Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

8.

Saturday, November 21

In the classic heist movie The Italian Job, a bunch of bantering Brits descend on Turin, steal some gold, and escape in three very cool Minis. Life (and UEFA’s fixture-generating computer) had thrust me into the Michael Caine role. My team and I would soon be heading to Italy to take something that didn’t belong to us - a win - and it was my role to create a plan that could counter Evaristo and his gleaming, high-value football. It was also up to me to pick a crack squad with suitable skills. Who would drive a Mini? Who would hack into the traffic light system to set those lights to red and those to green? Who would nearly ruin the caper by being a sex pest on a tram?

That’s not a joke, by the way. In the movie, when Michael Caine needs a computer expert, he picks Benny Hill, famous for chasing women while the Yakety Sax plays. I hoped my choices would be a little more rational.

To that end, I was sitting on an upturned bucket by one of the training pitches at Säbener Strasse. Bayern Munich’s reserves were slowly gathering in front of me, all kitted out and ready to go.

I was shattered. An unexpected by-product of getting the curse had been that I got super-healing. Bruises cleared up twice as fast, hangovers were mild, bones knitted faster than an olden-days spinster. Last night, 90 minutes of top-tier concentration had absolutely wiped me out and this morning I still didn’t feel much better. Imagine how bad I would have felt without my fast healing. How was I going to be a player-manager in the Premier League? I’d need a week to recover if I tried to combine both tasks.

”Did you eat in the hotel?” asked Briggy. She was orbiting me like a high-tech defensive laser, ready to zap my enemies.

”Yeah, big spread,” I said. ”Eggs. Avocado. Croissants. I asked the kitchen to make me a bretzel but straight. No problem, sir. Coming right up, sir. 700 Euros a night is mental but if you want a straight bretzel, you’re glad you went five-star.”

”Max, stop talking shit. Did you eat, yes or no?”

”Last night? No. Couldn’t.”

”And this morning?”

”Fuck sake,” I said. ”Did Peter make a bet with you about how much omelette I would eat per day? What’s going on?”

She stopped her patrol. ”I’m worried about you. You look... Remember the first day we met? You called TJ a husk.”

”Am I husky?”

She looked at the reserve players. ”I think you’ll be safe for ten minutes. Can I go and get you something? Please?”

The very thought of food made me feel sick. ”Er... in a bit.”

”How about a smoothie?”

”Oh,” I said, surprised. ”That could work. Do you think...?”

”What?”

”Do you think they’ve got papaya?”

”Your Mancunian body is crying out for papaya?”

”I think it is, yeah.”

”I’ll just pop to one of the local papaya farms. I can get you a fresh coconut and a jujube, too.” When I didn’t respond, she switched tone. ”Papaya. I’ll try.”

”Before you go,” I said, pointing towards a player who was standing in the direction of Bologna. (An Artistic License is pending for the previous sentence.) ”Is that Stefan Clown?”

”It is, yes.”

”Can you do that thing where you grab his head from behind with both hands and twist it really hard?”

”No.”

”Vulcan neck pinch?”

”No.” She turned towards him. ”Clown! Over here.”

”Mate,” I grumbled, but suddenly the kid was in my area. I was too husked up to get fiery. ”Why are you here?”

Stefan Clown looked miserable, which was a good start to the day. ”You asked Bayern Zwei to come to Säbener Strasse so I have come. I could not be the only one who didn’t come.”

”Briggy,” I said. ”I’m wrecked and I don’t have mental capacity for this. Talk to the dolt, find out what’s happening, and summarise it.”

She talked to the Clown for a while, then reported in. ”It’s less humiliating for him to be shouted at by you this morning than it is to stay at home. If he stayed away, he believes the other players will say he should have come and fought for his opportunity to go to Italy with the first-team squad. He’s here to show he’ll do whatever it takes to get to the top.”

”Everything except respect Dieter Bauer.”

Stefan’s head dropped but he blabbed in German a little more.

Briggy said, ”He can’t take back what he did and he expects you to chew him out but he’s not trying to impress you. He’s trying to impress Diane Berger and Hoggy. They will be here after you’re gone. I suspect he thinks being mistreated by you will endear him to those who are in charge here, and he’s almost certainly right.”

I shook my head. Cut this club and it would bleed politics. ”Who’s Hoggy?”

”The trainer of Bayern Zwei.”

”Right, yeah, I knew that.”

”He’s coming this way, with Diane Berger.”

I kept my sigh internal - I think. ”Briggy, can you get me an apple before you go papaya hunting?”

”Sure. What about him?”

I tutted. The kid was still there. He had explained the situation brilliantly - me sending him packing would be to his benefit. Obviously he thought he was hot shit and would be able to wow me despite getting off to a bad start. ”Dude. I’m trying to win matches so your club’s head coach can relax. If you’re on board with that, you can stay, but you won’t be going to Italy. You’re right about one thing - your redemption arc doesn’t involve me.”

Briggy said, ”Doesn’t everyone get a chance to impress you? Isn’t that the point of this morning?”

I tried to process what she was saying. The point of the morning was to get the lads to run around so I would see the magical numbers that would appear over their heads but if Briggy was thinking there was some kind of dog-eat-dog gladiator selection planned, the lads would probably be thinking that, too. By the time I’d thought about how to handle it, Briggy had gone, and Stefan had melted back into the group.

Diane Berger and Hoggy arrived. He wanted a handshake; I turned it into a fistbump. Germans loved shaking hands. It wasn’t just one when they arrived and one before they departed, I’d even seen one guy go to the bathroom and give handshakes when he returned. Mission accomplished! For someone teetering on the edge of being a full-blown germaphobe, that part of the culture was maddening. After some pleasantries, Diane said, ”Hoggy is here to help if you need it.”

”Oh? That’s cool.” My original plan - for me to lead a quick warm-up before the lads played a match - involved getting up from the bucket. If I could stay on the bucket, I’d be a happy chappie. ”Yeah, that would actually be really helpful. Thanks.”

Hoggy had a deep, flat voice that didn’t match his bushy eyebrows. ”It is no problem. My remit is to help to prepare players for the first team. I am very interested to learn what you think of them. Also, I am here to ensure you do not do anything to break my players.”

That made me laugh, a quick, low-key HA!, but he didn’t reciprocate. ”You’re not joking,” I said.

”No.” He wasn’t being a dick, just saying what was on his mind. ”I have heard a lot of things about you. Mostly negative.”

”Are you Dutch?”

”I am not Dutch. I am Bavarian. We also say our opinion.”

”Okay, that’s fun. Everyone here gets to blast me non-stop but if I say what I think it gets printed in Bild ten seconds later under the headline OMFG This Guy Is So Rude, He’s Such a Meanie.” I felt anger rise in me, which wasn’t useful in this scenario. ”Please get the lads over here,” I said. So I don’t have to get up, I nearly added.

Hoggy called out and made it happen. Some of the ’lads’ looked older than me, but the profiles weren’t showing yet so I didn’t know for sure. ”I can translate,” said Hoggy.

”Hey, guys. Thanks for coming.” I left a tiny break for the translation. ”I’m Max. I want to look at the options I have available to me during this time.” Break.

This was going to be pretty interesting. I had studied the first team, done my homework, but hadn’t really expected to need the reserves. I knew some basics. Most were 20 or 21 years old. One of them was very highly rated and if the media were to be believed, I would soon see that Real Madrid wanted to sign him. He was only 17, though.

”I would like you to warm up and then play a quick match.” Break. ”I’m sure you have seen a lot and heard a lot about me. That I’m a shit player, that I’m a good player, that I was a good player but now I’m shit. Let’s agree I’m somewhere between good and shit.” The players with better English laughed, while the others laughed a moment later as Hoggy finished translating. ”Same as a manager. Good? Shit? Shit but with a good haircut?”

More laughs.

”What you haven’t read is that I’m the best judge of talent in the world. That’s not a boast, that’s not arrogance, that’s a cold, hard fact. I’m the best and it isn’t even close.” While Hoggy translated, I realised these words were having the opposite effect than intended. The lads were getting pumped up! Wanted to impress me! I held my hands up and smiled. ”What I’m trying to say is you don’t need to do anything special. I don’t want you to get out there and give me a hundred and twenty percent, right? I want sixty percent. Yes, Hoggy, that’s what I said.” He frowned, but translated. ”Don’t get injured, don’t fly into tackles. Treat this like a fun little kickabout with your mates at school, yeah? Hoggy, are you struggling on the word kickabout? Sort of, you know, a casual game.”

”Pick-up football,” said Diane.

I clicked my fingers. ”Bosh. Actually, let’s do it like this. From the team that has the most fun, one player will get to join senior training for a week.”

This caused a stir, and things were looking up. As happened so often in Munich, someone had to ruin the moment. Diane said, ”How do you judge which team had the most fun?”

I looked up to the sky, unable to hide my impatience. ”I could write a special algorithm and illegally train it using every Facebook message that has ever been posted. Would that work?” I inhaled, forced myself to be a teeny bit calmer. ”Or we could count the smiles. Count the laughs. Count the joy-filled shrieks that happen when the lads jump around when their mate does a nutmeg.”

”What is nutmeg?” said Hoggy.

”Tunneln,” said Diane.

I rubbed my temples. ”Can you start, please?”

Hoggy blew his whistle and the players helped him to set up cones. The older guys helped him to organise it quickly. As the lads started jogging up and down the cones, their profiles appeared.

Absurd numbers. A few were the Bayern version of Fool’s Gold, players who seemed to be amazing but who would hit their ceiling earlier than anyone could expect. These guys were in the CA 90 to 120 range - still very good players. The majority sat between 120 and 150. Good Championship players. Half a dozen were at least Premier League quality and of those, five were seriously talented, and yes, one was coveted by Real Madrid amongst others. Three other players had a Who’s Who of megaclubs in their ’interested’ profile. One, though, appeared to not be on anyone’s radar.

I leaned forward, rubbing my lips, feeling almost ready to do a jig. My dream left back! Willi Tillmann, PA 190. Incredible. He was just there! What to do? Of course I wanted to bring him to Bologna to help me complete my Italian job but what if there was a better option?

I’d read a book once about a guy who visits some house and becomes convinced the owner has a long-lost Vermeer. He decides not to say anything because what if he could get the painting for himself? If he could persuade the owner to take fifty thousand pounds for it, that would be an instant twenty million quid profit.

What if I let Willi Tillmann’s career play out naturally? He hadn’t appeared for the first team. Maybe they didn’t rate him. Maybe he would get released... and three minutes later I would be knocking on his front door.

It wasn’t like Tillmann would improve Bayern’s starting eleven. He was ’only’ CA 119, but I would have him in my squad over a mutineer. I wanted hungry players who would give their all for the cause, not entitled brats. And just the fact that I was willing to throw randos into the mix would worry the first teamers. Cross Max Best and he’ll cross out your name.

”Who told you you’re a shit manager?” said Diane. I was pretty surprised she was still there, but then again, only seconds had passed. ”Have you been reading the first team’s WhatsApp group?”

