Chapter 406: Glad All Over

The team meeting was short and sharp. The players were gathered in the video analysis room, the lights dimmed, the screen glowing with the Stoke City defensive shape I had spent hours dissecting. I stood at the front, the remote in my hand, and walked them through it.

“4-2-3-1,” I said, clicking to the first slide our formation, the positions marked in red, the pressing triggers highlighted in yellow.

“Gegenpress. High line. We win the ball back within five seconds of losing it, or we don’t press at all we reset and go again. There is no in-between.” I clicked again.

“Stoke will set up in a 4-4-2. They’ll sit deep. They’ll be physical. Shawcross and Zouma in the middle, tight, aggressive, looking to win headers and bully our forwards. The full-backs will tuck in. The midfield will be compact. They want us to play in front of them, to get frustrated, to go long. We will not do that.”

I clicked to the starting eleven. The room went still.

“Hennessey in goal.” Wayne gave a single, firm nod.

“Back four: Wan-Bissaka, Konaté, Sakho, Chilwell.” I looked at the defenders. Sakho was leaning forward, his massive forearms resting on his knees, his eyes locked on the screen. Konaté, beside him, was perfectly still, absorbing everything.

Wan-Bissaka’s face was unreadable, as always the boy was twenty years old and had the composure of a man who had been doing this for a decade. Chilwell was bouncing his knee slightly, the only outward sign of the nervous energy coiled inside him.

“Double pivot: Neves and Milivojević.” Neves looked up briefly, his dark eyes calm, a faint smile playing on his lips. Milivojević cracked his knuckles. Neither said a word.

“Attacking three: Townsend on the right, Zaha on the left.” Zaha straightened in his chair, a flash of something fierce and hungry crossing his face. Townsend nodded, his jaw set. “And in the number ten position…” I paused, just for a beat. “James.”

James Rodríguez, who had been sitting at the back of the room in his characteristic languid pose legs crossed, head tilted slightly, the posture of a man who had played in World Cup quarter-finals and Champions League finals and was not easily impressed looked up. His brown eyes met mine.

He gave a single, slow nod. The room felt the weight of it. A man who had played for Real Madrid, who had scored one of the greatest goals in World Cup history, was nodding at a twenty-eight-year-old from Moss Side. And he meant it.

“And up top,” I said. “Christian.”

Benteke leaned back in his chair, a quiet, satisfied look on his face. He had been the first-choice striker for the five-match run last season, the man who had scored the brace at Anfield that had started it all. He was hungry to prove that was not a fluke.

“Stoke will be physical,” I said, my voice dropping, harder now, the coach’s voice, the voice that left no room for doubt.

“They will try to bully you. They will try to disrupt your rhythm. They will put the ball in the air and they will run at you. Let them. Absorb it. Be patient. And then, when the moment comes, when the press clicks, when the space opens be ruthless.” I looked around the room. “This is our home. This is our ground. And today, we show the Premier League exactly who we are. Any questions?”

Silence. The good kind of silence. The silence of a team that is ready.

[Squad Morale: VERY HIGH. Player Focus Rating: 9.4/10. Team Cohesion: 87%. All physical readiness indicators are green. No injury concerns. Optimal conditions for a high-intensity gegenpress. Note: Benteke’s sprint data in the final pre-season session was the best of his career. He is ready.]

—

Two hours later, I walked through the corridors of Selhurst Park, and the noise hit me before I even reached the tunnel.

It was a sound that started somewhere deep in the ground, in the foundations, and rose upwards through the concrete and the steel until it filled every corridor, every stairwell, every inch of the old stadium.

Twenty-five thousand, four hundred and eighty-six people. A sell-out. The first sell-out on an opening day in over a decade.

I had arrived at the ground ninety minutes before kick-off, and even then the streets around the stadium had been heaving. Holmesdale Road was a river of red and blue, a slow-moving carnival of scarves, flags, replica shirts the new ones, the classic striped design, everywhere you looked and faces bright with an excitement that bordered on delirium.

The pubs were overflowing, their doors propped open, the sound of singing spilling out onto the pavement.

I saw families: fathers with children on their shoulders, grandmothers in Palace scarves they had owned for thirty years, teenagers in brand-new James Rodríguez shirts with “JAMES 10” printed on the back.

A group of lads outside the Pawsons Arms had a homemade banner that read: “DANNY WALSH’S RED AND BLUE ARMY 7 FROM 7 MAKE IT 8.”

I saw a man selling unofficial t-shirts from a fold-up table: “THE WALSH ERA” printed above the club crest, and below it: “WE’RE NOT HERE TO MAKE UP THE NUMBERS.” He was selling them faster than he could hand them out.

The Holmesdale Fanatics, the ultras group who occupied the lower tier of the Holmesdale Road End, had been planning their display for weeks. As I walked out of the tunnel for the pre-match warm-up inspection, I looked up and saw it.

A giant tifo, stretching across the entire width of the stand. It was a painted image of me, standing on the touchline, one arm raised, pointing forward, the academy tracksuit still on they had kept that detail, a deliberate reminder of where it all started.

