored. McArthur's was saved, and he stood on the spot with his hands on his head. Boro scored.

That left Nya Kirby, 17, with the ball under his arm, and the whole south stand behind the goal whistling at him.

Sakho shouted something across from the halfway line. Kirby did not look round.

He put the ball down, took 4 steps back, and put it in the roof of the net. Tchk.

"KIRBY. KIRBY. KIRBY."

The bench was over the advertising boards before the net had stopped moving. Sakho got to him first and picked him up with both arms and shouted French into the top of his head, and then Krul got there and picked up the pair of them.

Pulis came along the touchline and shook my hand again, once, the same as before. Then he went and found Nya Kirby in the middle of all of them and shook his hand as well, and said something to him that made the boy look down at the grass.

"What did he say?" I asked Kirby in the tunnel.

"He said next time I will put 2 on you."

We flew home from Durham Tees Valley at 11. On the tarmac, with the engines going, my phone went twice.

MUM. 23:08.

Mrs Kaur says tell the little one well done with his penalty.

MICHAEL COOKE. 23:10.

Pitch 3, Thursday, 10 o'clock. Bring Gary.