By 8 that night I would know the name of the thing that was going to try to end us, and I could not make myself eat a thing until I did.
That is where the day had left me.
A World Cup final, 4 days off, the biggest match of my life and of every life in that squad, and I did not even know yet who we were playing, because the last 2 teams standing on the other side of the draw did not kick off in Saint Petersburg until the evening.
France, or Belgium. One of them was coming for us. And I had a whole afternoon to sit in a hotel room in Moscow and wait to find out which monster it would be.
So I did the only thing that has ever settled me. I went looking for football.
The club had a feed running for the analysts, so Marcus patched it through to us off the back of it, and 2,000 miles from Beckenham I watched my own football club kick off its pre-season on a laptop in a Moscow hotel room.
Against Norwich. A friendly. It meant nothing to a living soul except me.