”Ouch,” I said, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk. There were guys here who could do a job for me in the next four weeks. The one Madrid were interested in was no use - too young, too physically underdeveloped. He had trained with the first team before so it wasn’t like I could say I gave him his chance to impress. He was on the fast track and wouldn’t be any more loyal to me than anyone in the first team dressing room.

”It was good to win,” said Diane.

”Better than the alternative,” I agreed, in a flat voice that meant I didn’t want to go any further.

”I should tell you there are unhappy players.”

”Yeah, well, they were born that way. You can’t pin that on me.”

Diane looked away, which I thought was a mark of annoyance but no, she was hiding the tiniest little smile. ”It doesn’t worry you what they say?”

”How can it? I haven’t heard it.”

Incredibly, she took this to mean I wanted to know. ”They don’t think you are qualified. They don’t think you are experienced enough. They don’t want to play defensive football, long-ball football, English football. How they played last night wasn’t fit for Bayern Munich.”

”Okay,” I said. There was a guy who would be a fantastic wing back or on the right of midfield in a 3-4-3. A guy who could attack and defend, a true two-way player with high Decisions. All the ingredients were there - just add first team minutes. His CA was 126. Higher than Willi Tillmann’s, which I supposed was because this guy, Cheb Alloula, had played twice for the Algerian national team.

”The analysts don’t share your fears about Bologna.”

”I know,” I said. ”I’ve seen their presentations.”

”Either you are wrong or they are. I know on which side of the divide I stand.”

”Yeah?”

She shrugged her coat up a little; the morning wasn’t even that cold. ”They are concerned that you will play overly defensively against Bologna. It is not in Bayern’s DNA to park the bus.” That meant being ultra-defensive, as though you had literally parked the team bus in front of a goal to stop the other team from scoring.

”Diane, do me a favour and stop talking about the analysts. They’re technically competent but they lost me when they were unable to see the risks Evaristo poses. If you can’t see that, you’re about as reliable as my primary school headmaster who once made me stand up in front of the entire school while he said, ’Max, you will never manage the rekordmeister.’ The crazy thing is, I didn’t know what that even meant until this week.” Diane didn’t so much as twitch. Tough crowd. ”I don’t need them travelling with us.” So hard not to change ’want’ to ’need’ in that sentence. Diplomacy was exhausting. ”I’m not going to listen to anything they have to say so you’re literally burning money by taking them. It’s not my call. They can sit with their little iPads, tapping away, looking smug, being counter-productive, getting on my nerves, but by all means spend tens of thousands of Euros bringing them and their shit attitudes with us.”

”They don’t have shit attitudes. They are the best in the business.”

”If they were the best, they’d be at Chester.”

Diane dipped her head in exasperation. ”It is unhealthy to insist on your own ideas. You must listen to outside viewpoints. You cannot be right all the time.”

”I know, that’s why I hire staff who challenge me.” Briggy returned and handed me an apple in a napkin, plus a little block of chocolate. ”Oh, you read my mind. Amazing, thanks!” I unwrapped it and bit the corner off. ”We have big discussions, me and my team. Three at the back or four? The lineups. They can challenge me and so can the players. Discussion is essential. But when I say holy shit this team we’re playing, they’re really good, no-one ever says ’are they fuck’. No-one says, nah, nothing to worry about. Because I’m a cocky arsehole, right, so I don’t project doom onto the next oppo just to get a bit of extra motivation out of the lads. When I say it’s hard, they know it’s gonna be hard.”

”Of course Bologna will be hard, it’s the Champions League, there are no easy matches, but you are grossly overstating the case. You have been working in the lower leagues in England. You are not competent to judge the higher levels of European competition.”

”Great,” I said. ”If it’s so easy, put one of the iPad dudes in charge.”

”That is not my decision.”

”Oh, shame.” I bit another chunk of the chocolate block and felt it doing wonderful, sugary things inside me.

Diane was coming at me like The Terminator. Wrong movie, mate! Why couldn’t everyone just stick to the theme? ”This time, you cannot wait until the last moment to name the team. We fly on Monday and need to make our final preparations today. There are huge logistical challenges to such a trip. Over 300 members of staff will be coming.”

”300?” I said, absolutely gobsmacked. Football is eleven-a-side. ”What the hell are you talking about?”

”We will be over 300, including admin, organisers, brand ambassadors, and sponsors. Our people are in Bologna right now checking the final details of the venues we have chosen. We have bedrooms and function rooms in eight different hotels. It is a huge operation, Max, and as a courtesy I would ask you to tell me the team at the earliest possible moment so that our employees can do their jobs.”

I pointed to the pitch. ”I’ve got to watch this, then I can decide.”

”Yes,” she said. ”And you need the medical report. But as soon as possible after that, please.”

”I don’t need the medical report.”

”Oh my God,” said Diane. ”This is chaos, pure.”

”By the way, I agree I have to tell you the squad, but there’s no reason to tell you the starting eleven. That will be made known one hour before kick off again. Evaristo sets up his defensive system based on the attacking options of his opponent. Sounds simple but not everyone does that. If he knows the team in advance he can prepare. If he doesn’t know the team, he’ll have to guess. If he has to guess it’ll be fifty-fifty that I can surprise him and we’ll get an early goal. Early goals in games like these,” I told Briggy, ”are massive because you force the other team to come at you more than they want. If we get an early goal, we’ll probably win. I won’t be telling anyone the line up.”

Diane said, ”What if Paul Braun insists?”

”Don’t know. I might lie to him. It’s unlikely he’s the mole but why take the risk? I might only get one chance in my entire career to pit my wits against Evaristo. This is important to me.”

”Paul Braun is not the mole.”

”Who is?” I said.

”No-one... and everyone. There may be one person leaking information out of anger. One for money? Unlikely but possible. No, what happens is normal. A player sends a tip to a journalist friend in exchange for better coverage. A player informs his friend who he doesn’t realise is in a gambling ring. A player tells his agent he is out of the team - this one is very common. The agent tells the media, complains, whips up a storm. How dare you treat my client that way? It is unhelpful but it is not sinister.”

”In other words they are all fantastically selfish and unwilling to moderate their behaviour even one tiny bit, no matter the cost to the team. I’m ready to stop talking about it. I won’t change. The end. Fertig.”

”Max!” said Briggy. ”You learned a new word!”

”I know. I didn’t want to. I can’t think how it got in there.”

Briggy said, ”What’s the difference between three at the back and four at the back?”

”I’ll tell you when we’re watching Stuttgart,” I said, munching into the apple.

”Who’s good?” said Briggy, as the lads rushed to put the goalposts into position. The warm up was finished; now for the match, with Hoggy in the middle as referee. A quick analysis told me he had chosen to do firsts versus backups. He hadn’t understood the assignment, which was to make this fun. Doing the same old shit in the same way wasn’t fun.

”Who’s good? Good question,” I said. ”Why don’t you ask Diane? Let’s see what the official position is.”

Diane held a grimace for a few seconds. She didn’t want to spill the beans on the lads but she couldn’t really hide the truth, since it was relevant to my job. ”Who do you want to know about?”

I started with the Real Madrid target, as a smokescreen. Diane told me about him. I pretended to be interested, but when she finished by saying, ”So I don’t think you’ll be able to get him to Chester,” I realised she was worried I wanted to poach her assets. As if!

I pretended to check something on my phone, then pointed at a player. ”Cheb Alloula has more caps for Algeria than appearances for Bayern.”

”Cheb is well-regarded but we have plenty of first-team options in his position.”

”What’s his position?”

She gave me a sardonic look. ”I thought you were the best scout in the world.”

”I want to know what your super-genius analysts think his position is.”

”Attacking midfielder on the right.”

”Hmm,” I said. As with their analysis of Evaristo, they had got close to hitting the mark but missed something important; I didn’t see any benefit in pointing that out. ”Is he a dick?”

”No, he’s lovely. Very sweet. Over-competitive, of course, as they all are, but sweet.”

I asked about another guy who wasn’t very good, just because that felt like solid spycraft. Don’t make it easy for them to know who you’re really interested in, right? Throw in a false positive to throw them off the scent. Diane told me about the red herring, then I said, ”What about that goalkeeper? He looks the sort who would go around stealing girlfriends.”

”Jesus, Max,” said Briggy.

”What?” I said.

”Max is weird about Australians,” Briggy explained to Diane. ”He finds them intimidating because they’re easy-going, likeable, and comfortable in their own skin. The very opposite of him, in fact.”

”Never mind him,” I said. ”Thanks to me, the goalie situation is fine. I might need a left back. Who do we have?”

Diane said, ”Willi.”

”Will he what?” I said. Briggy made a noise.

”Willi Tillmann,” said Diane. ”21 years old. Hasn’t made the breakthrough into the first team squad, but he is behind Fonzy and Rui Santos.” It took me a second to realise that Fonzy meant Alphonso Davies, the Canadian star who was injured. ”Basti would use Shuji next.” Shibata Shuji was the Japanese defender who had left back as part of his curse profile, which meant I wouldn’t worry too much about him playing there, but whose attributes were very much weighted to the centre back role.

”If his pathway is blocked, why don’t you sell him?” I said, as casually as I could manage. Briggy turned her head a little and the intensity of her gaze increased. Busted!

Diane didn’t seem to notice, though. ”We might. There was interest in a loan move but Fonzy picked up the injury and our best-in-class analysts and performance experts started to detect that Rui Santos is nearly ready to age out.”

”And he’s a dick,” I added, which landed flat. ”Okay, so Willi is in limbo. You sort of need him but not enough to give him minutes. He’s Tom Hickman all over again.” I knew Briggy would ask, so I got it out of the way. ”He was this young centre back I really liked, but I couldn’t get him out of his club and then I pissed off some half-billionaires and they bought him to spite me. He’s rotting in Bradford City’s reserves now, same as Willi is here.”

That was it. Decision made. I could be a selfish prick like all these Bayern arseholes, or I could make sure Willi Tillmann got a chance at a proper career. PA 190! What a career it would be. I hated the idea of making Bayern Munich stronger, but then again there was no guarantee Willi would actually make it. ”What’s he like as a person?”

”Very good. Serious and professional. He can follow instructions, if that’s what you are worried about.”

”If he can follow instructions,” I said, slowly, ”why isn’t he smiling and laughing?”

Diane stared ahead, unblinking. ”Chaos.”

The chocolate had given me enough energy to banter; that energy ran out. ”Diane, listen. That chaos you’re feeling? That’s the result of a big difference in standards between me on the one side and this football club on the other. You think it’s obvious which way round that goes. But there’s a reason Bayern Munich get knocked out in the Champions League quarter finals every year... and it’s not me.”

***

When Diane fucked off for a minute, I asked Briggy to grab Cheb Alloula.

He came over to my bucket, apprehensive, excited, nervous. ”Bump that,” I said, holding my fist out. He obeyed. ”Dude, we have to talk quick before Diane Berger comes back. I don’t want a chaperone. Er, how’s your English?”

”It’s okay,” he said. ”I didn’t know the last word.”

”Chaperone. It’s the guy who goes with you on a date to make sure you behave.”

