[Morocco Team Base, Voronezh, Russia. Thursday 21 June 2018.]
The team room was the wrong sort of loud when I pushed through the double doors. Clunk.
It wasn't the usual breakfast noise, the clatter of cutlery and the easy banter about who slept through their alarm. This was lower and harder than that.
Men's voices running over the top of one another. A phone somewhere blasting a clip out loud, a tinny roar, a crowd going thump, thump, thump, three lads stood over the screen with their jaws set.
Yesterday this room had been a funeral. Heads down, slow, nobody saying a word after the 3-2 against Portugal. This morning it had heat in it.
Hakimi saw me first. He came straight across, phone already up, and there was nothing broken in his face today. There was a fire lit behind it.
"Gaffer. You seen?"
He turned the screen round. There it was. The goal.
En-Nesyri, ninety-four minutes gone, the ball squirming under Rui Patricio and over the line. Frozen.
