[Saint Petersburg. The warm-up. June 2018.]
The tunnel held the noise the way a shell holds the sea.
You don't hear a stadium from in there. You feel it through the concrete, in your feet, a pressure with no edges, and you walk toward the white square of light and it gets louder until it stops being sound and starts being weather.
England were lined up to my left in their tracksuits. Big lads, calm, a team that had done this a hundred times and knew it.
I shook the hand at the front of their staff. We did the thing two men do who both know what the cameras want, the firm grip, the half-second of eye, the small nod that says nothing and everything.
Their manager held my eye half a beat longer than the polite amount, the way a careful man checks a thing he hasn't decided about yet. I gave him nothing to decide.
Up and to the right, behind the glass, was the press box.