”Oh, my father,” he said, seriously, but two seconds later he cracked into a smile. ”I’m joking.”

”You got him,” Briggy said. She was right; the idea of a dad going on his son’s date was so mental it had to be true.

”Okay, Cheb, where to start? Question one. Have you ever thought about playing in England?”

His smile died; this wasn’t what he expected. He went through the calculations. I won’t be going to Italy with the team, but maybe a transfer to England is even better? The Premier League... His smile returned. ”Of course I would like to play in England.”

”Have you got an agent?”

”Yes.”

”Hmm,” I said. I knew he had one - his profile told me - and that was a shame because Cheb got more interesting the more I looked at him. His position was listed as: DM AM LR. He could play as a defensive midfielder or an attacking midfielder on either the left or the right. (The version of Soccer Supremo the curse was based on didn’t have a specific name for wing backs. A right wing back would be listed as DMR.) Cheb was 126/168, so he wouldn’t get to the very top of the sport but he would be a fucking awesome player for, say, the eighth-placed Premier League team while he pocketed close to a hundred thousand pounds per week.

Briggy said, ”Max, you’re spacing out.”

”Yeah, soz. Question two. Er, you observe Ramadan, I guess?”

”I do.”

”Okay and do they have those little breaks here so that players who are fasting can take on a bit of food during the match?”

”Yes.”

”See, that’s player welfare. I like that. We haven’t had this at Chester yet but I read that at Everton there’s a cook who gets up specially at like 4 a.m. to prepare the meals. I don’t think that’s in his contract, right? He’s doing it because he wants the best for his colleagues. When I was reading it, do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking, those fuckers had better say thank you to that chef.”

Cheb smiled. ”I’m sure they did. I’m sure they do. Nobody wants to get up at 4 in the morning. That is an effort that you have to appreciate.”

”I don’t want to help someone move up in the world and find out he’s just waiting to squash the little people.”

He smiled wider. ”My family will keep me on the ground. My sisters already think my head is too big.”

”Cool, that’s basically all I wanted to ask. Oh, but can you help me with something super quick? I’ve got a gay friend who’s really interested in what I’m doing here and I told him to come over but he heard that there was a big mess with the whole rainbow armbands thing and he’s worried it’s not, like, a friendly place to visit, you know? What can I tell him?”

”Munich?” he said, surprised. ”It’s very friendly to the gay community. One of the most... It’s everywhere something to do. And Bayern has the Queerpass. It’s, ah, a community for the gay fans. They have a space on the south curve with the ultras. It’s the 20th anniversary this month! There will be some events in the stadion in the cup match. That’s actually December but it’s the closest. Invite your friend to that. He’ll see.”

”Okay,” I said. ”Yeah, I might just do that.”

Some giant laughs came from the pitch and it was clear that if I was finished asking him irrelevant questions, he wanted to rejoin the fun. ”So are you going to sign me to Chester or not?” he said, with a cheeky smile.

I laughed. ”I’d fucking love to, bro, but we can’t afford Bayern Munich first-teamers.”

He became utterly still, as though he had grown roots. ”I’m not...”

”Is your passport up to date?”

”Yes.”

”Are you gonna play how I fucking tell you to play?”

”Yes.”

I brought the apple to my mouth but before biting into it, pretended to get exasperated. ”Servus, Cheb. That means goodbye.”

”I’m in?”

”You’re in.”

His face lit up. He wanted to say something but I waved him away.

When he was out of earshot, Briggy said, ”What the hell was that?”

”What?”

”You’ve got a gay friend who thinks Munich might not be a friendly place? What planet does this friend currently live on?”

”Last night when I was trying to get to sleep I watched a video where a metal drummer heard a song for the first time and had to create a new drum line for it. That song was Thunder by Imagine Dragons. He’d never heard it. Two billion views on YouTube but none from him. Not everyone knows everything, Briggy.” I chomped into the apple.

”You’ve perked up, at least.”

”Yeah,” I said. I checked that Diane hadn’t snuck up behind me. ”I’m starting to get excited. Cheb solves a problem. Now if I can get my hands on a Willi, things will really start looking up.” I grinned and continued munching.

***

I gave Willi a similar interview, but replaced the Ramadan one with one about his attitude to pranks in the dressing room. His answer was fine - it could boost morale and bring players together but it could get out of control. Briggy’s face nearly shot into orbit when I finished by saying, ”Oh, Willi, can you help me with something tiny? I’ve got a gay friend who’s really interested in this adventure of mine and I invited him over but he heard that there was a big mess with the whole rainbow armbands thing and he’s worried it’s not, like, a friendly place to visit, you know? What can I tell him?”

Willi, tall, handsome, decent haircut, said, ”Tell him he is very welcome. You know the phrase mia san mia. We also have mia san bunt. We are colourful. It, I think, does not translate so well.” He did a very tiny frown. ”Do you want us to wear the armband? Is that why - ”

”I don’t want anybody to do anything,” I said. ”When a player says they don’t want to do something, that’s fine, that’s the end of the discussion. It’s a free country. I won’t be asking anyone to wear anything, Willi. But I’m in charge of who goes on the plane, right? If I have the choice, I don’t want to sit next to someone who would rather my friend didn’t exist.”

He considered that. ”If you don’t choose the best players, you won’t be in charge of who goes on the plane.”

”Do you want to dive into my personal belief system or do you want to play left back in a 4-2-3-1?”

”Why not both?”

I pointed. ”Finish the game, then go home and make sure your passport is where you left it.”

It took him a second. ”Really?”

”Really. Don’t listen to anyone else. This coming match will be brutally hard. It’s a very difficult job and the only way to get through it is we all work together as a team. And that means you do everything I say.” That last part was a quote from The Italian Job and I said it in an awesome Michael Caine accent but weirdly, Willi didn’t seem to realise. ”Servus,” I said, pointing him back towards the pitch.

He left in a pretty similar way to Cheb, uncertain about how to behave, shooting happy glances back at me.

Briggy watched him go. ”Max, who’s your gay friend?”

”James,” I said, instantly.

”James what?”

”James Grass.”

”Uh-huh. And that little interview proves that these guys are suitably woke?”

”Course it doesn’t. You’re going to check their social media history.”

She groaned. ”What am I looking for? Anything that isn’t the exact same shade of liberal as you?”

”They can be whatever as long as they aren’t hateful. It’s not much to ask is it, Briggy? I’m putting rocket fuel under their arses and I want to make sure they aren’t carrying multiple warheads.”

She pulled a sceptical face. ”Being picked by you is putting rocket fuel under their arses?”

”It is, actually.” Another reason for the questions: I didn’t want to bring Benny Hill to Italy if I could help it.

”Here’s your smoothie,” she said, looking over my shoulder. Someone was approaching behind.

”Hey, did they have papaya?”

”No.”

”Can you call Stuttgart and see if they can get one?”

She eyed me. ”You’re joking. I know you’re joking. You’re not joking.”

I accepted the smoothie with a big smile and a big thank you, then waited until the cook walked off. ”This job is shit, Briggy. I’ve had to set up a whole fucking event to find some people who don’t despise me. I want a treat and I deserve a treat.” Briggy took her phone out and started double-thumbing. ”Are you looking up the number? I thought you’d been in touch with someone there.”

”I have. I’ll call her in a minute. This is me texting Peter. I’m contrasting this request for an exotic out-of-season fruit with you complaining about the pampered princes.”

I nodded. ”That’s fair. Yeah, I deserve that.”

”So are you going to change your ways?”

”Yeah. Soon. I pwomise.”

***

Before leaving, I got up to deliver my verdict. First, I asked the three older players to come and stand with me. ”You guys are sort of like the bodyguards for the young lads, right? What’s it called in ice hockey? The enforcers? You make sure no-one roughs up the lads.”

Briggy translated and the answer came back affirmative, with caveats.

”Yeah, fine, fine, write it all out in an essay. Briggy will read them all. Best one wins a set of steak knives. Translate that.”

”No.”

”Okay, lads, as you can guess I’ve chosen Cheb and Willi to help us out in Italy but that doesn’t mean the door is closed to you. Every time a senior player pisses me off, one of you will ascend to take their place.”

When Briggy finished translating, Diane said, ”You’ll end up with the entire Munich Zwei.”

”Anyone here have a problem with that? I don’t. I could win with these. No offence, Hoggy.”

”My win ratio is sixty percent.”

”Yeah but don’t let that get you down.”

”What’s yours?” said Briggy.

”This season? Can’t remember. Hundred percent. I don’t keep track of such things. Games I managed? Hundred percent. All right, as I was saying, the two lads are coming to Italy, and I want these three cloggers coming to training this week. Flying to Italy on Monday, no match Tuesday, tiny session on Wednesday, it’s not much of a bonus after all, but the idea that these guys are looking after you... It’s just my kind of thing, you know? This is the part of Bayern Munich that most reminds me of Chester and I want to reward that. Okay, I have to rush to Stuttgart. Bye.”

”But Max,” called out one of the lads. ”Who won the smiling contest?”

”Diane,” I said, as I pointed at her hard-as-granite face. ”Wait, looks like she forgot how to do it. Cheb, put your fingers either side of Willi’s mouth and lift up his cheeks.” Willi, of course, burst into a grin even before Cheb’s fingers got close. ”There we go! Okay, now Willi, do the same thing to Diane. Oh, there she goes! Look, everyone! That’s why she’s the winner. Servus, everyone. Have a nice wochenende.”

***

I got some much-needed sleep on the drive to Stuttgart, and arrived feeling much more like a young Michael Caine. We went into another massive stadium, 60,000 capacity, sold out, red-and-white banners, flags, scarves. Huge noise, huge passion, 7 XP per minute.

The home team made a bit of a fuss of me, and one of their chefs had found me a papaya somehow. I gleefully drank the smoothie he made and I insisted on thanking him in person. They wouldn’t let me go down into their bowels but brought the guy up. I gave him a big hug and signed his white uniform.

When we settled into our seats, Briggy said, ”Their content team were licking their lips the way you did when you saw that smoothie.”

”Really? What?”

”The English weirdo manager of Bayern Munich, who’s one of the hottest topics in Germany right now, asked for an impossible smoothie. They must have thought you were being a diva, like those rock stars who trash a hotel room if there are blue M&Ms. But instead you were so grateful you wanted to thank the guy in person. I bet they got some amazing photos, some top footage.”

”You think next time I come all the fans will be waving inflatable papayas? You’re overthinking it. God, it really hit the spot. So, what’s the vibe with me right now?”

”You’re about 30% husk.”

”Yeah, I meant in the press.”

”It’s quite manic. Bild are still calling you mad dog and printing all the rumours they’re getting. Bunte - that’s the magazine for royal family, celebrity gossip - are drooling over the prospect of Emma coming to visit you. They’ll treat her like a princess. I mean, in a bad way.”

”Emma will love it for about four hours.”

”The sports pages, YouTubers, TikTokers, podcast nerds, basically think you’re a hack. They don’t say bald fraud here. I tried saying it to someone and they looked at me like I was crazy.”

