I ran it back 9 more times.
On the 9th the kitchen door opened behind me. Emma came in with her hair in a towel and looked over my shoulder at the screen for about as long as the wide shot lasts. Then she reached past me and shut the lid of the iPad with 1 finger.
"You have a quarter-final tomorrow night," she said. "Go to bed."
I went to bed. I lay on my back in the dark and for once it was not Moscow on the ceiling. It was 2 lines of yellow shirts, 4 and 4, sliding across a pitch together like a gate on a runner, and I was working out how many passes it takes to get a gate to slide too far.
Ron had the barrier up for me at 10 to 7.
Rebecca had beaten me in.
Her board was on the easel outside my office with the whole squad on it in her square capitals, and a line through every man she wanted fresh for the Etihad. She had not waited to talk me through it.
