We held it like that to 74 minutes. And then the inch arrived.

It came off the outside of Bernardo’s boot, a disguised little thing, threaded into the half-yard between Saiss and Mendyl. And Ronaldo was already moving onto it.

He’d peeled off Saiss’s blind shoulder a breath before the pass, that Off the Ball 20 doing the one thing on this earth no defender can be coached against, and the deep block I’d built to smother him had quietly opened up the one gap he wanted.

I was up off the bench with the shout already dead in my throat. "SAISS!" Forty yards off, and "DIMA MAGHRIB!" rolling over the top of it, and it was gone before it cleared my teeth.

The ball rolled into his path and he didn’t break stride and he didn’t blast it. He just opened his body and stroked it, low and dead certain, across Bounou and inside the far post.

Thwump.

2-2.

And the carnival cracked. Not silence, not yet. A great wounded groan, thirty thousand people who’d had the dream in their two hands feeling it start to slide.

And up in their corner the red and green came off the leash for the first time all night, a roar out of all proportion to their number, scarves whirling over heads.

"RO-NAL-DO! RO-NAL-DO!"

He wheeled away to them with one finger up. No smile on him. The number turned over in the edge of my eye, and I didn’t want to look, and it makes you look.

Rating 9.0.

Saiss stood with his hands on his head, staring at the empty grass where the man had slipped him.

2-2, sixteen minutes left, and the worst decision of the night sat there waiting for me.

A draw kept us strong. A point, and we’d walk into Spain on Matchday 3 with the whole thing still in our own hands. Hold what we had, take it, live.

Or go and win it. Beat Portugal. Do the thing not one soul outside that green end had thought we could.

And I knew, the way you know the things you wish you didn’t, that going for it meant cracking the game open, and cracking the game open was the one thing on God’s earth the man on the halfway line was praying for.

Marcus had the tablet in front of me before I’d even finished the thought. Sofyan’s numbers, deep in the red. "He’s gone, Danny. He’s been the entire midfield for seventy-five minutes. Look at it."

Rebecca leaned in over his shoulder. "He’s running on empty. One more sprint and he tears something."

I looked out at the lad. Twenty-one years old, hands on his knees, chest going like a bellows, having run a World Cup quarter of a pitch on his own all night. He’d have died out there before he asked to come off.

So I made the call for him. My own board went up, his number in red. Belhanda on for fresh legs in the middle. Bouhaddouz on for Nordin, a second striker up top, throw the dice and go and win it.

When Sofyan saw his number he didn’t argue, just nodded, emptied right out, and the whole green end got to its feet for him as he came off, thirty thousand of them, his name going round three sides of the ground.

"SO-FYAN! SO-FYAN!"

A wall of it, for a kid who’d left every last drop of himself on the grass.

And the second he was off and the fresh men were on and we tipped forward to chase the win, the game cracked open like a dropped egg.

Exactly the way he wanted it.

It came on 87 minutes.

He picked it up deep, almost on his own halfway line, back to goal, two of my men breathing down his neck. There was nothing on. Nothing on at all. I’d have bet the house on it.

And then he rolled it under his foot, and he turned, and he set off.

I was up off the bench before he’d gone three strides, bellowing at a back four strung flat across the pitch and dead on their legs, at the green canyons yawning between them where a whole night of running after this man had pulled them to pieces.

Not one of them turned. They couldn’t hear a thing. I’m not sure I could either.

He took the first man with a single drop of the shoulder, gone before the lad had shifted his weight. And above my head I felt the whole stadium change.

Because they could all see it now. The thirty thousand who’d been screaming his name in fury a minute before fell quiet all at once, the song dying in their throats, a cold dread spreading across the green tiers as it sank in what they were watching.

He drove at Saiss. And Saiss did everything right, every last coaching point, stood him up, showed him the line, waited for the touch. And the man took the outside off him anyway, that Pace 17 still burning in his thirty-three-year-old legs, and left my centre-half turning on the spot at a shadow.

Benatia came flying across to cover, my captain, the one lad out there who’d lived in his pocket all night and mostly won the fight. Ronaldo took it past him on the inside without a glance, and Benatia’s despairing lunge closed on the patch of grass where the ball had been half a second before.

And the whole Luzhniki was on its feet, thirty thousand of them standing, and not a sound came out of any of them. Only the away corner, far off, a thin high wail climbing higher as the seconds stretched out.

Then there was only Bounou. And Bounou did the one thing left to a keeper, came off his line, made himself huge, and prayed.

And the man didn’t shoot.

He had the whole goal in front of him. He’d gone through every red shirt on the pitch and the net was gaping and he could have smashed it past Bounou and torn away to that away end with his arms flung wide.

He didn’t bother. He waited one more cruel half-second, drew Bounou that last foot off his line, and rolled it. Soft as anything. Square across the face of goal to Andre Silva, who had nothing left to do but stand in front of an open net and stroke it over the line.

Because the scoring was never the point. He handed the goal to a teammate like a man passing the salt.

Tk.

3-2.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.