”Yeah I think that one’s specific to England.”

”It’s not all bad. The vibe is basically you’re a hack but you mean well. They liked it when you got hot about deserving to be on the pitch. That kind of attitude plays well here. They don’t like that you’re passive on the touchline. They like their trainers to be demonstrative.”

”Same as in England. It’s moronic.”

”Last thing. It might be nothing but while the nerds were complaining about how you started the match so defensively, there was an undercurrent of excitement because you’re a pioneer. They’re hoping to see something radical, something new. They’re hoping you show us Bestball.”

I tutted. ”I’m not doing that here. How can I teach it in four weeks?”

”I’m just saying that it’s something very positive about you. It could be in your favour to mention it in your next interview. If you give one. Maybe it’s a good idea to stay mysterious for now. By saying so little, you are building interest.”

I slouched in the seat as much as I could. ”Use Bestball. Hmm. I can almost see a way...” I sat up straight. ”It doesn’t matter, though. If Evaristo makes me look like a chump, I’m finished here. Emma’s not coming, there’s no pap-the-princess chase, I don’t get to kickstart a few careers, I don’t get to do anything. Let me focus on this for a while. If I survive, we will have to play Stuttgart soon.”

***

With my XP income being a little lower than expected on the trip so far, I had stopped pumping experience points into my Chester players - a temporary but necessary measure. Even by cutting down on my spending, I calculated that I would only get up to around 3,800 XP after this match. Far short of the 5,000 XP I needed to unlock the 3-4-2-1 formation.

Sunday would be spent getting ready to travel and traveling. Monday was unlikely to come with opportunities to grind. Tuesday was the match. My first ever in the Champions League!

A tough one, too. Bayern’s data guys couldn’t see it, but Evaristo was the current Mount Everest of managers. The other ones in his class, like Pedro Porto at Man United, were too wedded to one system, one specific way of setting up a team, one way of attacking and defending. Evaristo was the Cambrian explosion, trying everything, evolving, adapting.

”Briggy,” I said. ”You asked about the difference between three and four at the back. See Stuttgart here? They’re called The Reds, so guess which colour they’re playing in?”

”White. I noticed that.”

”How many defenders have they got?”

”If you put a gun to my head I’d break your wrist. But if someone with skill put a gun to my head, I’d say four.”

”Yeah. They’re playing a straight 4-4-2. I got shit for doing that but this is one of the top tactical thinkers in Europe, apparently. Favourite to be the next Tottenham manager. Favourite to be the next Chelsea manager. Etcetera. Do you know who he is?”

”No. Wait - Jurgen Klopp.”

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it’s taken without the author’s consent. Report it.

I laughed. ”It’s Toddy Braun.” I waited but got no reaction. ”Paul Braun’s nephew.”

”Oh! That’ll be awkward when he beats you.”

”No, Briggy. Right now I’m spinning plates and I’m treading on thin ice and all kinds of metaphors but if I’m still in charge when we play Stuttgart, I will give them an absolute pasting. Paul might even be angry that I beat his nep-nep so hard. Okay so there are four defenders in a line there. With four you can sort of cover the width of the pitch but not really.”

”That’s what I want, is it? To cover the width?”

”Let’s come at it from the other angle. I’m playing out there and I want to score a goal. I start in the middle, in that big circle. I run towards the goal and I shoot. How do you stop that?”

”Break your legs?”

”Yeah, people try. Technically, it’s not allowed. What you do is you put defenders there. The more the better. Okay if you’re gonna do that I’ll go around the sides. I come to the left, like the oppo are doing now, and I run forward and I kick the ball into the middle. That’s a cross. You’ve heard us say that loads of times. You cross the ball and a dude in the middle does a header or a volley. The easiest thing is to stop the cross from ever happening, so you want defenders out wide, too, yeah? But you can’t have defenders everywhere because you’ve only got eleven dudes. So you might put three guys in the middle of the defence and say, yeah, crosses are gonna come in but we’re just going to head them away. Three, four, it doesn’t really matter as long as what you’re doing suits your players and the oppo don’t have the tools to hit you where you’re weakest. Stuttgart don’t have super-talented defenders, so what do you do? See Toddy Braun’s solution?”

”No.”

”His team squash up into about two-thirds of the width of the pitch. They make the playing area small. Smaller space means more pressure. It’s hard to pass the ball when there are so many defenders around you. It’s not impossible - that’s what Bestball is all about - but it’s hard.”

”So what do you do?”

”See the one-third of the pitch where no-one is? Put a fast winger there. Fuck it, why not put two there? When you get the ball, kick it to them as quick as you can. They can run at goal and if they’re fast enough, boom.”

”Why isn’t the other team doing that?”

”Yeah, good question. The manager might think he doesn’t have the right players. If you don’t have someone fast and clinical, you’re just kicking the ball away. Second point, you might not have someone who can play such an accurate long pass from the defence. And if you have two guys over there, the oppo has an advantage over here. Doing what I said is not as straightforward as I’m making it sound but basically it boils down to the orthodoxy.”

”The what?”

”All those people complaining I was defensive? I didn’t do what Bayern Munich should do? Diane Berger told me I hadn’t behaved according to the DNA of the club. If you’re a head coach in Germany, you don’t want to be the one guy who does something ugly. This guy today, he might get sacked but he’ll get another job because he’s, like, doing the things people agree should be done.”

”And you don’t agree to agree?”

”I’d love to say I don’t give the slightest shit but of course I do, I’m human. But my way of thinking is more like okay, I did that one ugly thing but I scored a goal or I nearly scored a goal. This little pressure box of yours doesn’t work. If Toddy Braun does this against me for 90 minutes, we will score the same goal six times. At what point does the conversation turn from Max Best is boring to Toddy Braun is a fucking idiot? He’s not an idiot, so he’ll change it the first time he gets a bloody nose. But if he’s not doing his box thing what’s he got? That sounds dismissive but all I mean is, if it’s just a plain Stuttgart versus Bayern Munich with no gimmicks, we’ll crush him and play beautiful football doing it. And all these influencers will go, ahhhh, why didn’t Best play like that from the start?”

”Because you couldn’t,” said Briggy, softly.

”Yeah.” I rubbed my lower jaw. ”You know, it’s really complicated. There are so many factors that go into a result. Evaristo has broken the limits of what should be possible through coaching. I mean, that’s my interpretation. The Bayern lot don’t agree. They think he’s pretty normal, which I don’t get. Toddy here has a pretty average team who play above average football. The input of the coach is visible, right? Evaristo is doing the same but with higher level players. He makes Bologna better so if Bayern have an off day, if standards slip, it will be an even game. God, I’m rambling. I was trying to say that it’s complicated so I try to bring simplicity to it. If the oppo do this, we’ll do that. Simple, you know? If the oppo leave a massive honking gap over there, fill it!”

”Do Bologna leave gaps?”

”They do, yeah. They send their centre backs rushing forward to create chaos. They gamble that if they lose the ball, they will win it back so fast that nothing bad can happen. But if we leave bodies up the top of the pitch when their defenders have gone walkabout, we could wreck them on counters. It’s very risky, though. Very risky. And I haven’t been able to practise it because whatever we train will be all over the internet in minutes.”

”There was something else you mentioned. A way to stop Evaristo’s methods.”

”Mmm. I wanted to try it last night but only if we were two goals ahead, which didn’t happen. It’s a kind of false midfield variant. That’s something I did with my women’s team when we played against Sandra Lane’s Man City girls. That was a big day for me,” I mused. ”Just to think that I could actually compete with a professional was a big, big deal for me. It meant a lot.” I snapped out of the reverie. ”To beat Sandra I invented the false midfield and now I’ve iterated on it to create the false false midfield.”

”It’s great how you keep things simple.”

”I think... It’s a little bit too crazy for this situation and I think the players don’t trust me enough. I’ll have to bring it home to Chester.”

”Have you got a plan for Tuesday?”

I clicked my tongue a few times while I thought about my reply. ”Yeah, I think so. It’s sort of brute force and finesse at the same time. It’s brute force because I know there are skill levels above me where a better manager would have a different approach. Basically I’m going to manually respond to everything Evaristo does, as soon as he does it.”

”Like, parrying his thrusts? That would be finesse, Max.”

”Yeah the implementation is going to be high-level, I think. I hope. I’ve seen some of his moves and I’m pretty sure I can counter them. It’s sort of like... if he does one of these boxes that Toddy is doing, I’ll do an equal and opposite box. If he makes a lovely Connect Four of players I’ll put two guys in between his to stop the passes flowing that way. I have solutions but it will take a lot out of me. It will be the most draining match ever.”

”Endlessly parrying... would be impressive but it only takes one mistake and you’re giving your death speech. And the idea of the sport is to score a goal yourself, isn’t it?”

I nodded. ”That’s what I mean by brute force. What I’ve got for Tuesday night is one idea, repeated again and again. That’s not my style at all, Briggy, but what’s the alternative? And the analysts are right about one thing - I’ve got better players. Bologna don’t have amazing finishers or elite defenders. We do. Evaristo could absolutely thrash me while his players lose against mine. Do you know what I mean? At least I’ll get to meet him. When I’m being too much of a fanboy around him can you mumble remember he is mortal, remember he is mortal? That’s your Italian Job for Tuesday.”

”I will definitely do that, yes.” She tapped the screen in front of us. ”Hey, look. You’re on TV.”

”I can’t look at it; that’s what noobs do. How husky am I?”

”About five percent.”

”Progress.”

***

After the final whistle, we hung around the VIP area for a while, chatting to bigwigs from Stuttgart. They would have loved some gossip about everybody’s least favourite team and I would have loved to give it to them. I stayed professional.

Chester had lost 2-0 away to Peterborough, which was disappointing but expected. ”What goes up must come down,” I said to their sporting director. ”We have to start a new winning run. Sandra will be gutted but they’ll get together on Monday and get their heads straight. This could be good, as long as the response is right.”

”I heard you plan to attend the next Transfer Room in Paris? Will that be in the role of Chester’s director of football, or the manager of Bayern Munich?”

I smiled with my eyes. ”Yes.”

***

Sunday, November 22

Since there was no way to gather enough XP to buy 3-4-2-1 in time for the big match, I had planned to give Briggy the day off. But when I woke up I felt rejuvenated and ready for action. I texted Briggy asking if she wanted to go for a jog. She did.

I said I’d got a tip about a good player that I might see in the Sendling area of Munich, so we went that way. It was a decent morning, a nice way to stretch the legs, and as long as I remembered which side of the road the cars were coming from, it was relaxing.

We got to a spot that was about equidistant between two parks and I hit a button called Playdar.

It scanned a certain area for people playing football and guided me to the one with the highest PA who wasn’t already in my database. Following the beams of light came with more misses than hits, but even if I only found one gem a year the effort was worth it. Plus, what else was I going to do with my time? I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a museum or a nice restaurant until the Bologna match was over.

The beam of light appeared to the west, so we went that way.

By the time we got to the pitch, the beam was long gone, but I could smash the button again for 1 XP, and again for 1,000.

