"Wind it back," I said. "Count the white shirts behind the ball."
Marcus nudged it back a frame at a time. Belgium had lost it with 6 men committed, the way you do when you are chasing a game against a side that will not come out. France went box to box in 4 passes and 9 seconds.
I counted the shirts left behind the ball and there were 3, and one was Mbappé, and he had not run back one step, because running back is not his job. Standing in your grass, waiting, is his job.
"That's it," I said, and I was not talking to Marcus, I was talking to the dark. "That is the whole thing. They want you to come.
"They sit, and they let you have it, and they wait for you to commit men, and then they put it behind you to the quickest thing on earth and they kill you in the space you left."
I heard myself laugh, and there was nothing in it.
"It is what we did to England. They just do it better than anybody who has ever done it."
