"Højbjerg?"
"Southampton will do it at 12. They will not do it at 10. And they know we have got the money because they read the same papers as everybody else."
"And Hakimi."
The pause went on so long I thought the line had gone.
"You cannot ask me that."
"I am not asking you anything."
"Danny." Dougie's voice went flat, the way it does. "You are the manager of Morocco. That boy plays for Morocco.
"If you so much as breathe near a conversation about his registration while this tournament is running, we are in front of FIFA, and you are finished, and Palace are finished, and it does not matter that you are right."
"I know."
"Real Madrid rang him this morning."
"I know that as well."
"They can. You cannot."
And there it is. That is the whole thing in one sentence.
I made that boy. I put him on that right side at 19 years old when a whole country told me he was not ready, and I watched him run 60 yards through Croatia in the 104th minute of a World Cup quarter-final.
