Over on the far goal, Steeley had both keepers working, and it was Munir putting the crosses in.
40 of them, high and hanging and nasty, into the exact spot France put them, over and over, so that Yassine Bounou could come and claim them.
The man who lost the shirt on Friday morning, standing on the edge of a box at 3 in the afternoon, making the man who took it better at the one thing Sunday will ask of him.
Neither of them said much about it. They did not need to. I watched it for a minute from 60 yards away and then I made myself stop watching it, because I had a job to do and there is only so much of that a man can take in an afternoon.
Here is what I asked them to do. 11 men in a box 40 yards square, keep the ball off 7 pressers, and every time we lost it the whole thing stopped and reset and started again.
That is it. That is the whole session. It is the most boring drill in football and it was the only thing that mattered in my life that afternoon.
