Chapter 326: The King of Old Trafford II
On the other touchline, Mourinho was a storm of black-coated fury. He wasn’t watching the celebration; he was turning to the fourth official, his face a mask of theatrical disbelief, his arms spread wide in a gesture of pure, manufactured outrage.
He was playing to the ho crowd, feeding their sense of injustice, and they responded in kind. A low, guttural roar began to build around the stadium, a wave of collective anger directed not at their own team’s failings, but at the referee, at us, at the world.
The goal, however, was the spark that lit the powder keg.
As Eze wheeled away in celebration, his arms outstretched, his face a picture of pure, youthful ecstasy, a frustrated Paul Pogba, the world’s most expensive player, needlessly shoved him hard in the back. It was a mont of petulant, childish anger. And it was a catastrophic mistake.
Scott Dann was there in a flash, his face a mask of cold, protective fury as he stepped between Pogba and Eze.
"You do not touch him," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "You hear ? You do not touch him." Pogba, who had a good four inches on Dann, stared down at him. The two squared up, and then it was on. Players from both sides piled in, a mass of shoving, shouting bodies in red and blue.
On the touchline, it was even worse. One of Mourinho’s assistants, a stocky man with a shaved head and a permanent scowl, turned to Sarah and said sothing. I didn’t hear what it was, but I saw Sarah’s face change.
Whatever he said, it was enough. Our bench erupted. Substitutes, coaches, and kit n spilled onto the pitch. Their bench responded in kind. For a long, chaotic, extraordinary mont, the technical area was a swirling vortex of bodies, a full-on brawl of coaches and substitutes.
As the brawl on the touchline kicks off, I have added a description of the chaos spilling into the stands. Stewards are shown struggling to contain angry fans, and Mourinho is described as adding fuel to the fire with a look of weary martyrdom, centing his role as the master of chaos.
And in the middle of it all, I remained utterly, almost eerily calm. I walked over to the lee, grabbed my players by the shoulders, and pulled them away, one by one. "Not now," I said, my voice a low, firm command. "Don’t lose your heads. Let them lose theirs. This is exactly what we want."
After what felt like an eternity, the referee, his face pale and his authority in tatters, finally regained so semblance of control. The cards ca out. A yellow for Pogba. A yellow for Dann. A yellow for two of our substitutes and two of theirs. The ga had completely boiled over.
And it was perfect.
United’s discipline was gone. They were playing with pure, blind rage now, chasing ghosts, their tactical shape in tatters.
The tackles beca more reckless, more desperate, more cynical. In the seventy-fifth minute, Ander Herrera, who had been a frustrated, peripheral figure all half under McArthur’s relentless attention, finally snapped.
Zaha received the ball on the left wing and turned to run at him. Herrera, unable to live with the pace, scythed him down from behind. It was a cynical, ugly, cowardly foul. And it was his second yellow card of the ga. The referee, with a weary, almost apologetic sigh, showed him the red. United were down to ten n.
I used the stoppage to make my changes. I brought on the cool, experienced head of Luka Milivojevi?? for the magnificent but exhausted Nya Kirby. As the young midfielder jogged off, I grabbed him by the shoulders.
"You were unbelievable today," I told him, looking him in the eye. "Absolutely unbelievable. Rember this feeling." He nodded, too tired to speak, and walked to the bench, where the rest of the squad gave him a standing ovation. A few minutes later, I replaced the tireless Andros Townsend with the fresh legs and raw power of Bakary Sako, to give us a different kind of threat on the counter.
Then, in the eighty-second minute, the final, definitive nail in the coffin.
Down to ten n, their shape gone, their spirit broken, United were a ragged, emotional ss. We won the ball back with contemptuous ease in our own half.
Milivojevi??, calm as a lake on a still morning, looked up and played an intelligent, weighted pass to Benteke, who had dropped deep. Benteke, with a deft, clever first touch, laid it off to the onrushing Jas McArthur, who had burst forward from midfield into the vast, empty space that Herrera had left behind.
McArthur was one-on-one with De Gea. He didn’t panic. He didn’t blast it. He took one touch to steady himself, looked up, and calmly, coolly, slotted the ball into the bottom corner.
0 - 3
The ga was over. The season was over. And sothing much bigger was just beginning.
As the ball hit the back of the net, a strange, profound calm descended upon . The noise of the stadium, the boos, the insults, the sheer, unadulterated hatred of 75,000 people... it all faded into a distant, irrelevant hum.
I didn’t run. I didn’t pump my fists. I turned, slowly, to face the Stretford End, the heart and soul of Manchester United, the most famous stand in English football. And I stood there, a solitary figure in black, on the edge of their sacred ground.
I raised my arms, not in triumph, but in offering. A ssiah of their misery. My head was held high, my chin up, a proud, defiant, almost regal expression on my face. I let their hatred wash over , a baptism of vitriol.
The plastic cups and the screwed-up programs that rained down around
were not insults; they were confetti. The thousands of angry, contorted faces were not a mob; they were a congregation. And I was their god of misfortune.
This was not just a victory. This was an ascension. I was the villain of their story, the architect of their humiliation, the twenty-seven-year-old ’schoolboy coach’ who had co to their theatre and burned it to the ground.
In their eyes, I was a monster. And in that mont, standing in the heart of their fortress, bathed in their fury, I had never felt more beautiful. I had never felt more alive.
***
Thank you to Sir nayelus and chisum_lane for the support.
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