2-2. 30 more minutes. A World Cup semi-final at the far end of them.
I did not wait for them to come to me. I walked out into the middle of them and got them into a ring, and some of them could not straighten their backs to stand in it.
I did not shout. There was no shout left in me, and it was not the moment for one anyway.
"Look at them." I nodded across the circle at the white shirts flat on the turf. "Older than us. Less in the tank than us. 30 minutes, and their legs go first. When they go, we go through them. That is the whole game now. Are you with me?"
Sofyan could not get a word out. He grabbed my wrist, grey, wet-eyed, and squeezed, and that was the answer for all of them.
Benatia was already talking before I had finished, low and hard, half in Arabic and half in French. En-Nesyri had his jaw set the way he gets. Bounou banged his gloves together once. They did not need me any more. They needed 30 minutes.
