The longest night of the summer turned out not to be the one I expected.
I had gone back across town to Emma and her family braced to lie awake till morning, waiting on Jessica and a board and a federation eight hundred miles apart deciding my summer for me.
And I slept like a stone, because Emma made me, the way she does, talked nonsense at me in the dark until the World Cup went quiet in my head and I went under with my hand on her hip.
The answer was there when I woke.
Jessica had not rung. She had sent four words, which off Jessica is a fanfare. Done. It's yours. Conditions held.
Both things I had asked for, the staff and the cameras, won overnight while I slept. The board squared. The federation signed.
Kovacic and James going through Dougie's hands by the weekend so I would leave nothing half done at Palace. I read it twice, sat on the edge of the hotel bed with Emma still asleep behind me, and let it land. By breakfast I was a World Cup manager.
