Chapter 280 - 10 Men II

peep.

"OFF! OFF! OFF!" from the away corner.

The referee was running in with his hand already going round to his back pocket. Before it got there Stokes was on his feet with his shirt over his head. He pulled it off and stood there in his white vest with the shirt balled in one fist.

"Good lad," said the woman in front. "Good lad, Dean."

He did not argue. He held his free hand down to their centre-forward, pulled him up off the grass, and patted him once on the chest. Then the card was up.

Red.

"What is he doing?" Raj said.

"He is going before he is sent."

"Why would he do that? It is 0-0."

"If he lets him go, we are 1 down and need 2. Now we need 1, with 10. And we have got Kanté."

For a second after the card the ground did not make a sound. Then the main stand worked it out, and the Bovril End worked it out a second after the main stand, and 8,000 people stood up and clapped a man for getting sent off.

clatter of the seats tipping up behind me, row after row.

"DEAN-O! DEAN-O! DEAN-O!"

The away corner whistled him every step. He walked straight down the touchline toward us with the shirt in his hand. Marsh was on his feet in front of the dugout with his tracksuit top already half off.

"Yours, Len," Stokes said, as he passed him. "Talk to them."

"Go and get warm, Dean."

Sadler nodded once as he went by. Then he turned to the fourth official and pointed at Marsh.

"Does Stokes miss the next one?" Raj said.

"If there is a next one, yes."

Raj looked at me, and then at the tunnel, where Stokes had gone. "He knew that when he did it."

"He knew."

I had signed him in January to be the fire extinguisher on the wall. He had called himself that, across Margaret’s desk.

Was it worth a semi-final, if we got one? I did not know. He had decided it in a second, at a full run, with his eyes on the man.

The fourth official held his board up. 10 off, 5 on. Reece came off at a jog and shook Marsh’s hand on the line, and the ground stood up again.

"CAP-TAIN! CAP-TAIN! CAP-TAIN!"

Sadler had Marsh by the arm on the touchline for 10 seconds, talking into his ear, and I could not hear a word of it.

Then Marsh walked on. He did not run. He was saving it. He went straight to the wall and started moving men into it by their elbows.

The ground had gone quiet for the free kick, and from 3 rows back I could hear every word.

"N’GOLO, IN. MURPHY, END MAN. TOM, YOUR POST, I HAVE GOT THE WALL."

He had 68 minutes to play, and the referee’s stoppage time on top. He had those minutes in him because of an argument in Dev’s room in March.

I had known for a long time how few that knee had left to give. In March I had taken Dev’s plan off his sheet, a start every third game and 20 minutes when it was safe, and let him pick 6 real ones instead. Dev had counted every minute since.

Since the middle of March he had played 78 of them. The rest were still in that knee.

"Will it last?" Raj said. "The knee?"

"Ask Dev."

"I am asking you."

"It is his knee, Raj. He picks."

The free kick hit the wall. smack of it off Kanté’s back. Maguire put his foot through the rebound and sent it out to halfway, and Marsh was already shouting.

"OUT! ALL OF YOU! OUT TO ME!"

Our back 4 came up to the edge of the box in a straight row, with Marsh standing where Stokes had stood a minute before.

"Now they shut up shop," Raj said.

They did not. Marsh turned round to the 9 of them with both arms up and shouted what Sadler had put in his ear.

"4-3-2! NOBODY DROPS! WE KEEP IT! IF WE HAVE GOT IT, THEY CANNOT SCORE!" He pointed at Kanté. "N’GOLO! BOTH SIDES! YOU ARE 2 MEN NOW!"

Kanté lifted one hand, and went.

"I DO THE TALKING! YOU DO THE RUNNING!"

"What does that mean?" Raj said. "2 men?"

"Watch him. Do not watch the ball. Watch him."

He won it on our left touchline off their winger and gave it to Murphy and ran.

"There," I said. "Now look right."

10 seconds later he was on the right touchline with his foot in again. Their left-back had looked up with all the time in the world, and found Kanté on him.

"He was over there," said Raj. "He was just over there. He is like a fare who gets out at the lights and is stood waiting for you at the next ones."

"He does that all day."

"How?"

"I have never asked him."

We kept the ball. Braithwaite to Maguire, to Marsh, to Kanté, back to Marsh, across to Kettle. Crewe came at it in pairs, and every time a pair arrived it had gone.

"ROSS! YOUR MAN!" Marsh never moved faster than a jog. He did not have to. "GARY, IN! IN! HARRY, STEP WITH ME! STEP!"

The back 4 stepped. Their centre-forward was left offside by himself, and the Bovril End jeered him for it.

"Is this better than having 11?" Raj said.

"No," I said. "But it is better than having 10 men who sit."

peep, peep. 0-0 at half-time. The ground stood and clapped them off, all 10.

Edna turned round with her programme. rustle of it unrolling. "Arthur would have stood on his seat for that," she said. "The red. He would have stood on this seat and clapped till his hands hurt."

"Was that your husband?"

"Arthur. 40 years in this seat. And the Bovril End before that, before it had a roof, till his legs went." She rolled the programme back up. "He would not have believed the roof."

Priya came along the row with her phone in her hand.

"We shut the turnstiles at 20 to 3," she said, sitting down on the step by my feet. "300 locked out on the seawall road. Kieran says some of them are watching from the bus shelter roof. Do you want the other scores?"

"No."

"Sheffield United are..."

"No, Priya." I put my hand up. "If we win, we are in. Whatever is happening at Bramall Lane does not matter till 5 o’clock."

"It matters for where we finish. 5th or 6th. Yeovil or Brentford."

"5 o’clock."

She turned the phone face down on her knee.

"I want them," Raj said.

"You are not getting them either," said Priya. "He has made a rule. I am keeping it for him till 5."

peep. We had the ball for most of the first 6 minutes of the second half.

"TALK!" Marsh was shouting. "I WANT TO HEAR YOU! ALL OF YOU! TALK TO EACH OTHER! N’GOLO, BREATHE! WE HAVE GOT IT, SON, YOU CAN BREATHE!"

clack of studs on a shin pad. A free kick to us, and we kept that as well.

On 51 minutes Mahrez took it off the right touchline and came inside onto his left foot, the way he always does, and hit it. A defender threw a knee at it. thok. The ball went straight up off the knee and dropped 15 yards out, into a space nobody was standing in.

Kanté was running into it. When Mahrez picked the ball up, Kanté had been on the edge of our box.

He went to side-foot it and caught it with his shin. It came off him at an angle nobody meant, bounced twice, and rolled into the corner of the net while their keeper was diving the other way. swish of the side netting.

1-0.

The Bovril End made the noise it makes for a goal, and then a different noise, a sort of question.

"Who was that?" Raj was pulling at my coat. "Who was it?"

"Kanté."

"Kanté does not score."

"He has now."

Behind us somebody was shouting it down the rows. "KANTé! IT WAS KANTé! OFF HIS SHIN!"

"WHO?"

"KANTé!"

"He has not scored all season!" said Frank behind me. "Not one!"

"Sit down, Frank," said the woman in front, without turning round.

"Sorry, Edna."

The second roar came off the covered end bigger than the first, as the people at the back found out who it had been.

"KAN-Té IN THE BOX AND THE TIDE IS COMING IN!"