Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Hakimi. CA 149 to 154 since May, PA 178]

[En-Nesyri. Composure 15 to 16]

[S. Amrabat. Stamina 17 to 18, Form 15]

A tournament does that. It forges them week on week, faster than any season ever could. The whole world had noticed what was happening to these players. Only I had it in numbers, and the numbers were climbing.

Elena’s cameras had caught near everything out here. The dressing rooms, the flights, the old man on the boards at Kaliningrad. Every frame of my life for 6 weeks.

Except the one thing in it no lens will ever see. I blinked the panel away, drank the cold coffee, and watched my full-back laugh at a nutmeg like the whole world wasn’t circling him.

And the worst of it, the thing that had me grinding my teeth the whole session, was that he was right there in front of me.

Hakimi. 15 yards away doing rondos, the ball snapping between them, thud thud thud, laughing with Ziyech, the most wanted teenager on the planet and the reason my two best people were sat in a café across town. Right there.

And I had to coach him like he was any other lad. A word on his positioning, thwack as he drilled one across the top of the box, a hand on the shoulder, nothing more. Not a flicker. Not a hint that half my own club was 3 miles away fighting to make him ours.

He jogged past me at the end, soaked through, and grinned. ”Good session, gaffer.” And I said good session back, and that was every word I was allowed, and it near killed me.

The tournament had rolled on without us while we celebrated. The bracket had filled in overnight, and Marcus had it up when I came off the grass.

Our half was set. Us and the hosts first. Get through that, and it was the winners of Croatia and Denmark in the quarters. Sweden and Switzerland, Colombia and England, they were on our side of it too.

And Marcus had saved the detail for last, because he knows me. The venue. Luzhniki. Moscow. Sunday night.

The scene of the robbery. Same ground, same grass, 3 weeks on, against the hosts, with a place in the last 8 on it.

You couldn’t write it. Somewhere across the city, Elena was probably in tears of joy over her script.

And away on the far side, a world off, Portugal had Uruguay. France had Argentina. Brazil, Belgium, the rest of the big names, all stacked up over there.

If everything fell a certain way, and it never does, the only place we’d lay eyes on Ronaldo’s lot again was the last day of the whole thing. I didn’t look at it long. There was a host nation in 3 days and a teenager in a café, and both were a great deal closer than a final.

They came to find me after, at the training ground. Dougie with his coat back on and his face giving nothing away, which with Dougie means it went either brilliantly or terribly.

”Well?”

”He listened.” Dougie let it hang there a second, the sod. ”Properly listened. Didn’t laugh us out the room, which for a club our size sat across from a Real Madrid boy is a lot further than it sounds.”

”He asked about you first,” Sarah said. ”Before the money, before the league. What you’re like with the door shut and the cameras off.”

”And?”

”And we told him you’re the real thing. That his lad can go somewhere bigger and rot on a bench, or come to us and get built by the best young coach in the country.”

Dougie snorted. ”We left out the bit where you’ll be picking him on Sunday, mind. Not that daft.”

”What did he make of the football?” I said, because that’s the bit I’d have led on.

”Sarah led on it.” Dougie tipped his head at her.

”Every week, from day one, in a team that just won Europe,” she said. ”A 19-year-old needs games, not a good seat in the Bernabéu watching men on 10 times his wage. Salas has heard every pitch there is. That’s the one he sat forward for.”

”So where are we?”

The pair of them glanced at each other, and Dougie did the honest thing, the way he does whether you’ve asked for it or not.

”Nowhere yet, son. He’s 6 clubs to see, and 2 of them can pay double and play Champions League. We’re the romantic one and the plays-every-week one, and those two don’t always carry the day.”

”But, gaffer,” Sarah said, and she nearly smiled, ”he asked when he could come and see the training ground. Men who’ve made their mind up to say no don’t ask that.”

And that was as much as I was getting, and more than I’d any right to. I had to sit on my hands and let two other people carry the one thing I wanted most, while I went off and did the job that made it impossible for me to touch it.

Dougie and Sarah were flying home in the morning, and then it was back to being the loneliest job in the game, a long way from my own dugout, about to send a team I’d grown to love into the teeth of a nation.

So we made the last night count. A little place off the main square that Marcus had dug out, the three of us in the corner, and for a couple of hours there was no World Cup, no transfer, no host nation.

Just Dougie moaning about the wine list, clink, and Sarah telling training ground stories I’d have paid money to hear, and me laughing till my face hurt for the first time in weeks.

Near the end she put her glass down and looked at me.

”Whatever happens Sunday, gaffer,” she said, ”and whatever happens with the boy. You’ve already done something nobody thought you could. Twice.”

Dougie lifted his glass. Sarah lifted hers. ”To the daft wee shelf stacker,” Dougie said, ”who conquered Europe and then went and adopted a country.”

I touched my glass to theirs, clink, and didn’t trust myself to say a word.

There was a wine list Dougie hated on principle, and Sarah doing the kitman’s voice till I couldn’t breathe, and a corner table in Voronezh where for a couple of hours I wasn’t the gaffer, or the story, or any of it. Just a lad from Moss Side, having his tea with his mates.

Home, for one night.

Sunday could have me in the morning. The hosts, Luzhniki, 80,000 of them, the lot of it, still out there in the dark and not going anywhere.

Tonight, I ordered another bottle, and let Dougie moan about that one too.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Massage Chair.