There were ways to improve Playdar but they were really expensive. I had never been able to justify the cost, but if I was going to be doing more international travel, maybe it could get bumped up the list.

I found the player easily enough. He was PA 110, which was pretty good, but he was 25 years old. Too old to be starting out. I watched him play for a few minutes, telling myself optimistic stories about the guy. He could make it! He could! But he couldn’t. Even if he busted his arse off for 5 years, he would have one decent season in him at his maximum potential. The payoff wouldn’t justify the risk and effort.

”Briggy, how’s your energy?”

”High.”

”Can we jog back the way we came and hit that other place?”

”I can take you a different route so you can see more of the city.”

”Bosh,” I said, and we set off in companionable silence.

One of the upgrades for Playdar would allow me to refine the search to a certain age group. That was pretty essential, really, if I was ever going to maximise its use.

The second most interesting upgrade would allow me to halve the cooldown period, which was currently 24 hours.

The Playdar icon was greyed out and would slowly fill with colour. This time tomorrow, though, when it was available to use once more, I would be shoving my best shit hoodie into my awesome suitcase-backpack. And after a tedious wait in the hotel, after presentations from analysts I didn’t agree with and a team meeting with players I didn’t like, it would finally, finally happen.

Max Best in the Champions League.

Max versus the best.

Evaristo? Show me what you got.

***

XP balance: 3,866

***

Tuesday, November 24

”All right, lads, listen up.”

We were in the away dressing room at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara. The stadium had been the venue for two famous England matches. One in the 1990 World Cup knockouts, in which David Platt scored a gorgeous, high-degree-of-difficulty ball-dropping-over-his-shoulder volley to beat Belgium in the last minute of extra time. The other was when England played against San Marino needing to run up the score to have a chance of qualifying for the 1994 World Cup, only for Europe’s worst international team to score the fastest ever international goal after just 8.3 seconds.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. I hoped we would get more of the first than the second.

”On Friday, there were some complaints about me taking the starting eleven and telling them the plan in private.” Everyone was in the room for this one. The coaches, the analysts, Fabian Fromm (who had traveled because he was the club captain), and I had even made a big deal of inviting Diane Berger. ”I’m famously flexible and easy to work with so this is me compromising, okay? Everyone’s here, and everyone can listen to the plan.”

I ambled around the room in a tight circle. ”My favourite movie is The Italian Job. Not the 2003 remake, which is barely in Italy. I mean the 1969 version. You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” I looked around. Not a great deal of interest, and there was even some hostility.

”I see I’ve upset fans of a young Charlize Theron. Fine. As we discussed in the team meetings, Evaristo is one of Europe’s top head coaches and his team is absurdly dangerous. It is greater than the sum of its parts.” Their starting eleven averaged CA 149, putting them on a par with Ipswich Town or Crystal Palace, but Bologna played much better than a bottom-half-of-the-table Premier League team. ”Our only tactical advantage is that he selects his team to negate our offensive weapons. If we play with two eights - that’s another way to say two central attacking midfielders, Briggy - he will play with two sixes, that is, two defensive midfielders. His starting point is to counter us and evolve around that.

”So, the plan today is to start out absurdly defensive. You thought we parked the bus against Elversberg? That was nothing compared to this. I have put on the team sheet that we are doing 5-3-2. That’s the graphic that will go on TV before the game starts. But that’s just for show. We’re actually going to do 5-4-1.” Barely anyone twitched. ”I thought that would get more reaction.”

”We already know,” said Henno. ”It was all over social media.”

”How can it be? I didn’t tell anyone.”

Moses, one of the three coaches who I had filed under ’hindrance’ along with the analysts and medical team, showed me his phone. ”You sketched the team in the hotel this morning. When you went to the bathroom, someone took a photo. It has been doing the rounds.”

”Now who’s the mole?” said Henno Wald, my captain. He had been more friendly to me after the Friday night match, but when the split came between me and the analysts over Evaristo, he had sided with them. The more I talked up our opponents, the more annoyed he got. His attitude meant that using the Triple Captain perk could have been disastrous. I probably should have used Bench Boost but I had this stubborn feeling that I wanted to compete on my own merits. I wanted to know where I stood in relation to a really great manager.

I rubbed my forehead and pinched my nose. ”This fucking club, man. Okay, so you know the team. I’ll go over it anyway because that’s what you do in a heist movie. Torben is back in goal.”

Goalie CA: 170.

”The defenders are Shuji on the left, Dumi on the right, Kumba and Pak Young in the middle.” Shuji was CA 152, almost the same as Dumi’s 151.

Defence average CA: 163.75.

”For midfielders we’ve got Adam, Danny, Henno, Beat, and Claude. Henno will drop into the centre back spots when we’re doing five at the back. Adam, Danny, and Claude give us some pace and skill for later in the game, if we manage to get out of defence.” Henno didn’t like me talking so defensively; he was grinding his teeth as I spoke. ”And Beat can go box-to-box so we do have some goal threat.”

Midfield average CA: 171.6.

”And up top is the big man. Zoran Bratko, all two point one metres of him. He’ll hold the ball up, give the defence a breather, that kind of thing.”

Zoran’s CA: 167. Why so low? It was something to investigate if I survived the night, but I suspected it was simply that he played every minute of every match combined with him getting battered in the media twice a week.

The team’s average was 168.2. Bologna’s was 149. Piece of piss, right?

”Go through your processes and we’ll come back for the final instructions about twenty minutes before kick off, yeah?”

***

I went through the tunnel and into my section of the arena, my part of the stage. There was something sticking out of the stand in front of me. Something like an old church, an obstacle to climb over in an Assassin’s Creed game. Had they built a stadium around a two-thousand year old town hall?

The rest of the setup was very modern. Everything was ready for a big Champions League night; we were getting all the frills. The big hoop the players walked through, a plinth with the match ball, the tournament’s logo on a gigantic mat in the centre circle. The home team’s ultras were over to the right, already making a racket, already lighting flares.

Everyone had red flares, didn’t they? I’d seen them at Bayern, at Stuttgart, and now here. Three teams that had red as part of their identity, but it wasn’t just teams that played in red that were fond of red pyrotechnics. Maybe it was just the cheapest colour.

I checked out my spot, not that I planned to sit down too much, and paced out my technical area.

And then it happened! I switched in an instant from moody Manc at war with his own team to the world’s biggest fanboy. Evaristo! Tall, slim, black hair, fashionable clothes, elegant movements. I wanted to run up to him and scream with my hands over my face. Instead I ambled. ”Signore,” I said, giving him a firm but not obnoxious handshake. ”Big fan. Huge fan of your work.”

”Max Best,” he said, with a smile I found very Italian. Sort of serious but cheeky at the same time, and he had the accent, too. ”Thank you for your words. They help when I talk to my club about a new contract. Max Best, he says I am good. Who is Max Best? Nobody. Ah, wait, now he is the head coach of Bayern Munich. Pay me or I go.”

”Go?” I said, confused. ”But this is a perfect fit. Where would you go?”

He shrugged. ”Eh? I have the ambition, yes? The big team, the big budget.”

”The big arseholes.”

He did that smile again, complete with a little slip of the head. ”Yes but I ’andle them. It is difficult, yes. As per’aps you know. There is no Diogo in the squad tonight. That is a very big boost for me. A very big boost.”

”He has a bad back.”

”A bad back? That is bad luck for him.”

It was my turn to shrug. ”We have a world-class medical team. Bayern have a scanner that cost more than my entire squad at Chester.”

”Chester, they lost without you.”

Interesting. That confirmed he approached matches from all angles. Did his homework. ”Yeah. If you humiliate me tonight at least I can go back and help them tomorrow.”

”Humiliate? No. Surely not.” He grinned, showing the teeth of a predator. A big beast indeed. I wondered what Luisa would make of him. She always compared me to a shark.

Time was up. ”I need to talk to the TV guys,” I said. ”Very nice to meet you.”

”And you, Max Best. In boca al lupo.” He enjoyed my confusion. ”Into the mouth of the wolf. It is how we wish one another good luck in Italy.”

So. Not a shark. He was a wolf. He was a wolf and he was big dogging me while delighting in the fact that I didn’t even realise it. My fingers twitched and I wanted to stare him out. Show him that I wasn’t some pup. That wasn’t the plan, though. With a hint of timidity, I said, ”Thank you, sir. We’re going to need it.”

He gave me a final look before leaving. I had disappointed him and after the match, he would forget all about me.

I turned around and tried hard to keep the same dopey look on my face. I’m new here! It’s my first day!

***

I performed my media duties as neutrally as possible, took one last look around the stadium, and went back into the dressing room. I opened the door to the coaches’ room. ”First team, with me.” This nearly caused another mutiny, but they obeyed. ”Kaspar, you too.” It made sense to me that the backup goalie needed to know what was going on just in case he had to join the action. The fact that someone outside the eleven was allowed in seemed to wind up the people being excluded even more, though. Poor little lambs.

”Right,” I said, as I made sure the door was properly closed. I had a tactics board with the magnets laid out in a 5-4-1 shape. I pointed to it. ”We’re not doing this.”

Adam Adebayo, Bayern’s star boy, said, ”So we’re really doing 5-3-2?”

”No. Here’s a principle of football I learned pretty early on. Every strength is a weakness and every weakness can be a strength. Evaristo’s clever, he’s brilliant, but his weakness is that he’s clever and brilliant. Bayern’s weakness is that everyone leaks even though it hurts the team. I’m turning that weakness into a strength. I leaked the 5-4-1 image myself.”

”What?” said Danny, the other star boy. ”You did?”

”Yeah. Everyone was throwing their toys out of the pram about us playing defensively for ten minutes on Friday. Weren’t they, Henno? It’s all everyone’s talking about. Who’s this weirdo and why is he so defensive? Evaristo read those articles, watched those videos. He knows I respect him and I’m afraid of his team. So when he sees a story about how I’m planning to park the bus, he believes it.”

”Wait,” said Danny. ”You just told everyone we would be defending.”

”Yeah, I lied,” I said, pacing around. I was feeling very, very smug. Smug and excited. My words started to tumble out of me. ”How many people in there heard what I said and posted it on social media as soon as I left the room? Told their friends, their agents. If Evaristo had the slightest doubt about my intentions, well, bosh. I said it in the actual team talk! Confirmation of this morning’s leak left that room and went straight into his inbox. I wonder how many of those fucks texted him directly?” I laughed for a solid five seconds. ”Trying to undermine me but doing my work. Fucking clowns. This is the Max Best show now. Learn that.”

I went back to the board and slapped it.

”He’s going to try to blitz us in the first five minutes.” I moved the little magnets at the top-right of the tactics board into a 3-2-5 formation. Very attacking. ”Something like this.” Exactly like that, according to the curse. ”So we’re going to start with 4-2-4. Claude, you’re up with Zoran. Beat, insanely aggressive runs into the box straight away. Adam and Danny, you should have incredible freedom here in the vacant full back areas but if you do get marked, that’s just space for someone else, isn’t it? This freedom won’t last long. Thirty seconds, maximum. Henno, win the coin toss, get the ball. We line up defensively until five seconds before kick off. Do you get me? Then it’s this. We get the ball wide, we destroy. If we score first, we win this match. If they want to kick off first, we’ll line up in 4-5-1 and switch on the first turnover.”

