[Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow. Wednesday 20 June 2018.]
Down in the tunnel the strip lights buzzed in their housings. The studs of twenty-two pairs of boots clattered on the concrete, restless, and under all of it something else was bleeding down through the ceiling.
"AL-MA-GHRIB! AL-MA-GHRIB! AL-MA-GHRIB!"
It came up through the soles of my feet and sat in my back teeth. Seventy-eight thousand of them up there, and they hadn't even laid eyes on us yet.
I stood at the mouth of it with my lads at my back. Portugal made a line of white right alongside, close enough to smell the Deep Heat off them. And at the head of the white line stood the man himself.
I'll tell you something daft, on the one night I'm meant to be plotting how to stop him. I've loved that man near enough as long as I've loved the game.
I'm a Manc.
