Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Dulwich to Mayfair. Monday 23 July 2018. 06:40.]

She was awake before the alarm. That never happens.

I came out of the shower and Emma was sat up against the headboard in my white shirt from Saturday night with her knees up and her phone face down on the duvet, watching me get dressed.

”You are quiet,” I said.

”I am looking.”

”At what?”

”At a man who is about to be told what 4 football clubs think he is worth, and who has not eaten a proper breakfast since the 31st of May.” She reached over and hooked 2 fingers into my belt loop and pulled, hard enough to move me. ”Sit down.”

”Em, I have got to be in Mayfair at 9.”

”You have got to be in Mayfair at 9 and it is 20 to 7 and it takes 40 minutes.” She did not let go of the belt loop. ”Sit down, Danny.”

I sat down on the edge of my own bed.

”Whatever she says to you this morning,” Emma said, ”you do not answer any of it today. Not yes, not no, not maybe. You listen, you say thank you, and you get on an aeroplane tomorrow.”

”That is what Jessica is going to say.”

”Then it is 2 of us.” She let go and pushed her hair back off her face. ”And Danny, one of them is going to be the one, and you are going to feel it in your chest when she says the name.

”Feel it. Do not act on it.”

Dougie was already in Jessica’s office when I got there at 5 to 9, with a coffee and the folder he takes everywhere.

”You are early,” he said.

”I could not eat.”

”Aye, well. Emma rang me about that an’ all.”

Jessica came in at 9 exactly and put 4 files on the table.

”Sit down. You are going to let me finish each one, and Dougie is here because you will not remember a word of it and he will.”

”He will not,” Dougie agreed.

”Number 1 is a Chinese Super League club and the number is 11 million a year after tax.”

”No.”

”Obviously it is no.” She dropped it straight in the bin. ”They wrote twice. I am obliged to show you. I have shown you.”

”Jessica, I do not even want to know which one.”

”You are not going to. Number 2.”

She put her hand flat on the second file and left it there, and did not open it, which she has never done.

”Before this one. Steve Parish has known about it since the 6th of July and he has been sat on it for you, and when you get to the end of it you are going to want to ring him and you are going to do it after Wembley and not before.”

”Jessica.”

”Chelsea.”

”Chelsea have got Sarri.”

”Chelsea appointed Sarri on the 14th.” She turned the file round. ”That came in on the 6th, at 11 in the morning. Formal, written, to Steve, asking permission to speak to you.”

I looked at the date on it for a while.

”Danny,” Dougie said, ”you were in Voronezh on the 6th.”

”I know where I was on the 6th, Dougie. I was doing a session on a Portakabin pitch and I got food poisoning off a chicken.”

”Aye, you did.”

”5 days before England,” Jessica said. ”And they had Sarri on a plane by the 14th, so the answer they wanted was never yours. You were the name that makes a board feel clever in a meeting.”

”What did Steve say?”

”One line. No. Same day, no consultation, and then he rang me at half 6 that evening to tell me he was not putting it in front of you until you were home, and he was rude about them for 9 minutes.”

It is not Chelsea I sat with.

Not Chelsea. Steve Parish, on the 6th of July, in an office in Croydon, saying no to a club with 5 European trophies without ringing the manager it was about.

”He should have told me.”

”He was going to. Thursday, apparently, and badly.” She shut the file. ”Let him do it, Danny. He has been carrying that since the 6th and he is not a man who carries things well.”

”Number 3.”

”You are getting ahead of me. Number 3.” She opened it without any ceremony at all. ”Real Madrid.”

”Say that again.”

”No. You heard.”

Dougie put his coffee down.

”Informal, through a third party, because that is the only way they have ever done anything.” She read it off the sheet rather than at me. ”An interest in speaking to you about a role in the summer of 2019. Lopetegui is 6 weeks into the job and nobody is sacking him before he has taken a competitive session.

”They have put a marker down 11 months out. Real Madrid do not put markers down.”

I did the arithmetic and it took about 4 seconds.

”When did it come in?”

She checked. ”Thursday the 19th. 3:40.”

”Dougie. What time did we bid for Hakimi?”

”Half 9 Saturday.”

”And they came back at 5 past 2. Same day. On a Saturday in July, off a club that had ignored us for 5 weeks.”

Dougie sat back and said a word in Scottish that I am not putting in writing.

”So they sold him cheap to be nice to me.”

”That is one reading.”

”Give me the other.”

”They have got a 19-year-old they cannot play, an accountant who needs 30 million pounds of Odriozola off a balance sheet, and a manager in London who bid on the morning somebody happened to be clearing a desk.”

She squared the file.

”Both of those are true on a Tuesday and neither of them is true on a Wednesday. Welcome to Madrid.”

Then she put 2 fingers on the last file and left them there.

”I am going to be no use to you for the next 20 seconds.”

”Jessica, just say it.”

”Manchester United.”

Nobody said anything.

”Not a job. Nobody is offering you Manchester United in July 2018.” She opened it. ”A meeting. Woodward’s office, no date, at your convenience. The phrase in the email is a conversation about the next 10 years of the football club.”

”Their manager is in post.”

”Their manager had a summer. You had a different one. They can count and so can you.”

My uncle Kev took me to a reserve match at Old Trafford in 1996 because he could not get a ticket for anything else. I was 6. I stood on a nearly empty terrace and thought it was the biggest building on earth.

It is 3 miles from the road I grew up on.

”Danny.”

”I am here.”

”You have gone white, son.”

”Give me a minute.”

Emma told me at 20 to 7 that I would feel it in my chest. I am not telling her she was right.

”Park them.”

”All 4?”

”All 4. I have got a medical at 12 and an aeroplane at 6 tomorrow and City at Wembley in 13 days.”

Jessica stacked the files square.

”Good,” she said. ”That is the first sensible thing you have said in this office since March.”

***

Thank you for 50 Golden Tickets.