One of the biggest jokes of the whole enterprise was that I didn’t even have access to 5-4-1 as a formation. I couldn’t even force my guys to stand in that shape before the match. I had never used it in a match, ever, and the fact that not one Bayern analyst knew that just confirmed my belief that they were no good to me.

Dumitru Demetrescu, the Romanian full back, said, ”You laid a false trail and allowed us to spend the day grumbling about another defensive mindset so that you could gain an advantage for half a minute?”

”Yes. Because it’s not just thirty seconds. Evaristo is like you guys. He thinks I’m a clown. When he sees four of the best forwards in the world and a future Germany captain in his penalty box in the first move of the match he’s going to freak out. His lineup isn’t set up to defend this, right? When the team sheet leaked, he switched out one of his defensive players and brought in a more creative one. He might even make an early sub to undo that mistake and if there’s one massive advantage we have it’s our bench. We’ve got Didier, Jost, Petar, Drissa. Every change Evaristo makes - apart from the first - weakens his team. Okay so we go hard and either score or make him use a sub. Then we sit back and pick him off on counters. That’s the first half. If they survive, we grind. Yeah, you don’t like it but I don’t give a shit. We’ll grind them and smash in the last twenty minutes, same as on Friday.”

I left a break for the lads to process what I’d said.

Torben, the goalie, said, ”4-2-4 is the start, yes? And what follows?”

I shifted the magnets around. ”Same as Friday. We have a 4-4-2 base and from there we can do almost everything. 3-4-3 is less attractive today but this time we have a really sensational 4-2-3-1, don’t we? There will be a lot of switches as we counter what Evaristo gets up to. We will dip into defensive shapes at times but we’ll also throw in some ultra-attacking ones to keep them pegged back. Yeah,” I said, sliding the magnets back into a 4-4-2. ”It will be a big physical and mental effort but we could end up doing something really special this evening. I’m giving you a gift, boys. Something we get a lot at Chester, something you’ve probably never had before. I’m giving you the gift of being underestimated.” I bared my teeth. ”Enjoy it.”

***

As kick-off approached, I tried to stay calm. Impossible.

The build-up was stuff that normally annoyed me outside a World Cup match. The exchange of pennants, the tournament anthem, the team photos, blah blah blah. But it all got under my skin, got me hyped. The pomp and ceremony, the rising noise of the fans, and yes, even a few good old red flares. The Champions League anthem! Years of watching these matches on TV had conditioned me to equate this music with the highest standard of football, the most epic matches, the best players and coaches.

Die Meister, die Besten, les grandes équipes, the champions!

Football matches are ninety minutes long. This one felt, to me at least, more like a one hundred metres sprint. Nine point five eight seconds and you’d know who won. Eight point three seconds to score a goal against a team who couldn’t believe the opposition were even thinking about attacking.

I had crafted this opportunity beautifully. I only needed the players to go along with it. They would, surely?

Did I need some luck? Of course I did. The odds were in my favour but I had bet big. Too big.

Sweat was trickling down my back already. I suddenly panicked. What had I done? This was mental.

The referee blew his whistle. Too late to change my mind!

Henno had won the coin toss, it seemed, and Zoran passed the ball back to him. Henno shaped to pass it to the left back, Shuji, as Bologna’s players streamed forward looking for that early hammer blow. But Henno passed to Dumi on the other side, who hit the ball over a red-and-black shirted opponent.

It went to Danny, and I could see him blink with surprise. There was no-one near him!

He fell into a full sprint, and suddenly both sets of players were rushing towards the home team’s goal. Only a handful were ahead of Danny, though. One of the centre backs rushed out to foul him - refs didn’t give yellow cards so early in the match so it was like a free hit - but Danny nudged the ball to Beat, who had burst forward as I had instructed. He played it first time, wide left, to Adam.

Adam surged into the box, shaped to shoot, cut inside onto his right foot...

And scored.

Thirty thousand raucous Italians fell silent, stunned, while the travelling German fans went bonkers.

The players celebrated with wild abandon. The coaches and staff behind me jumped around.

I had what I can only describe as a religious experience.

I’d always wondered what that felt like. How did Saul become Paul? What had it felt like on the road to Damascus, where his faith was ignited? It must have felt like this. Full-body, tip to toe euphoria. Nerve endings on fire, tingling, buzzing.

I had pulled off one of the greatest capers in the history of crime - in eleven seconds. A fast-paced masterpiece of misdirection. I’d bet big and won big. I existed. I had value.

The next time I knew I was inside my body, the physios were on the pitch checking on Danny and the ref was showing a yellow card to the guy who had fouled him.

I took a few steps along the touchline. Danny’s Condition score had dropped and he had a ’potential leg injury’, but the injury didn’t meet my threshold of warranting an immediate sub; he seemed fine to continue.

By the time the ball arrived back at the centre circle, some of the initial dopamine surge had died down, but then I saw Evaristo telling one of his subs to warm up and I got another hit, even bigger.

Early goal, early yellow card, early sub.

Who would win a fight between a shark and a wolf?

You know who would.

***

I switched us into a cautious 4-4-2 and waited for Evaristo’s response. He went defensive, too, while he rethought his strategy. He made the substitution I had predicted and I saw Dumi and Danny talking to each other about it. Danny mimed his brain exploding.

Bologna were back to their usual 4-1-4-1, which morphed into a 4-3-3 (and all kinds of other things).

When they pressed us, we coped well. These were top-class players, after all. We managed to pass our way out of trouble, forced Bologna to retreat into their own half, and then did some safe horseshoe passing across the defenders. Ran the clock down. Let the ball do the work for us while the oppo were forced to shuffle and slide, burning calories to keep their shape. Welcome to Grind City, population: you.

When they did get turnovers and attacked us, we dropped back but kept at least one of Adam or Danny in an advanced position. Our threat on counter-attacks was on a par with any team in the world. Bologna simply couldn’t commit too many bodies forward, so their attacks kept crashing into the awesome Kumba Viera and Pak Young. When they did have a shot, one of the world’s best goalies was there to catch the ball.

For about twenty minutes, it was pretty much perfection.

Evaristo finally put his finger on our weak point. Shuji and Dumi, the left and right back, were defenders. True defenders. The kind of player who throws himself at a shot. The kind who loves it when the coaches say ’let’s walk through the positions again’. They were technically competent, of course, but they were our least press-resistant players and they were in zones where Evaristo could set traps. Over the course of a few minutes, he did just that.

I knew what was coming. Kumba would pass to Shuji and a striker would move between the Japanese player and our goalie. He would be forced to move up the pitch, but would suddenly get swarmed by the oppo. The same would happen on the other side. If Bologna could take the ball off a defender in those positions, one, two quick passes later they would have a chance to score. Or even better, the defenders would panic and commit a foul.

I knew it would happen that way, and it came to pass. Shuji fell into the trap. Pressure came at him from all sides. He had zero time to react.

Danger?

Nah.

He clipped the ball high and central, towards our shiny new playmaker, Zoran Bratko.

Zoran controlled the ball on his chest, got fouled, and we took our sweet time taking the free kick.

A few minutes later, the same happened on the right. Dumi’s pass to Zoran was too high, but Adam was chasing the flick and a Bologna defender had to kick the ball out of play for our throw-in.

I pulled my hood over my face so the world wouldn’t be able to see my smile.

***

Half an hour gone, still one-nil, but Evaristo had finally realised that he had met his match and he spent a few minutes fine-tuning his tactics. The balance between defence and attack was suddenly much better, the risk and reward slightly more in his favour.

I responded by doing what I’d been preparing myself to do ever since I had seen the Italians in Nottingham. When they switched to 4-3-3, so did I. When they morphed into a 4-1-4-1, I copied them. To the extent possible, I matched what I was seeing.

On top of that, I had the Without Ball screen permanently open. I shoved my midfielders a little to the left, to the right, made them dance. I turned pressing off and on in surprising ways. Made it hard for Bologna to get into a set routine, forced them to be spontaneous. I would rather face their minds than Evaristo’s.

When Bologna’s centre backs moved forward and their full backs came inside to cover the space, I told Zoran and Claude to mark the full backs. This ensured they stayed at the top of the pitch. When we broke, we had amazing transitional opportunities. The first time was a two-on-two break from which we should have done better.

Evaristo knew his bench was nowhere near as good as mine; he was using all his tricks to get the scores level. I was matching him. It was demanding, draining, at times more art than science, but it was working.

Every so often, when the flow of the game was in our favour, I would break out of this containment mode and into all-out attack.

36’

Ulrich saves easily.

He throws the ball to Kowalski.

Neat play from him. He passes to Ritter.

Ritter returns the pass and hares away.

Kowalski with a little space. Ritter comes back to the ball and gets it.

Kowalski’s turn to race ahead.

Ritter chips the ball over the defensive line.

Kowalski hammers the ball low across goal.

Ohhhhh!

The away fans groan.

A defender tried to clear but sliced the ball over his own bar!

How close was that?!

Yeah, close. This seemed like a good time to use the Free Hit perk. I put one extra body into the penalty area.

37’

Adebayo will take the corner left-footed.

It’s an away swinger.

Viera rises highest.

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

An emphatic finish!

An unstoppable header.

Two-nil to the away team, and you can’t say they don’t deserve it.

Wow.

Wow wow wow. This was actually happening!

I tried not to show the ecstasy I was feeling, but Emma would have known right away. Sandra would have called it. I was vibrating at high frequencies, touching the stars, spinning, buzzing.

I bent to pick up a water bottle and struggled to open the lid. Fucking lids were giving me more problems than my opponents! I just couldn’t grip the plastic. My hands were shaking, they were hyper-sensitive, they were numb.

Two-nil!

Breathe. Remember to breathe. I focused on the lid, opened it, and drank deeply.

Now calm yourself, lad. There’s a long way to go in this one. A long fucking way.

***

When I got to the dressing room I felt utterly wretched, but Friday night’s match had given me some warning about what to expect. I downed an alcohol-free beer (isotonic, mate!), ate, and went into the coach’s room to take a shower and change into new clothes.

I immediately felt better, much more like a real human being, but when I stepped out I realised I had made a mistake.

The players had been experiencing the same kind of high as me - how could you not when you were dominating a match so completely? The match ratings were amazing. The so-called weak links, the full backs, were on 7 out of 10. So was Beat Ritter, who was still a novice at this level. But then it was 8s for days, 9 for Adam and Danny, and a perfect 10 for Kumba Viera.

But I had left them alone in a room full of shithead coaches, idiot analysts, and follow-the-leader physios. Well played, came the message. But I told you Bologna were easy. When I reappeared, a bunch of players moved away from the backroom staff.

Hmmmmmm.

I reached into my backpack and took out a bag of cashew nuts. Brain food. I would keep calm for another five minutes, chat to the lads, bosh.

