Glory Of The Football Manager System

I went to sleep at about 1 thinking about a lad called Ned who has no life of his own.

Mo was outside that hotel at 20 past 6 the next morning with 2 coffees he had bought himself, and we were through the gates at Leavesden by 10 past 7, and a woman took my phone off me 2 minutes after that and put it in a grey pouch with a magnetic seal and gave me a numbered ticket, like a cloakroom.

I had known that was going to happen since the 14th of May.

Chk.

I took the ticket and put it in my jacket and walked onto that lot thinking about 4 millimetres of swelling in an ankle 30 miles away.

And about 4 people in a room in Beckenham who knew what to do about it.

Then I came round the end of a scene dock and stopped walking, because they had built a street.

Not a set on a stage. A street, outdoors, on a backlot the size of 3 training pitches, with shop fronts and bins and a bus stop and 40 feet of road that goes nowhere, and 200 people working on it at 20 to 8 in the morning.

Rrrrrrmmm. Generators.

Chk. Chk. Something metal being locked off 30 yards away.

”BACKGROUND STANDING BY.”

A woman with a radio walked me to a chair with my surname on tape on the back of it. Then a runner called Josh, 23, from Watford, who did not know who I was, asked me to move 3 times in 90 minutes.

The third time he said, ”Sorry mate, are you a stand-in?”

”No.”

”Right.” He looked at his radio. ”Sorry. Can you move anyway.”

I moved, and the 4th place I stood was next to a man in glasses who had been watching me get moved.

”You beat England,” he said.

Jon Watts. American, 37, 200 people waiting on him, and he gave me 11 minutes at the side of a road that is not a road.

”I did.”

”I watched it in a Portakabin here with 40 people and I do not know anything about soccer and I have not stopped thinking about it.” He was holding a coffee he did not drink. ”The 3 substitutions. In 8 minutes. Somebody explained it to me after and I made him do it twice.”

”Somebody explained my substitutions to a film director.”

”He is Moroccan. He does lighting. He cried.”

Prrp. A radio went on his hip and he turned it off without looking at it.

”Can I ask you something,” I said.

”Go on.”

”I watched the first one last night.”

”Everybody says that in the first 4 minutes.”

”Ned.”

Jon Watts stopped not drinking his coffee.

”Go on.”

I said it badly and I am going to put it down properly.

I said Ned and the girl are the 2 best things in that film and neither of them wants anything. I said that in the old ones Harry Osborn is going mad in the corner of every scene about his own father, and Mary Jane is failing at the thing she moved cities to do, and both of those come back round and hit Peter Parker in the face 40 minutes later.

And I said that every man at my football club thinks he is the main character of his own life, and that is the only reason any of it works.

He listened to all of it with his head on one side. Then he put the cup down on a bin that is not a bin.

”So how do you do it?”

”I play them.”

”You play them.”

”The 16-year-old has started a cup tie. So has the 17-year-old. I have got a lad of 18 who took a penalty in a shootout in America last week 5 days after we signed him.” I meant every word of it. ”Every one of them gets a competitive match, and if he is good enough he gets 30 more.

”Nobody at my club is waiting to be needed. That is the entire policy and it is the only one I have got.”

Jon Watts looked at me for a while.

”Alright,” he said. ”Then answer me a different one.”

”Go on.”

”Who did you leave out of the World Cup final?”

I did not say anything.

”You had 23 men in Moscow. You put 11 out and 7 more came on.” He had not raised his voice once. ”So 5 of them sat there. They gave you a year and they sat there and watched it and they will think about it for the rest of their lives, and you knew that when you wrote the sheet, and you wrote it anyway.”

”Yes.”

”Because you had 90 minutes.”

”Yes.”

”I have got 2 hours 10 and a studio that takes it off me at 2 hours 25.” He picked the cup back up. ”Same job, mate. You are just better funded than I am.”

”JON. JON, WE ARE READY.”

”You are right about the girl,” he said, on his way past me. ”We are doing something about the girl. Ned I am going to get wrong and I already know it, and that is what it is.”

They came for me an hour later.

4 hours on a film set works like this.

40 minutes of standing about, 90 seconds of everybody in the world moving at once, then 40 minutes of standing about.

At half 11 a woman called Dita put powder on my face with a brush, told me my own eyebrows were doing something, did something to them, and would not say what.

At 20 to 12 a man called Sam taped a radio mic to my spine with 3 bits of tape. ”Do not scratch your chest, do not sigh, and if you swear I will hear it and so will 9 other people.”

At 10 to 12 a woman called Anouk photographed me from 4 angles on a phone. Not for anything. So that if they come back to this street in October, the tape on my collar is in the same place.

”LAST LOOKS.”

”BACKGROUND FIRST POSITION.”

Priya told me what I could and could not put in a sentence out loud, and this is inside it.

Something is happening over the river.

It is not a storm and it is not a fire and it is made of all 4 of those things at once, and it is a quarter of a mile high, and it is coming up the Thames towards a bridge.

There are things in the air around it. Small ones. They are firing at cars.

That street is 200 yards from the water. 40 people on it hear the noise and run away from the river. Every single one of them runs.

And 1 man stops and turns round and looks at it.

The tennis ball on the 12 foot pole is where the thing is. Everything I am looking at all afternoon is a tennis ball, and 4 men will spend 8 months putting a quarter of a mile of fire and water where that tennis ball is.

Bec walked me to my mark before the first take. 2 strips of orange tape on a fake pavement in a T, and my feet went on the T, and that is where they were for 4 hours.

She is the first assistant director. She is 41, she is from Leeds, she has done this 18 years.

”You have seen it,” she said. ”Everybody else has heard it. You have looked up and seen it. That is the whole difference and it is about a second and a half.”

”So I am ahead of them.”

”You are ahead of them, and you are the wrong kind of calm about it, and then you say your line.” She put a hand on my elbow and moved me 8 inches left. ”Do not act frightened. Frightened is 40 people behind you and we have already got 40 people behind you.”

”Right.”

”Have you done this before?”

”No.”

”Right,” Bec said, and 6 seconds later she was 30 yards away shouting at 40 extras about where they start from.

”TURNING OVER.”

”SPEED.”

Clack.

”AND ACTION.”

At about take 7 I stopped acting and started doing my job.

A man stood still in a street while 40 people run past him is 1 of 2 things.

He has frozen. That is what everybody plays and it is dull to watch.

Or he has already worked out that running will not help him, and he is looking at the thing to see what it does next.

That is a touchline in the 80th minute at 2-1 down.

”CUT. Reset.”

”BACK TO 1, PLEASE.”

31 takes. 6 camera positions, 4 lenses, 3 of them with no line at all.

I did not get it wrong once, and it became a thing on that set by about half 2. A sound man called Terry started counting out loud from behind a trolley, and by take 20 there were 4 people watching who had no reason to be watching.

”31 for 31,” Terry said.

”Is that good?”

”Mate.” He pulled his headphones down round his neck. ”I did 4 days in April with a man off the telly who could not say 1 word 9 times.”