They came in a wave and would not stop.
For 10 minutes after they levelled, my team did the one thing I had begged them not to do. Chase. Turn. Chase. Backpedal on legs with nothing left in them, while Modrić stood in the middle of it all and moved us about like furniture.
"In front of you," I was screaming, hoarse, out on the paint. "Let them have it in front."
They could not hear me. Nobody could hear anything. 40,000 of my own were making a noise that ate every word before it cleared my teeth.
Somewhere under the din a drum kept time, boom boom boom, steady as a pulse beneath the chaos, and I hung onto it the way a man in the sea hangs onto a spar.
And away to my right, up in their corner, the answer to it.
Smaller than our end, maybe 3,000, and twice as hard. Red and white checks packed tight, and where mine sang, theirs stamped, a chant coming up slow and heavy, ai-mo, ai-mo, ai-mo. A red flare bloomed in the middle of them and hung its smoke over their heads.