Danny came up to me. ”Gaffer, that was amazing. You said it and it happened.”

”Doesn’t always work, Danny, but yeah. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I call it just right but the players can’t deliver. You lot delivered, didn’t you? Halfway there.”

”Yeah, but gaffer, thing is, my shin. The guy caught me pretty bad. I, er...” He looked around. ”I know you dropped Fabian because he was injured and wouldn’t fess up. So, like, this is me telling you it might be... I mean, I can play on if you want, it’s just that...”

I checked his profile. His Condition was 91%, which was better than the Bologna lads, and he didn’t have any red attributes. He probably could have stayed on. I pointed at him. ”Start treatment right now. Is there a physio you trust?”

”Yeah.”

”Go on, then.” No way was I taking a risk with a one-hundred million pound player. Basti would want me to win but not at any cost.

”Thanks, boss.” He didn’t go right away, but got a big goofy grin.

”What?”

His eyes widened. ”5-3-2 but it’s really 5-4-1 but it’s really 4-2-4. I’ve never had anything like that before.”

”It’s called Chesterness, bro. There’s a documentary about it.”

”Right,” he said. ”I didn’t really want to watch it. There’s too many shows, you feel me? Might check it out, though.”

”Hmm,” I said. Pitching Chester’s content to a new audience wasn’t really my mission. Who should replace Danny? My first instinct was Cheb. All the right midfielder needed to do, really, was be solid. Work hard, show some quality on the ball, scrap for every inch, defend hard, attack harder. Cheb.

But I couldn’t seriously throw him in against Bologna’s best eleven. If he fucked up in a big Champions League match, he might never recover. The same went for Li Anjie, the guy from Singapore, who hadn’t started a match for Bayern yet, and Parnell Gourlay, the Canadian midfielder who didn’t know that his new agency was part-owned by me. Those guys would get minutes in the coming games, but this wasn’t the right situation.

So it was either Drissa Doh, AM FL 150/170, or Didier Cartier, AM RLC 166/178.

Drissa could go left and Adam would switch to the right. Or Claude Sonko could go right and Adam could be the support striker. But so could Didier. Stupid Bayern and their amazing squad. How was I supposed to make such decisions?

Didier’s CA was higher but Drissa had better Morale and Form.

I checked the tactics screen. Evaristo had made his changes. He would revert to his trusted 4-1-4-1 and use that as a base to unleash all his tricks. The guy at right back had been set to make forward runs. If I kept Drissa Doh in that slot, we would always have a great counter-attacking option and his poor defensive skills wouldn’t be much of an issue. Claude to the right, Adam the free man.

That’s a bingo.

”Drissa,” I said to the former German international. ”You feeling good?”

”Yes, Max.”

”Can I get you to play left wing and stay high so we always have a counter option?”

He did a little smile. ”Stay high and counter? Where you been all my life?”

I scoffed. ”Yeah, it’s a sweet gig. I’ll need you to shuffle and slide sometimes but mostly I want you vertical. Sounds good?”

”Sounds great.”

We clapped hands together.

The countdown clock went below five minutes. I held the door to the coaches’ room open. ”Munich in here,” I called out. Most hurried inside. Henno took his time. From a treatment table, Danny had a puppy dog look on his face. ”Do you want in? Come if you want. It’s not that interesting.”

”Agree to disagree,” he said, getting down and hopping all the way across the room.

I closed the door to some hopping mad people.

”All right, this’ll be quick,” I said. ”We climbed a hill, and look! There’s another hill. We have to suffer some more but the rewards are right there, yeah? That was an immense half, lads. Immense. Brilliant. We won every duel, kept them at bay, it was just glorious. But that’s half the job. We have to go again. It won’t be as bad because if we get to 70 with a clean sheet, they’ll start making changes and it’ll get easier.

”Danny’s off and Drissa’s on. That’s Drissa left, Claude right, Adam central. I’m asking Driss to stay high for fast breaks which means a little more defensive work from everyone else. It’ll pay off, trust me.”

”My God,” said Henno.

I froze. I had spent far too much time dreading that elite players might turn on me, had imagined all kinds of scenarios where that would happen. Most involved being two-nil down. It hadn’t occurred to me for a single second that it could happen at two-nil up. My worst fears were coming to pass and I couldn’t process it. It wasn’t often that I felt like a rabbit in the headlights in the context of football but my captain was digging me out after a masterclass in management.

”Defend, defensive, shuffle and slide, defend, clean sheet, keep it tight. Yes, that was a good half and we played well. Your initial idea was perfect, it’s true. But then we hid in our shells like turtles. We are Bayern Munich. We should attack this Bologna team because we are superior in every respect. They are not the big bogeyman you think they are. We should play our natural style and dominate the game. They had more possession than us in the first half! More xG, more xT, more field tilt. That is embarrassing.”

The effort I had put into the first half meant I didn’t have a reserve of feeling to shoot at him. I spoke quite calmly, but not by choice. ”I have been preparing for this match for exactly one month. I watched Notts Forest against Bologna on the 21st of October. One month. Evaristo has been preparing since Saturday, after his league match. I have given him everything I’ve got in that half and he’s in his room reacting and plotting and Bologna are going to come at us hard. If you are complacent, we will get wrecked. What’s more embarrassing? Having less possession or throwing away a two-goal lead?”

”We will not throw it away if we have the ball. That is how elite football is played. You dominate the ball and impose your philosophy on your opponents. The experts say we should play 4-2-3-1.”

The warning bell rang. One minute to go.

I didn’t speak.

I’d done my part. Prepared, planned, schemed. The first half had been a true work of art. A precision mechanism combined with some utterly audacious social engineering. But without knowing it, I had given a key role in the heist to Benny Hill.

I opened the door, grabbed my bag of nuts and a thermos with some hot tea, and went out to the touchline, where I sat on an upturned bucket ready to be taught a lesson in elite mentality.

***

Evaristo pitched his response to the first half perfectly.

First he established more control. Instead of his normal attacks, he did sort of half-strength attacks, probing for weaknesses. He probably didn’t realise he was draining my concentration by doing that, but that’s what he was doing.

Pass, move, pass, move, retreat, go again. It was impressive. Many teams who are two goals down get too frantic, too busy. These guys trusted their manager. When he said be patient, they allowed themselves to obey.

Having established control, they turned it into dominance. A breakthrough came when they realised that Drissa Doh, for all his bluster, was having a shocker. Instant 5 out of 10. My idea had been that he would be so threatening that the oppo would need to keep two guys back to cover him. Nope. At times they left him alone. That part of my plan died a death.

Evaristo had problems of his own, though. Time was running out for his guys to get the goal that would really put the cat among the pigeons, that would turn the volume in the stadium back up to ten. And he faced a brick wall. The trio of goalie and centre backs felt more permanent than the ancient church that was sticking out of the stadium.

If we could get to 60 minutes without conceding...

59’

Brilliant interplay in the midfield. Bologna’s number 8 jinks past Ritter.

He sends the ball wide left.

Will the winger cross? He prefers to dribble inside.

He passes back to the 8. Wide right this time.

Inside once more.

But now it’s chipped over the top...

Hesitation from the keeper.

The striker is there first. He shoots...

But it hits the post!

The rebound falls kindly to the home team...

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

The place exploded. Noise, drums, horns, flares. An absolute cacophony, and to my left, Evaristo sprinting along the touchline, gesturing wildly, his assistants drawn in his wake.

I popped a cashew nut into my gob and chewed.

The intensity ramped up a notch, then another.

I could barely feel it. I was either outside my body, looking down on myself, or I was inside feeling numb.

Another minute, another great move from Bologna. I was trying to stop them, but I would stop one sequence, then another, then lose concentration and it would be mayhem. I realised my tweaks had become counter-productive - players were ending up out of position and Bologna’s players were clever enough to exploit the gaps.

I settled for a basic 4-4-2 defensive, a formation for all seasons, and stopped micromanaging.

We still had hope. Kumba Viera, ten out of ten. Pak Young, nine out of ten. Even fucking Henno was on 9.

Bologna would run out of legs and when they made their subs, we would ruin them.

I ate cashew nuts.

65’

Long ball from Demetrescu.

Bratko competes, but loses out.

Bologna’s number 2 gathers and clips the ball down the line.

Their right midfielder takes a touch under pressure from Shibata and passes to the right back.

And a terrible tackle from Drissa Doh!

He went high and over the ball straight into the leg of the right back.

He seems to be badly hurt.

It’s a red card for Doh!

He has been sent off.

After a moment of madness, Munich are down to ten men!

I shot to my feet, head in hands. What the actual fuck was going on? It was one thing being sabotaged, undermined in subtle ways, but Drissa Doh had done serious harm to that guy. The defender’s Condition fell to zero and his attributes turned all kinds of red.

I’m not sure if Evaristo thought my reaction was a complaint about the red card but in any case, he reacted violently. He came flying over to my side of the pitch and pushed me, with his assistant apes up in my grille, too.

I moved out of the way, kept retreating. I had no interest in feeding their fire. First of all, it’s what they wanted. Second, I was numb.

My players and the people who were supposed to be helping me seemed determined to undo all my good work. Not just undo it, but say it wasn’t even good to start with. They planned to lose the match and now they’d caused a rift between me and a manager I admired. One of the very few. The sense of loss was crushing.

I brought my bucket to the far side of my technical area and sat on it.

There was a shadow. When I looked up, the referee showed me a yellow card. For what? Being pushed and shoved? For once I was absolutely blameless.

Perfect. The ref was in on it, too. I stared at him, blankly, not giving him the satisfaction of anything more.

When Bologna’s sub came on, the match got going again. I turned and checked the dugout behind me. Some players looking shocked. The coaches murmuring to each other. Analysts. Physios. Diane Berger. I wanted to go over and kick them all out, but thought better of it. I had agreed to eat a certain amount of shit when I took this gig. Giving them a piece of my mind would take place behind closed doors.

68’

The action gets back underway.

And it’s a chance for Bologna!

Great save by Ulrich!

Bayern were caught napping.

Kumba Viera is incandescent!

We were in a 4-4-1 formation, pushed back, unable to break out. Our former advantage in fitness was being wiped out. Bologna’s inferior bench no longer mattered. Their guys would be able to stay out longer. Forget a twenty-minute rampage at the end. I’d have been happy to get two more shots in the entire match.

We got pounded, battered, could barely cope with Bologna’s constant shifting of patterns.

But we held. Kumba Viera was massive. Immense. Christian Fierce had dominated like this the first time I had played against him. Viera led and his partner, Pak Young, did his best to match it. 10 out of 10, 9 out of 10. The full backs threw themselves at shots, tracked and tracked back. They hadn’t played much recently; they would run out of gas soon.

And in front of them, unbelievably, Henno Wald played like a world champion. Blocks, tackles, interceptions, headers, and then a moment of class on the ball to buy a free kick from the frankly incompetent referee.

The guy who had caused this shitshow had picked up a shovel and started digging us out of it. He lifted the other guys. Zoran battled. Adam and Claude ran with opponents, stuck to their tasks, chipped in. Beat Ritter showed he could defend as well as attack.

