Friday, June 16, 2023Ta' Qali National Stadium6:45 PM
The substitutes warmed up at the south end while the starters worked the north half, and the stadium had been filling steadily since six, the home sections in red and white producing the specific noise of a crowd that knew what the evening was probably going to be but had come anyway.
Demien jogged the touchline with Eze, Gallagher, Phillips, Wilson, and Grealish while the dynamic stretching ran its course, and the pitch under his boots confirmed what yesterday's walkthrough had shown — hard, compact, the ball skipping fast and true across the surface rather than dying into the grass the way English pitches tended to do in summer.
He worked through first-touch practice in the possession grid, cushioning passes deliberately softer than usual to account for the pace the firm surface added, and by the third or fourth time it stopped requiring thought and became the automatic version of itself.
