Tomás Reid

Ninety minutes is a long time to be patient. I’m good at patient.

Saltmarsh’s captain on the slow work of stopping fast people.

Tomás Reid has played more than four hundred games at centre-back, and he can count the times he has gone to ground on purpose.

“Tackling is the last resort,” he says. “If I have to slide, I’ve already got it wrong. The job is to wait. Make them choose. Most people choose wrong eventually.”

He wears the Deadball Heritage, leather, the way he has since he was fourteen. “I like boots that get better. New boots are someone else’s. After a month they’re mine.”

At thirty-one he knows how the last fifteen minutes feel from the inside: legs gone, lungs gone, head still working. “That’s when the game’s decided. Whoever’s still thinking.”

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