Hakimi came down the steps and did not look up once.
And then I finally did the thing I had spent 20 minutes walking round.
Bounou had not moved.
Every man in green was up somewhere on that pitch, and my goalkeeper was still sitting against the inside of his own net with his back to all of it. Gloves on. Laces done up. Exactly as he had been when the whistle went.
Shhp. Shhp. Shhp.
I went down the pitch to him and the water came over the welt of my shoes, and I got there, and I got down on my knees in it.
He would not turn his head.
"Yassine."
Nothing.
"Yassine. It's me."
"Don't."
"Alright."
"Boss, don't. Please. Don't say it."
The 92nd minute goes over his left shoulder. He comes off his line and spreads himself the way he has done for 6 weeks, and it is not the wrong call, it is the right call.
And a 19-year-old lifts it over him soft as a man hanging a coat on a hook, and everybody in that stadium including him watches it drop in.
