Hand of God

57

Somehow the match restarted and a couple of minutes later the Irish referee blew his whistle for half time, which managed to calm things down a little. Air conditioning and about a ton of Valium would have been more effective, probably. As we trooped down the tunnel I heard an enormous, deafening bang that someone told me was an exploding fire extinguisher; sometimes the Greek fans set them alight, I was told by someone, which seemed so fucking crazy and dangerous I almost considered pulling out of the game then and there. What kind of a country is it where they set fire to extinguishers? One way or another I was looking forward to going home to London, where — thank God — hooliganism of this order was a thing of the past and the biggest bang you’ll ever hear is when David Beckham shuts the door of his Rolls-Royce in anger.

In the malodorous slum of a dressing room I told our players only that there was nothing I could tell them that would improve the way they were playing now, except for one thing:

‘Just imagine what’s happening right now, in the Olympiacos dressing room. Fucking chaos, that’s what’s happening. Total meltdown. Let’s hope Trikoupis is in jail. Giannis Maniatis is probably having to do the team talk. Giving them a piece of his mind. Which he probably keeps in that little space between his eyebrows.’

‘What would you say, boss?’ asked Gary. ‘What would you say to them if it was you in there giving the team talk?’

‘Yes,’ said Ayrton, ‘it’d be good to hear that.’

‘Christ,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t know where to start. But I suppose the first thing I’d tell those guys in red would be this: you’re a complete bunch of malakes.’

Everyone cheered with noisy good humour.

‘Either that or a bunch of fucking mongs.’

More cheers.

‘He said “mong”,’ squeaked Ayrton Taylor, in imitation of Ricky Gervais, who is quite fond of the ‘m’ word himself.

‘But seriously, lads, Gianni needs to tell his team to keep a lot tighter at the back. That’s the major problem. The way they defended those two set pieces we had — that was appalling; we were unlucky not to have scored from those as well. They seem more interested in trying to keep possession of the ball than in defending. I think that may have been the inspired team tactic of the night. Deny us the ball and play pass the bloody parcel and hope that we’ll give up chasing the game. But it’s not working. Nothing for them is working now. Not even the gods.

‘In the air, well, they’re just crap. A team of acrophobic pygmies could win more high balls than they did in the first half. And certainly I would take that child Mouratidis off. He’s completely lost his bottle now that Gary has given him an old-fashioned Toxteth lobotomy.’

Prometheus grinned a huge grin and clapped Gary on the back of the head.

‘Here, mind the fucking hair,’ he said, which got another big laugh.

‘Gary? You might not get the Ballon d’Or this year, but you’ll certainly win the lead balloon for the best head-butt I’ve seen since Zinedine Zidane took out Marco Materazzi. Maybe they’ll erect a statue to you in Qatar. But I really wouldn’t know who I’d bring on in Mouratidis’s place. Mrs Boerescu, probably. She couldn’t do any worse than him. Maybe she could offer a free blow job for anyone of theirs who scores a goal tonight. That might get them going a bit. I know it would get Big Simon going. He’s talked about nothing but her sucking his cock since he saw her in the tunnel.’

Everyone cheered again.

‘Frankly, they’re not playing like a side that went into this leg 4–1 up. They’ve lost every cube of the ice cool they should have had about this game. I mean, all they needed to do was keep their heads, but that’s not happening. At the moment they’re being ripped open by good old-fashioned running football. Not passes. Running. Real Roy of the Rovers stuff. When you run at them it’s like you fillet them with a fucking fish knife. They don’t know how to handle a fast-running game. And that’s all I’d say to you. Run at the cunts. You get the ball and run at them like Prometheus did when he scored his first goal and I promise you we’ll win this.’

We went back on the field to find that the local riot police had turned up in force bearing shields and batons and were now facing the Olympiacos fans, on the basis, I suppose, that the Panathinaikos fans were less likely to burn down their own stadium. An acrid cloud of smoke hung like a net curtain and the match restarted with everyone wondering if it would be finished that night.

Mouratidis was still on the field, which struck me as a serious mistake, but I hardly paid this much attention after what I’d just seen in the tunnel. Because surely William Winter had winked at me. Was it possible that he was on our side? I was still trying to get my head around what this meant when the referee blew his whistle. Immediately Olympiacos were on the attack and thanks to Giannis Maniatis they enjoyed their best chance of the night. It should have been a goal, such was the quality of the Greek captain’s effort, with a brace of superb strikes: the first came off Kenny Traynor’s enormous fist and ricocheted straight back at the Greek’s feet; the second strike ought to have been in the back of the net as soon as Maniatis put his boot through it, but somehow Kenny picked himself off the ground, dived again, and this time collected the ball cleanly with two hands. The most astonishing thing was not that Maniatis failed to score but that a man as big as Kenny Traynor could move so quickly; I’ve seen scalded cats move with less speed. And even the Greek captain was moved to go and shake our goalkeeper’s hand after his awe-inspiring save.

This single sporting gesture did much to alter the temperature of the match; because having seen their captain shake Kenny Traynor’s hand, the Olympiacos fans applauded him too, as if they realised not only that they’d seen a save of the rarest quality, but that they’d also seen a decent sportsman in the person of their own mono-browed captain.

Simon clapped his big hands and shook his head.

‘Bloody marvellous,’ he boomed. ‘What did I tell you? Sticky fingers. That’s what any great keeper needs. God only knows how that man didn’t score. What a pity that Kenny Traynor isn’t English and that he’ll never grace a World Cup.’

I didn’t say anything. Even as a Jock myself I couldn’t have argued with that. But that wasn’t what was making me silent. It was the realisation that after what Simon had said I knew exactly how Bekim Develi had been killed; it had been staring me in the face like the Zapruder film for the last hour; not only that but I knew who had killed him, too.

I stayed quite still for a moment, then walked back to the dugout and sat down feeling like a man who has suffered a stroke and for whom half the world has suddenly disappeared. If you had placed a mirror in front of me I would not have seen my own reflection. The noise of the crowd seemed to get sucked up in a vacuum, along with the oxygen in the air around me. On the pitch I could hear the worms crawling through the earth underneath the grass; they were surely better than the people who had killed Bekim. Above me the smoke seemed to roll like thunder through the stadium; it tasted sweeter than the sour flavour that I had in my mouth from knowing what I now knew, beyond any reasonable doubt.

‘You’re in charge,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid I need to go and speak to someone. Right now.’

‘Can’t it fucking wait?’

‘No, it can’t.’

‘Speak to who?’ asked Simon as I stalked off. ‘Where the fuck are you going?’

‘To speak to Mrs Boerescu. I want to ask her something. Maybe she’ll give me a blow job if I talk to her nicely.’