Behind the painted figure, the Selhurst Park stands rose in the background, filled with thousands of tiny painted faces, every one of them singing. Across the top of the tifo, in enormous red letters, a single word: “BELIEVE.” And beneath the image, in white: “IN DANNY WE TRUST CPFC EST. 1905.”

I stood on the pitch and stared at it for a long time, the noise of the crowd washing over me like a wave. I felt the hairs on my arms rise. I felt my throat tighten.

The System offered its own assessment, and for once, it felt almost reverent.

[Matchday Atmosphere Analysis: Crowd noise levels at Selhurst Park are currently registering at 94 decibels.]

[This is the highest pre-match reading ever recorded at this ground.]

[The Holmesdale End is at full capacity 47 minutes before kick-off. For context, the average Premier League ground reaches peak noise at kick-off. Selhurst Park has exceeded its peak 47 minutes early. This is not a normal football atmosphere. This is an event.]

[Historical Note: Crystal Palace FC were founded in 1905. In 112 years of existence, they have never won a major trophy. They have reached one FA Cup final (1990, lost to Manchester United).]

[They have never qualified for European football until you took charge. The fans in this stadium are not just excited. They are experiencing something their club has never given them before: genuine, legitimate hope. Do not underestimate the power of that. And do not waste it.]

I walked back into the tunnel, my heart hammering. The players were lining up, the Stoke City players opposite them, the match officials checking their watches.

The tunnel at Selhurst Park is narrow, cramped, nothing like the grand, wide tunnels at the Emirates or Old Trafford.

The two teams stand shoulder to shoulder, close enough to smell each other’s muscle rub. It is intimidating by design. The noise from the crowd was a physical force that vibrated through the walls.

I looked at my players. At their faces. At the fire in their eyes. Sakho, a mountain of calm authority, his hand resting gently on the head of the mascot beside him. Konaté, his young partner, stared straight ahead, his jaw set like granite.

Neves, loose and relaxed, rolling his neck, a faint, almost private smile on his face the smile of a man who knew he was about to do something special.

James Rodríguez, his collar popped, his eyes half-closed, the picture of cultivated nonchalance but I could see his left hand clenching and unclenching at his side, the only tell that even he felt the electricity of this place.

Zaha, perfectly still, a coiled spring, his eyes already fixed on the rectangle of green light at the end of the tunnel. And Benteke, at the front of the line, the captain’s armband on his sleeve for the day in Dann’s absence from the starting eleven, his chest rising and falling with slow, controlled breaths.

I looked up at the banner the Holmesdale Fanatics had unfurled across the stand, visible even from here through the tunnel’s narrow mouth. “IN DANNY WE TRUST.”

The referee’s whistle sounded. The line began to move. The noise doubled, tripled, became something that was no longer sound but sensation, a wall of pure, concentrated belief that hit you in the chest and didn’t let go.

[Match Status: Crystal Palace vs Stoke City. Premier League, Matchday 1. 12th August 2017. Kick-off imminent.]

[Formation: 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress. High defensive line. Aggressive counter-press. Press triggers active on opponent’s centre-backs and holding midfielder.]

[Manager Record: P7 W7 D0 L0. Goals For: 25. Goals Against: 2. Win Rate: 100%.]

[Current Premier League consecutive wins record from start of appointment: 7 (level with Pep Guardiola, 2016). A win today sets a new record.]

[Status: Ready.]

I took a deep breath. I stepped out of the tunnel, into the light, into the noise, into the heart of the storm. Twenty-five thousand voices hit me like a thunderclap. The grass was impossibly green.

I took a deep breath. I stepped out of the tunnel, into the light, into the noise, into the heart of the storm. Twenty-five thousand voices hit me like a thunderclap. The grass was impossibly green.

The sky was a pale, perfect blue. The flags were a blur of red and blue and gold, rippling in the warm August air.

Somewhere in the Holmesdale End, a drum began to beat: that drum, the one that had been the heartbeat of this club for decades and then the clapping started, rhythmic, thunderous, twenty-five thousand pairs of hands in perfect unison, and the song rose up from the stands like something ancient and unstoppable:

“I’m feelin’… glad all over… yes I’m… glad all over…”

It rolled around the stadium in waves, from the Holmesdale to the Arthur Wait, from the Whitehorse Lane End to the Main Stand, every voice raised, every face lit with a joy that was almost ferocious. “Glad All Over.” The anthem.

The song that had echoed around this ground since the 1960s, the song that had soundtracked every triumph and every heartbreak in Crystal Palace’s long, stubborn, beautiful history. And now it was soundtracking this a new season, a new squad, a new beginning.

I walked to the technical area, took my position, and looked out at the pitch. Eleven men in red and blue stripes. My men. My team. My club.

The song was still ringing in my ears, still vibrating in my chest, and I realised, with a clarity that cut through the noise and the nerves and the weight of everything that had led to this moment, that I knew exactly how they felt.

I am also glad all over.

***

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