Glory Of The Football Manager System

”I have never played like that,” he said. His voice was a whisper.

”I know,” I said.

”That is why it is going to work. Because nobody will expect it. They will see Bojan Krkic on the team sheet, and they will think they know what they are facing. A small, technical, creative player who can be bullied. A player who does not like the physical side of the game. A player who can be pressed and harassed and knocked off his stride. And they will be wrong. They will be so wrong that by the time they figure it out, the game will be over.”

I leaned back in the driver’s seat. I looked out at the perfect green pitches. ”I am giving you a chance to reinvent yourself, Bojan,” I said. ”Not to be the new Messi. To be the first Bojan. The real Bojan. The player you were always supposed to be. A player who is not just beautiful to watch, but hard to play against. A player who wins.”

He was quiet for a long time. I let him be quiet. I had thrown a lot at him. He needed to process it.

”When do I start?” he said finally.

”You start now,” I said. ”You have three days until you report for training. I want you to spend those three days getting fit. Running. Not jogging. Running. Because on the twenty-ninth, I am going to put you through the bleep test. And I am going to find out if you are serious about this.”

”I am serious,” he said. And for the first time since he had answered the phone, he sounded it.

I hung up. One down. One to go. I took a long drink of water. The conversation had taken more out of me than I had expected. It was easy to have these ideas in your head. It was easy to see the potential in the data. It was harder to look a man in the eye, even over the phone, and tell him that everything he thought he knew about himself was wrong.

I found Pato’s number. I dialled.

He answered immediately. His voice was different to Bojan’s. Smoother. More confident. The voice of a man who had been famous since he was a teenager and was used to people wanting things from him. ”Danny,” he said. Like we were old friends.

”Alexandre,” I said. ”Welcome to London.”

”Thank you,” he said. ”I am excited to be here. I have heard good things about the city.”

He was good. He was very good. He was already trying to control the conversation. To keep it light. To keep it on the surface. I was not going to let him.

”We need to talk about your hamstrings,” I said.

The silence on the other end of the line was immediate. And total. It was like I had reached through the phone and slapped him. No manager had ever said that to him. They had all pretended it was not an issue. They had all told him he was fine. They had all crossed their fingers and hoped for the best. And they had all been disappointed.

”What about them?” he said. His voice was cold now. Guarded.

”They are a problem,” I said. ”A big problem. They have defined your career for the last five years. They have turned you from one of the most exciting players in the world into a man who is afraid to sprint. And we are going to fix it.”

”How?” he said. The word was a challenge. A demand.

”By accepting reality,” I said. ”You are not the player you were at AC Milan. You are not the seventeen-year-old kid who could run a hundred metres in ten seconds and do it ten times a game. That player is gone. And he is not coming back. The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can start working with the player you are now.”

I paused. I let him absorb the brutality of it. The truth of it.

”The player you are now,” I continued, my voice softer, ”is still a world-class finisher. You still have the instinct. You still have the touch. You still have the ability to find space in a crowded penalty area. What you do not have is the engine to get there. So we are going to give you one.”

”Bojan,” he said. He had understood immediately.

”Bojan,” I confirmed.

”Bojan is going to do your running for you. He is going to press. He is going to harass. He is going to create the chaos. And you are going to live in it. I do not want you chasing the ball into the midfield. I do not want you tracking back to the halfway line. I want you to stay on the shoulder of the last defender. I want you to be a ghost. A predator. I do not want forty yard sprints from you. I want fifteen-yard bursts. Three seconds of explosive speed to get to the ball before the keeper does. That is all I need. You are a finisher. So I am going to put you in a position to finish. Over and over and over again.”

He was quiet. But it was a different kind of quiet to Bojan’s. It was not the quiet of confusion. It was the quiet of a man who was seeing a door open that he thought had been locked forever.

”You are building the team around my weakness,” he said. It was not a question. It was a statement of disbelief.

”I am building the team around your strength,” I corrected him. ”Your strength is finishing. Your weakness is everything else. So I am taking everything else away. Bojan will be the engine. You will be the bullet. It is that simple.”

He laughed. A short, sharp, surprised sound. ”Nobody has ever said this to me before,” he said.

”I know,” I said. ”That is why you are here.”

”The bleep test,” he said. ”On the twenty-ninth.”

”The bleep test,” I confirmed. ”I do not expect you to beat everyone. I do not even expect you to finish in the top half. I just expect you to run until you cannot run anymore. I need to know you are in this. I need to know you are willing to work. The rest we can manage.”

”I will be there,” he said. And he sounded like he meant it.

I hung up the phone and sat in the silence of the car. The sun was lower in the sky now. The lunch break was almost over. I had done it. I had laid the blueprint. I had told two of the most talented and most disappointing players of their generation that I was going to ask them to become something they had never been before. One a warrior. The other a ghost.

The world called it reckless. The media called it a circus. Dave called it madness. But none of them had what I had. None of them had that private, unnameable certainty that sat in my chest like a compass needle, always pointing in the same direction. I had followed it to Seville. I had followed it to Villarreal. I had followed it to Stoke. And it had not let me down yet.

I walked back into the lecture hall for the afternoon session on defensive transitions. I sat down. I opened my notebook. I wrote a heading at the top of a clean page. And for the first time since the triple announcement had broken the internet, I felt something close to calm. The dice had been rolled. The pieces were in place. And the compass was still pointing forward.