Chapter 530: The Emirates II
The match settled. Arsenal pushed. Palace absorbed. The shape held.
In the thirty-fourth minute, the counter-attack came.
Kovačić received from Dann under pressure from Ramsey.
He turned the Welshman with the hip-drop, the same move he had used against Xhaka in the first leg, the same move he had used against Gross at Brighton, the movement that was becoming as identifiable as Zaha’s step-over or Rodríguez’s outside-of-the-boot pass. He carried the ball ten yards, drawing Mustafi out of position, and looked up.
Eze was running. Not the cautious, positional run of a player fulfilling a tactical instruction. The run of a boy playing on the pitch he had dreamed about since he was six years old, his legs carrying him faster than the tactical plan required, his eyes locked on the space behind Koscielny that was opening like a wound because the thirty-two-year-old’s legs could not keep pace with a twenty-year-old’s fury.
Kovačić played the pass. Eze collected it on the run, his first touch pushing the ball forward into the space, his body already angled towards goal. Čech came out.
Eze shifted the ball to his left foot, the foot that Danny Walsh had described in a scouting report eighteen months ago as "capable of things that the right foot has not yet imagined," and he curled it around the goalkeeper and into the far corner.
The ball hit the net at the same moment that two thousand Palace fans in the upper tier of the Emirates produced a sound that had no right to exist in a stadium where they were outnumbered thirty to one.
Arsenal 1-1 Crystal Palace. Eze. 34 minutes. Aggregate: 1-2 Palace.
Eze didn’t celebrate. He turned away from the goal, his face blank, his arms at his sides. Not the performative no-celebration of a player making a gesture. The genuine restraint of a boy who still loved this club. Who had grown up in this club’s academy.
Who still owned an Arsenal shirt that hung in his wardrobe in Croydon because he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. This was not Tottenham.
When he had scored at Wembley in November, he had cupped his ears at the Spurs fans with the gleeful, undisguised contempt of a boy who had been rejected at fourteen and had turned the rejection into fuel. Arsenal was different. Arsenal was home. You don’t celebrate when you score in the house you grew up in.
But his teammates didn’t care about the distinction. Zaha reached him, grabbed his shoulders, shook him, and shouted something into his face that made Eze smile despite himself.
Benteke lifted him. Navas, who had been at Manchester City and understood what it meant to play against a club that still lived in your chest, put his hand on the back of Eze’s neck and held it there.
On the touchline, I allowed myself one nod. Not a fist pump. Not a celebration. A nod. The tactical plan had worked. The counter-attack had come. And the boy they threw away had come back and scored.
Half-time. 1-1. Palace leading 2-1 on aggregate.
In the dressing room, Tomás was in his corner. The Netflix camera was rolling. I did not think about it.
"The structure is working. Arsenal are getting frustrated. Wenger will throw everything at us in the second half. Giroud is coming on. They’ll go direct. James and Scott, you deal with Giroud. You’ve done it before. You’ll do it again."
I looked at Eze. "Ebere. What you just did. That’s not the end. That’s the beginning. Arsenal are going to push. The spaces behind their defence are going to get bigger. You’re going to get more chances. When they come, take them."
I looked at Mili. "Luka. You haven’t played a competitive match in three weeks. How do you feel?"
"Like I’ve been waiting three weeks to play a competitive match."
"Good. Because the next forty-five minutes are going to be the hardest forty-five minutes of your season."
"I know. That’s why I’m smiling."
He was smiling.
The Serbian, who rarely smiled, who treated football with the serious, workmanlike dedication of a man who had grown up in Belgrade and had learned that joy was a luxury and professionalism was a necessity, was sitting on a bench at the Emirates with a smile on his face and tape on his calves and the look of a man who had been given exactly the match he wanted.
The second half was a siege.
Arsenal attacked with the desperation of a club that was about to be eliminated from a cup semi-final by Crystal Palace.
Wenger had made the change: Giroud for Lacazette, the aerial threat, the percentage football, the long balls and crosses that were the last resort of a team that had run out of ideas on the ground. The Emirates was deafening. Sixty thousand people willing the ball into the net with every breath.
Pope was extraordinary. The twenty-five-year-old who had been third choice in August was playing the match of his life. In the fifty-second minute, he tipped a Ramsey volley over the bar with a hand that moved faster than the eye could track.
In the fifty-sixth, he caught a Giroud header at full stretch, the ball stuck to his gloves, his body landing on the six-yard line with the composed certainty of a goalkeeper who had found his level and was not going to be dislodged from it.
In the sixty-first minute, Arsenal won a penalty.
Wan-Bissaka, who had been immaculate all evening, who had made four tackles and two interceptions and had been the best right-back on the pitch, caught Monreal’s ankle in the box. It was a foul. It was obvious. The referee pointed to the spot without hesitation.
The Emirates erupted. This was it. The equaliser on aggregate. The moment that would turn the tie, that would give Arsenal the momentum, that would send sixty thousand people into delirium.
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Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Readerdude1069 for the support.