Hope springs eternal.

75’

Bologna probing again. Through ball from the number 10. Shuji hacks clear - anywhere will do.

The ball comes straight back. The number 10 crosses to the far post.

Rare missed header by Pak Young.

The ball is clipped back across goal.

Viera with the block!

But it comes to a home player...

He’s fouled!

Penalty kick!

Yeah. The number 10, who had been appearing in all sorts of pockets around the pitch, dusted himself off, sent Torben the wrong way, and equalised.

I noted that Evaristo’s celebrations took him onto the pitch. He made some rude gestures in my direction. You know as well as I do that there are many people from whom such body language would be justified. Him, though? What for?

While the home players went nuts, jumping over the boards onto the old running track and into the fans, the referee came to the side to get a drink.

”Ref,” I said. ”Evaristo ran onto the pitch. That’s an instant yellow card. Do you want me to get a copy of the laws?” He sprayed some water into his mouth and walked off. ”Love that elite mentality, bro,” I called after him.

I went back to my bucket.

Now all that was left was for the coup de grace.

***

We kept fighting but there were more and more gaps, and losing our lead had taken some oomph out of our legs. It was about 80-20 that we would concede another.

There was one small comfort. A hard-fought, narrow defeat while down to ten men wouldn’t be the trigger for Bastian to rip all the tubes out of his arm and come back to work weeks ahead of schedule. I might not survive the night, but I felt I’d held up my end of the agreement I had made with Dieter, Paul, and Karl. I had picked a team that could win.

Bologna were toying with us now. Hundreds of short passes while we stayed compact and conserved energy. I needed to make some subs but to be honest, I couldn’t be arsed. I’d done my job. The players had quit at half time. They could own this mess.

That’s when it happened.

81’

Bologna are playing some delightful football.

There’s a neat triangle to bring the ball to the edge of Bayern’s penalty area.

Number 25 retreats but spins and moves past Shuji in one fluid motion.

The home fans loved that!

Impudent trickery!

25 fizzes the ball diagonally backwards.

Number 10 runs across the ball...

6 shoots from distance but it goes over!

Fantastic football!

I was up, prowling, skin tingling. Numb? Don’t talk shit! The game was afoot.

The fuck had I just seen? Had I just seen what I thought I had?

For the first time in the match I went to the dugout, grabbed one of the iPads, and ripped it out of its dock.

”Hey,” called the twat who had been looking at it.

I scrubbed the video feed back twenty seconds. Watched the sequence. Again. Again. Again.

I dropped the tablet and paced back to the touchline.

Bologna were doing Relationism! Bestball! Evaristoball!

I kept thinking about Evaristo as Italian but he was Brazilian. He had grown up around Relationism. Why wouldn’t he absorb it into his methods? Simple answer: he would.

How hadn’t I realised?

Because he had taken the principles of Relationism and given them structure. That was absurd - the very point of the technique was to have NO STRUCTURE - but that’s what he had done. He had created a hybrid set of moves so elegant that to a ’world-class’ analyst it looked like normal football.

”Fuck,” I said. Energy coursed through me. I had come to Italy hoping to steal a win, to steal three points. Instead, I had stolen a secret. ”Come on!” I screamed, suddenly. I was so jubilant my abs crunched. ”Get in! Fucking yes!”

What I was seeing was the future I had been working towards. It had been a theory of mine, something uncertain, something unsure. But here it was! I was pretty sure I could set it up even better. It didn’t need to be so rigid. Well, maybe it did with these players. But the ones I would have at Chester? Wibbers and Youngster and Peter Bauer? You could let them run wild. Their feel for the game, their instinctive cooking would be better than any recipe.

I pointed at Petar Gutić and Jost Benn. ”Lads, you’re up.”

”What’s going on?” said Jost. ”Why were you celebrating?”

I gave him a big smile from close range and a friendly tap on the face. ”Because you’re gonna score the winner again, bro.” I laughed, hard. Mad chemicals were flooding through me, making me talk absolute shit, even more so than normal. This match had saved me years - potentially decades - of fumbling around, not knowing if what I wanted to do was even possible. I prowled around. Off came Dumi - Jost went to right back. Petar replaced Beat Ritter, which actually increased our CA.

Such things didn’t matter, though. Tonight was a disgraceful capitulation but it was a lurch towards the future. Evaristo, the despicable prick, had taught me a lesson. I had been fumbling in the dark; he had lit up the way.

”Just like Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2,” I said. ”Why can’t anyone stick to the theme?”

Fresh legs helped. Jost ran his arse off. Petar didn’t put a foot wrong. I told Willi and Cheb to warm up.

I noticed that Claude Sonko’s Condition score dropped five points all of a sudden. On the far side of the pitch, Shuji curled a pass along the touchline. I didn’t wait to see if the linesman’s flag would go up. I swapped Claude to right back and Jost Benn to right mid, and pushed Jost one zone forward.

84’

Shuji plays the ball down the line.

Two Bologna players stop.

But the assistant referee’s flag doesn’t go up!

The ball is still in play!

Adam Adebayo is there. He takes the ball past one defender.

He plays it to Bratko.

The Slovenian striker shifts his feet and passes in front of Adebayo.

Nice combination!

Adebayo drives forward. He cuts back suddenly and plays a pass between two defenders.

Who’s there?

It’s the substitute, Jost Benn. Where did he come from?

Benn cocks his leg...

I didn’t read the rest because I was being buffeted on all sides by the guys from my dugout. They were running past me, onto the pitch, into the corner where Jost was just coming to the end of an epic knee slide. I was all the way back to being numb. The scoreboard said three-two. Jost had hit a shot so hard it was amazing the net had held. Jost Benn, goal machine. Whut.

Jost ran at me, leapt into my arms. I grabbed him, held him steady, then put him down and yelled, ”You shot too hard! You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”

”What?” he cried.

He hadn’t seen the movie. I settled on yelling, ”Go to the fans!”

He nodded and sprinted away to where the Bavarians were the only audible section once more.

I turned and strode towards Evaristo. He was giving me daggers. I thought of fifty things I could do or say. I said and did none of them. He was yesterday’s news.

As the Stone Rose so aptly wrote: Kiss me where the sun don’t shine. The past was yours... the future’s mine.

I backed away, staring at him until he blinked. ”Fucking prick,” I said. ”Ref, change.”

I told the assistant the changes I wanted to make. He got the boards ready.

Willi and Cheb came back from the celebrations and when they realised they were coming on, their Morale actually plummeted. What if they made a mistake? What if they cost us the game?

The ref showed Jost Benn a yellow card for being too happy.

Claude Sonko and Shibata Shuji trudged towards the touchline. They had put in a fucking shift, all right. Couple of warriors. Guys you’d go to prison for.

The reserve lads continued to leak terror sweat. ”You nervous? Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea.” I put my hands on Cheb’s shoulders. ”Make him smile.”

Cheb moved his index fingers towards Willi’s mouth. Willi cracked into a big grin before Cheb got anywhere near. ”Willi,” I said. The same thing happened in reverse.

Two beaming, laughing players took to the pitch.

We were fit. We were fresh. We were fearless. We had the lead and we weren’t going to give it up to anyone. Put those three points in the vault; they belong to us now.

***

At the final whistle, I sagged back onto my bucket. The dugout went nuts again, running past me again, celebrating again.

Celebrating what, mate?

My first win in the Champions League was bittersweet at best. Some players had been immense. Some had been worms. My distrust of the back office had reached new levels.

I had a choice to make. Either I could keep what I had - Evaristo’s gold - or I could go double or nothing. This wasn’t the only heist I was planning. My other caper would need much more unity from the players. Much more buy-in from absolutely everyone. I was sick of even pretending to be diplomatic. Was it time to go Full Max? Or could I catch more flies with honey than vinegar?

The 1969 British crime caper, The Italian Job, ends with one of the very best cliffhangers of all time. This would be a good time for a cliffhanger, wouldn’t it? Leave you in suspense about how I reacted to this latest betrayal.

Well, yeah, it would, if I hadn’t instantly decided I was ready to let some people know what I thought about them, just as soon as I finished telling the TV people the exact opposite of what was really on my mind.

***

When I got into the dressing room, victory music was pumping from the Bayern-branded speakers. I ripped the cable out of the socket and all eyes turned to me.

”Willi and Cheb,” I said. ”Well played. Please wait outside for a couple of minutes. I don’t want you to hear this.” They stood and headed to the doorway, hoping someone would stop them. Nobody did. When the door closed I leaned over Henno. Got close to him. Really close. ”They’re gone, Henno. When it comes time for you to take your revenge, remember that they weren’t here. They didn’t do anything, okay?”

As I leaned back, I ripped the captain’s armband from his bicep.

I twirled it round as I circled the space. ”You guys have your elite mentality, don’t you? You love your elite mentality. You look down on me because I came from Chester. Chester. What’s that? We’re just some worms in the dirt to you. Well we must be fucking stupid because when we put in a shocking, disgraceful performance and fluke a win, we don’t celebrate. You guys with your elite mentality celebrating being utter shite? I’m learning a lot about how to be elite.”

I continued to pace around, noting how everyone was reacting.

”That performance was disgusting. Disgraceful. You’re paid a lot of money to care about this club and you can’t even be bothered to do that. Rubbish. You want a medal for running around cleaning up your own mess? How about you don’t make a mess in the first place? I’ve gone to the media and hyped you up. Said a lot of things I don’t mean about your spirit and will to win. What really happened was that you crumbled at half time. You quit. You surrendered. That’s what happened. Bunch of fucking twats.” I took a tiny pause to drink some water. ”Here’s what you do now. You cry to mummy.” I pointed towards Diane Berger. ”Mum, the babysitter’s being mean! He wants me to work hard and I don’t like it! If mummy sacks me, well done, lads. Elite mentality in action.

”If that doesn’t work, you run to daddy. Paul! The babysitter doesn’t believe me when I say I’ve got elite mentality! I stamped my feet and everything. He keeps talking about standards. What the fuck are standards? Get rid of him, daddy. He’s horrible. I want to get knocked out in the Champions League quarter final like I do every year.”

It’s fair to say a recreation of this rant would have gone down a treat in the Stuttgart dressing room. It wasn’t landing as well here. I was in front of Fabian Fromm, the guy lying about his injury.

I poked him with the armband. ”Let me make one thing very fucking clear. If I’m still the manager of this club on Saturday, the captain I choose will be someone who leads by example.” I walked around until I was in front of Henno Wald. ”The captain will be someone who gives a shit.”

I nearly gave the armband to Kumba Viera right there and then but some tiny sliver of common sense told me to wait. That voice proved right in a quite spectacular way.

”Coaches, analysts, hurry up and leave. Players, get showered, get changed. Anyone I see smiling or laughing between here and Munich better be watching old Benny Hill episodes, because there’s nothing to smile about when it comes to how you played.” For a few seconds, nobody moved, but then I opened my mouth, fully intending to melt someone’s face off, and there was a flurry of activity. In almost complete silence, the process of leaving Italy began in earnest.

It had been a very successful trip.