And the breath went out of thirty thousand people all at once.
Into the hole where the carnival had been, you could suddenly hear the daftest little things. The squeak of the substitute's studs as he wheeled off. The ball still rolling in the back of the net. One small voice high up in the green, calling a name that wasn't going to answer.
And over the top of all that nothing, the only full-throated sound left in the Luzhniki, the away corner, that wall of red and green up on its feet and screaming itself raw.
"SIII! SIII! SIII!"
Their man had done it again.
The old fella had both hands flat over his mouth. The painted man had simply stopped, paint and all. The Russian lad in the scarf stared out at the pitch like he'd been told someone had died.
