Glory Of The Football Manager System

[The Office. 10:30 BST.]

Dougie Freedman was already in my office when I came up.

He had the laptop open and a stack of paper thick enough to stop a bullet, and he was a Crystal Palace legend sitting in a Crystal Palace office doing a Crystal Palace job, which is exactly the sort of thing that does not happen at other clubs and the sort of thing that is the whole point of this one. Dougie scored the goal that kept this club in the division on the last day of the season in 2001.

Eighty-seventh minute. Stockport. There are men in their fifties in Croydon who will buy you a pint to this day for the privilege of telling you where they were standing when Dougie Freedman scored that goal. Now he was our sporting director, and he had been since the summer, and he did the job the way a man does a job when the badge on the wall is the badge he bled for.

Sarah was in the other chair with two coffees and slid one over without a word, because Sarah knew all I’d had since five was tea and cold toast.

Tap, tap, tap. The rain back on the window.

”Three things,” said Dougie, in the Glasgow that twenty years down south had not shifted by an inch. ”Then I’m out your hair till after Lyon. The full-back. We’re decided. Hakimi.”

Click. The laptop spun round. A lad in a Real Madrid kit, nineteen, all legs, mid-sprint.

”Achraf Hakimi. Nineteen. Born in Madrid, came up through the Real academy from a wee boy. Debuted under Zidane in October, played a dozen times this season. Right-back, flies forward, can do the left as well. His problem is Carvajal’s in front of him and isnae budging, and Real have gone and bought another right-back on top, so a nineteen-year-old who could be anything is staring down two years on a bench at the Bernabéu.”

”And we’re the way out.”

”So are Dortmund. They want him on a two-year loan, that’s the fight. But Marcus has been on the boy’s people since February, and he likes London, and he likes being a first-choice right-back at nineteen a lot more than being Carvajal’s understudy.

That’s the thing we can promise that Dortmund cannae. You’re our man from the first day. Him and Aaron split the season and we’ve got the two best young full-backs in the country, both under twenty-one, and Aaron brings him on.”

”Cost.”

”Loan, obligation to buy. Steve’s signed it. We move the morning after the final, no’ before. You’ve a match to win.”

”Good. Two.”

”Bruno Fernandes.”

I picked up the coffee. Sip. Still molten. ”He told me to sign him. Twice. Selhurst and the José Alvalade.”

”Aye, and he’s every bit as good as you’re remembering, which is the whole bother. Twenty-three, captain’s head on him, scores from midfield, takes the set-pieces, runs till he drops. Sporting know exactly what they’ve got and they’ll want a third of our whole summer for one man.

Bruno’s no’ a no. Bruno’s a no’ this summer, no’ at that number, no’ with everything else we’re at. Win Thursday, get us proper European nights next season, and the conversation moves. The now of it is he’s a beautiful idea we cannae pay for.”

”And the Norwich lad.”

Dougie almost smiled. ”You’ve read the folder.”

”Marcus left it Sunday. I don’t sleep. I read folders.”

”James Maddison. Twenty-one. Norwich, the Championship. Fourteen goals, eight assists, in a side that finished fourteenth, which some weeks means he WAS the side. Player of the Season. Team of the Season.

England under-twenty-ones. Free kicks you do not see at that level, scores from outside the box, feet off a street corner. He’s carrying a knee knock from Norwich’s last game so the medical has to be spotless. Half the league’s watching. Twenty, twenty-four million, and for what he is that’s the cheapest line on this whole list.”

”Where’s his head?”

”There’s the snag.” Dougie closed the laptop halfway. ”Coventry boy. Family’s in the Midlands. He wants to be near his mammy. Leicester are in for him and Leicester’s twenty minutes from her front door.”

”And we’re two hours and another world,” said Sarah, dry.

”And we’re two hours and another world,” said Dougie.

”We can’t move Selhurst to Coventry,” I said, ”but in a fortnight we might have a European trophy and a side that finished second playing the football a twenty-one-year-old lies awake dreaming about. Leicester finished ninth. Don’t sell him money, Dougie. Sell him the football. Send him Eze. Send him a lad his own age who got told he was too small and just played a European final. Let him watch that, then think about twenty minutes from his mum.”

”I’ll send the clips. Last bit. Two of yours are wanted, and one of them tells me how cold you can be.”

”Go.”

”Mandanda. Marseille have come in, properly, and the man wants to go home. Thirty-two, third behind Pope, brilliant in the cups, and it’s his city, his club, his life. That one’s no’ cold, son, that one’s lovely. We take a fair fee, we shake his hand, and we send him home with a guard of honour if he’ll have one.”

”He goes with everything we’ve got. And the other.”

Tap, tap went the rain. Dougie did not answer straight away.

”Bojan.”

I set the coffee down.

”Barcelona,” he said.

”They’ve come in. He was La Masia’s golden boy, the next one, the great hope, and it didnae happen the way the whole of Catalonia decided it would, and he’s carried that round Europe ten years, club to club. Now they want him home. A senior pro, a bridge between the kids and the first team, their lost boy back where it all started. It’s sentimental and it’s real, and if you ask Bojan today he wants it, because no man alive says no when the place that made him and broke him asks him home.”

”What’s the number?”

”That’s the thing.” Dougie leaned in.

”Right now, low. Twenty-seven, been a rotation player, clubs don’t pay big for that. But if Bojan’s on the grass in Lyon, if he plays a part in this club winning a European trophy, the number isnae the number anymore. A final changes what a man’s worth overnight. So here’s the cold question, Daniel. Do you put Bojan in the eighteen because it’s right for the team, or because it doubles what we get for him in June. And can you sit comfy knowing the answer to both is the same.”

I thought about it. Properly. Tap, tap on the glass.

”Both halves,” I said.

”Bojan’s in the eighteen because he’s one of the best footballers at this club and he’s earned a European final and I’d pick him if Barça had never rung. And it doubles his value in June, and that’s true, and I’m not going to stand here and pretend it isn’t, because pretending the money’s not real is how clubs our size go skint being noble. He gets his send-off in Lyon. We get ours from him in June. Everybody gets the thing they should get. Put him in the eighteen. Don’t tell him the June part. He doesn’t need maths in his head two days out.”

Dougie nodded slow. ”That’s the right answer. It’s the cold one and all. I wanted to hear both.”

”You heard both.”

”Aye.” He stacked his papers, stood, the chair going skrrt on the floor. ”Win Thursday, son. You’ve no idea how much of all that gets easier if you win Thursday.” Bang of the door behind him.