Chapter 927 - 927: Since April

On Monday morning I picked the team for San Siro, and I picked it for the 1st of December.

"It costs something," Sarah said. "Resting them."

"It costs us a draw at Wembley."

"And Saturday is the league."

"Saturday is the league," I said. "None of Saturday's 11 starts. I want the second team, Sarah. All of it."

She looked at me for a while, and then she wrote it down.

"Ibrahima is going to ask."

"Ibrahima is going to watch it on a laptop at Beckenham with his foot up," Rebecca said from the door. "I will tell him myself."

Ivan Perišić knocked on the frame behind her.

"I want to start," he said.

"You are starting."

He had come in ready to argue it and there was nothing to argue.

"Then do not stay at the hotel on your travel sheet," he said. "And when you hear them, do not open the curtains. They want you to open the curtains."

Nathan put a big glass hotel near the Central Station on the travel sheet that went to the media. The team went 25 minutes the other way, to a hotel on the road out towards the airport, on a coach with no crest on it.

It went off at 20 to 2 in the morning, at ground level on the car park under my window.

BANG.

Every car alarm on that side of the hotel went at once. Then the drums.

Dum. Dum. Dum dum dum.

I did not open the curtain. Through the gap at the edge there was a crowd of them under the street light, in black, hoods up, and then a red flare went up over their heads and the car park turned red and black.

Fsshh.

"PAZZA INTER! PAZZA INTER AMALA!"

Then, slowly, clapped:

"IVAN! IVAN! IVAN!"

Then something short and hard in Italian about the rest of us, for a lot longer.

My door went at 10 to 2. Sarah, in a hotel dressing gown, with her phone.

"Have you looked?"

"Through the side."

"Good. Cartwright has been sat in the corridor since the first 1. Christian is sat with him."

I went out. Half the doors on the floor were open an inch. Ellis Cartwright was on the carpet with his back to the wall and his knees up, and Christian Benteke was next to him in exactly the same position, and neither of them was talking.

I sat down across from them.

BANG.

All 3 of us jumped. Then Benteke laughed, from somewhere deep, and Cartwright laughed too and put his head back against the wall, and I sat with them until the blue lights came.

They came back at 10 past 3 in a car with the engine running, BANG, BANG, BANG, and were gone before anybody reached a window. Ivan Perišić was in the corridor that time, in a T-shirt, with his arms folded.

"Midnight, I said."

"It was 20 to 2."

"They are getting old," he said, and went back to bed.

At breakfast Rebecca showed me the sleep numbers on a sheet she does not show the players. The average was 4 hours and 10 minutes. I looked at it, and at the room, and I did not change the team.

CRYSTAL PALACE: Krul. Hakimi, Sakho, Tuanzebe, Ward. Højbjerg, McArthur, Grealish. Bowen, Blake, Perišić.

Bench: Pope, Tarkowski, Wan-Bissaka, Kovačić, Townsend, Cartwright, Olise.

INTERNAZIONALE: Handanović. D'Ambrosio, de Vrij, Škriniar, Asamoah. Vecino, Brozović. Politano, Nainggolan, Keita. Icardi.

I said 1 thing to them in the dressing room, with their boots on and the noise already coming down the stairs.

"Nobody in this room is the second team tonight. You are the team. Go and show them."

The north end had a choreography up in blue and black across the bottom 2 tiers, with 1 word across the middle in white.

ONORE.

"CHI NON SALTA ROSSONERO È! CHI NON SALTA ROSSONERO È!"

The whole north end jumped, and the concrete under my feet jumped with it.

"Whoever does not jump is a Milan fan," Perišić said to Connor Blake in the tunnel line. "Jump if you want. They will not stop."

They whistled us for 90 minutes. They stopped once, when the announcer read out Ivan Perišić's name, and applauded him, and he stood in the middle of the pitch and looked at the grass.

"INTER! INTER! INTER!"

On 23 minutes Keita came at Achraf Hakimi on our right at a jog. Sarah had said the word to him twice in the dressing room.

