Chapter 560: Promos
Monday.
Beckenham at seven in the morning. Training pitch at eight. Milan preparation at nine. Sarah’s tactical session, the final walkthrough, the shape drilled one last time before the squad would stand on the San Siro pitch on Wednesday night and rehearse it under floodlights that eighty thousand people had watched illuminate European football’s greatest matches.
Then, at one o’clock, the circus arrived.
The EFL’s broadcast team pulled into the Beckenham car park in three white vans, trailing cables and lighting rigs and aluminium flight cases that Barry eyed with the territorial suspicion of a man whose kit room was adjacent to the loading bay and who did not appreciate uninvited equipment on his patch.
A producer named Helen, brisk, organised, carrying a clipboard and the particular energy of a woman who had fourteen hours of content to produce and a window of exactly four hours to produce it in, shook my hand and said: "We’ll be fast. We’ll be invisible. We’ll be out by five."
They were not invisible. The Beckenham training ground, which operated on a protocol of controlled access and carefully managed information flow, was suddenly full of people who did not know where the toilets were and who kept walking into David Carter’s analysis suite by accident.
Dennis at the gate processed 17 visitor passes in 40 minutes. Anita, at reception, answered the phone six times to confirm that yes, Crystal Palace were in the Carabao Cup final, and yes, the media day was today, and no, she could not provide Danny Walsh’s personal mobile number to a journalist from talkSPORT who claimed to be "a close friend."
The squad assembled for the photographs at two. The cup final kit was laid out in the dressing room. Macron’s bespoke design for the occasion: the Palace red and blue, sharper than the standard home strip, with gold trim on the collar, the EFL Cup final patch stitched onto the right sleeve, the Wembley date embroidered inside the collar. February 25th, 2018. The date that a hundred and twelve years had been building towards.
Dann picked up the shirt and held it. He turned it over in his hands. He looked at the gold trim. He looked at the date inside the collar. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. His face said everything the cameras needed.
The photographs were professional, controlled, and over in ninety minutes. Squad portraits against a white backdrop. Group shots on the training pitch.
The captain holding the replica trophy, the silver catching the February light, Dann’s hands wrapped around the handles, his face carrying the expression that Helen’s photographer had spent twenty minutes trying to direct and that Dann had produced naturally: the expression of a man who was imagining the weight of the real one.
Individual portraits. Every player. The first team and the senior squad, positioned against the Palace crest, their faces lit, their eyes forward. Sakho, who treated the camera the way he treated everything, with absolute commitment, stared directly into the lens with an intensity that made the photographer step back involuntarily.
Kovačić produced a half-smile that managed to be simultaneously warm and entirely unreadable. Zaha grinned. Rodríguez looked as though he had been photographed ten thousand times before, which he had. Pope looked slightly uncomfortable, which was how Pope looked in every photograph, and which was, according to Steele, "the face of a man who would rather be diving at things."
Tuesday.
Video content. The EFL’s social media team, younger, more informal, equipped with smaller cameras and questions designed to produce clips that would perform on Instagram and Twitter and the platforms where football’s audience was measured in shares and views and the algorithmic approval of an eighteen-year-old in Norwood who ran a fan account with three hundred and forty thousand followers.
The players filmed their segments. Two minutes each. The question that sat at the top of the list: "Crystal Palace have never won a major trophy in a hundred and twelve years. What would it mean to change that?"
The interviews happened. They were professional. They were fine. I will not reproduce them here because the words that players say to content cameras are not the words they say to each other, and the words they said to each other, in the corridor after filming, in the canteen at lunch, in the quiet moments between the scheduled obligations, were the words that mattered.
Dann, to Sakho, in the corridor outside the media room: "Sunday. Whatever happens on Thursday, whatever happens in Milan, Sunday is the day."
Sakho: "I know."
"Are you ready?"
Sakho looked at him. The look of a man who had played in a World Cup and a Champions League final and who was now being asked if he was ready for a League Cup final at Wembley against Manchester City. "I have been ready since I was seven years old, Scott. Every match. Every final. Every moment. I am always ready."
That evening, I made the squad decision for Milan.
Twenty players. Senior players only. No academy. No under-eighteens. No Blake. No Olise. No Kirby. No Morrison. The decision was deliberate and it was non-negotiable and I explained it to the staff at seven o’clock in the meeting room at Beckenham with the whiteboard behind me and the squad list in my hand.
"The San Siro is not a classroom. It is not a development opportunity. It is not a chance to give young players experience of European football." I looked at Sarah, at Bray, at Rebecca.
"The match is a formality on paper. Six-one on aggregate. But the atmosphere will be hostile. The media in Italy have spent the week building a narrative about a comeback. The word ’remontada’ has been on every Italian sports programme since Friday. The Milan ultras believe it. The city believes it. Eighty thousand people at the San Siro will believe it on Thursday night, and I will not put an eighteen-year-old in that environment when the cup final is three days later."
"Blake?" Sarah asked.
"Blake stays in London. He trains with Paddy on Wednesday and Thursday. He is in the cup final squad on Sunday. His legs and his mind are protected for Wembley."
"Olise?"
"Same. Kirby, Morrison, Eze, all of them. The academy players do not travel. The senior squad manages the second leg. The academy squad prepares for the final."
Rebecca nodded. The science agreed. The bodies were protected. The decision was correct.
The Milan squad: Hennessey, Mandanda, Pope. Wan-Bissaka, Ward, Dann, Tomkins, Tarkowski, Konaté, Sakho, Chilwell, Digne. Neves, Milivojević, McArthur, Kovačić. Navas, Townsend, Gnabry, Bowen. Zaha, Rodríguez, Bojan. Pato, Benteke.
Twenty-five players. Every senior professional. No teenagers. No development minutes. No risk.
Wednesday morning. The Rio Ferdinand interview.
Ferdinand arrived at Beckenham at nine. The BT Sport crew set up in the first-floor meeting room, the one with the view of the training pitches, the room where Parish had offered me the permanent job and where the whiteboard still carried the traces of a hundred tactical sessions.
Two cameras. Two chairs. A small table between them with two glasses of water that neither of us would touch. Ferdinand was wearing a navy suit without a tie, the relaxed formality of a former player who understood that the best interviews happened when neither person felt like they were working.
He shook my hand. "Ready?"
"Ready."
***
Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the constant support.