2 yards out Keita broke his stride.

Achraf planted. Keita dropped the shoulder, went, and put it across the 6 yard box, and Mauro Icardi got a yard in front of Sakho and headed it in.

Thud.

"ICARDI! ICARDI!"

The whole third ring moved under it. I felt it through the concrete in front of the bench.

Achraf went into the net for the ball himself, ran it back to the centre circle, and clapped his hands at the 10 men round him.

"HEADS UP! HEADS UP, PALACE!" Sakho, to all of them.

On 58 Grealish carried it 30 yards with Vecino hanging off him and found Bowen on the right, and Bowen hit it first time across the box. Connor Blake ran to the near post and took Škriniar with him, and it went through to Ivan Perišić, alone, 8 yards out, in front of the north end.

He hit it with his left foot into the bottom corner.

Fwip.

He turned round and walked back to halfway with his hands by his sides. At the far end of the ground, up in the top tier of the south curve, our end went mad. The north end whistled and applauded him at the same time.

"IVAN! IVAN!"

He came off at 60. Kovačić went on, and the whistling for him lasted the rest of the night, and he asked for the ball every time.

On 70 Spalletti put Lautaro Martínez on for Keita.

[LAUTARO MARTÍNEZ. CONDITION 100%.]

There was not another man on that grass above 80.

On 84 Brozović took it off McArthur on halfway, Nainggolan found Politano, and Politano slid it between Sakho and Tuanzebe. Lautaro was there a step before Sakho was, and hit it low under Krul.

Thump.

2-1.

"LAUTARO! LAUTARO!"

"Up! UP!" Sakho, walking the ball back to the centre circle himself. "6 minutes! UP!"

We had 6 minutes and nothing left in our legs for any of them.

Fweeeeeeeeeet.

Internazionale 2, Crystal Palace 1.

Nobody went down on the grass. My players stood where the whistle had left them, hands on hips. They looked at each other, and then at the scoreboard.

I walked the length of the pitch.

I did not decide to. I was going down the tunnel and then I was not, and I went past their bench and past the north end, with the whistles following me the whole way, to the far end of the ground, and stood under the top tier of the south curve and looked up.

They had been in there since 7. They had come to Milan on a Wednesday in November to watch a match that did not matter, and watched the second team lose it, and watched the run end.

They were still singing.

"DANNY WALSH! HE SAID NO! DANNY WALSH! HE SAID NO!"

I stood there and clapped them. Sakho came and stood on 1 side of me, and Ivan Perišić on the other, and then the rest of them, 1 at a time, the second team, all of them, in a line under that stand, until the stewards came to move us.

Luciano Spalletti was waiting at the mouth of the tunnel when I got back. He shook my hand and held on to it.

"Now you lose," he said, in English. "Now we see the team."

He went to find Ivan Perišić, and I went in to mine.

Marcus was in the dressing room doorway with his phone.

"Dortmund won in Eindhoven," he said. "12 each. Wembley."

It was the quietest I have known that room. None of us had been in it since April.

Ivan Perišić stood up with his shin pads still on.

"I have lost in this stadium," he said. "Many times. Everybody in that north end has watched me lose in this stadium." He looked round the room. "Nobody is crying. Good. Tomorrow you are angry. Saturday you are Crystal Palace again."

He sat down. Mateo Kovačić was the last man to get changed, and I sat down next to him.

"You asked for it every time."

"Of course." He started on his laces. "I want the ball."

On the coach to Linate my phone went twice.

EMMA. 23:52. Come home.

DION ASARE. 23:58. Who was at right back.

I typed: Achraf.

The answer came back before the coach had reached the motorway.

He planted. Friday?

Friday. 8, I sent.

Sarah was in the seat across the aisle with her coat over her knees and her eyes shut. She was not asleep.

"If we had played them," she said. "Rúben and Wilf and Ibrahima. If we had all slept. Would we have won?"

I turned it over all the way to the airport.

"Ask me on the 12th," I said.

Sarah opened her eyes and looked at me across the aisle.

"I will," she said.