Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

12.

Sunday, December 6

”Hello, and welcome to a special edition of Hans Across Germany with me, Hans Reiz. Yes, I can English speak!”

I gave my interviewer a second look. Hans was in his forties, shortish, thin, with silvering hair. His English was really good, but now that we were on air he was dumbing down. I knew another journalist who switched tone based on their audience - Bethany Alban. She was whip smart but didn’t always want everyone to know it. Now that she had made some progress in the sports journalism business, she gave herself permission to show the world just how awesome she was. Hans was already a star in Germany - their version of John Oliver, the satirical centre-left talk show host - so why was he making deliberate mistakes? It very slightly put me on edge. Don’t underestimate this guy.

I had three main goals with this interview. One, to generate interest in Tuesday’s Champions League match in Hungary. Two, to fine tune my squad’s mentality for that game. I knew they would be in their homes, watching this, wondering what I would say. In some cases I would be able to boost Morale and check it in real time via the curse interface, and in other cases I would be able to challenge players to play well in the next game. Finally, I had a kind of meta goal of promoting the interview itself. I would say a few controversial or amusing things that would go viral, and that would reinforce my other objectives. Being tricked into saying things that didn’t fit my agenda wasn’t, ah, on my agenda. Cut that, that’s terrible. Can’t cut it; we’re live.

Hans shrugged in his immaculate but not pretentious suit, turned to a different camera, and lowered his voice a fraction. ”Actually, my English is very good. Hollywood, are you watching? I’m available for a big-money transfer. Come and get me!” He smiled and went back to his normal volume and his normal camera. ”The reason this special episode is in English is that I have secured the first and only interview with Max Best, the caretaker head coach of Bayern Munich! And that is why we are here in the Allianz Arena. It’s quite a sight in the twilight of the day, is it not?”

I turned. Through the enormous panes of glass, the stadium was dimly lit but the pristine green grass of the pitch was visible and the scale of the place could not be disguised, even on a quiet Sunday evening. ”It’s spectacular.”

As Hans spoke next, video clips of me playing for Chester appeared on the monitors and screens. Everything looked super cool, with some dribbles and long shots sped up, some outrageous tricks slowed down, and me jumping into masses of fans at normal speed. ”Max is the player-manager of Chester FC, with whom he has had much success. He is on the cover of Soccer Supremo, the best-selling computer game, and he made headlines around the world earlier when he proposed to his girlfriend after scoring the winning goal in the last minute of a big cup match.” A photo appeared: me on bended knee in front of Emma. A second photo was dropped on top of the first: me spinning Emma around. A third depicted the referee showing me a yellow card. It was a superbly well-made and funny sequence that gave me confidence these people knew what they were doing, even if I hadn’t actually scored the winning goal, and the winning goal was technically an equaliser. ”Max, welcome to the show.”

”It’s an absolute pleasure. Hans, where’s the monitor that shows what people at home are seeing? They told me I’d be able to see the final output.”

He pointed. ”It’s there.”

”Oh, look! The captions are so fast. That’s AI translation, is it?”

”Yes.”

”The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. Huh. My German isn’t good enough to know if it’s translating properly.”

”It is translating properly.”

”I hope so, said Max Best handsomely. Did it get that right?”

Hans smiled. ”It did. This is going out live, Max. Does that make you nervous?”

I frowned. ”Nervous? I’m used to performing live. We don’t pre-record football matches, Hans.”

”No, but sometimes it would be nice to fix the endings in post-production, I think?”

I laughed. ”Yeah. Reshoot the penalty kicks.”

”So what do you think of Germany so far?”

”It’s really interesting, obviously, to be in a different country for more than a long weekend, but I have been working quite hard so my impressions are sadly quite superficial. I arrived on a Monday, had a match already on the Friday, then Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday. If you factor in that I’ve also flown to Italy and to Kiel, plus I went to watch Stuttgart and I zipped over to Paris to discuss transfers, it has been hectic. I decided not to stress myself by having the tourist experience on top of everything else, so I satisfied myself by going to nice restaurants. I have to eat, right, so that is a chance to ’explore’ the city while not taking time away from the job I am here to do.”

”You haven’t formed any impressions at all?”

”Sure but I’m obsessed by football and what interests me is a comparison of the fan culture. A lot of English fans are jealous of the German fan experience. The cheap tickets, the fact that most clubs are fan-owned, just the general sense that while the executives are sometimes far too keen to chase dirty money, generally things are run for the fans. I love that when the supporters don’t like something they protest, and protest hard. It’s really great. In England, fans complain and grumble but it takes a lot for them to organise and fight for their rights.

”One thing that has stood out to me for all sorts of reasons is the contrast in the stadium experience. Fans in Germany are co-ordinated, right? It’s like you’ve got a conductor guy, who isn’t even watching the match, and he’s like okay it’s time for song 6! And everyone sings song six for twenty minutes. You get this kind of constant drone which you may or may not like.”

”Do you like it?”

”No comment,” I said, grinning. ”Actually, I like it in general but I prefer the way English fans are... let’s be mystical and say present. They watch the match and react to what’s happening. If you win a tackle they get hyped. If you do something cool, they applaud. If you are in a noisy stadium and you score a goal, the home fans shut their stupid gobs and that’s an amazing feeling as a player. In Germany you score a goal and the fans just keep doing what they’re doing. It’s like if you want to shut the home fans up you have to score just as song 6 is ending, you know?” I smiled. ”Both ways are cool but just for my personal preference, I like the English way of being on the terraces. It’s more organic, more spontaneous, and less directly organised. Which if you did your homework, Hans, is a clever lead-up to a discussion on ways of playing the sport itself.”

”Do you mean Bestball? We planned to save that until the end.”

”Sure, sure.”

”Max, I’d like to start with a rather fundamental question. Why are you here?”

It was probably a good idea to go over the basics for viewers who had no clue who I was or why their TV schedules were suddenly in English. ”Bastian, the head coach of Bayern Munich, needed a minor medical procedure but he didn’t want to take a break from work. Paul Braun, Dieter Bauer, and Karl Lippstadt came up with the solution that I would come for four weeks. The two weeks before that were an international break - when the national teams play - and the two weeks after is the winter break.”

”Two weeks plus four weeks followed by two weeks. Add them together and Basti can rest for two whole months.”

”Right. The reason I was chosen is that while I have the skills to do the job for a short time, there is no danger of me wanting or being offered the job on a long-term basis. Bastian can relax.”

”Why wouldn’t you get the job?”

”People find me super annoying. I know, right! Your viewers can’t believe it.” I dazzled the camera.

He smiled. ”Why wouldn’t you want the job? It’s one of the best in the world for someone in your position, isn’t it?”

”It is if you think conventionally.”

”You don’t do much of that.”

”I’m aggressively conventional. For me, the Bayern job would not be an ideal fit because while there is a lot of focus on the actual football compared to some megaclubs, there isn’t complete focus and that would drive me absolutely insane. Why are we flying to Australia and then America in the summer? Is it to boost the brand or because it’s the best preparation for the new season? We know what the answer is and it’s the wrong answer. In addition, there is far too much media work and I wouldn’t have control of the transfers. At Chester - that’s my club back in England - I have a co-manager who talks to the press, and I have virtually complete control of who comes into the club and who leaves. In Munich I drive the car - as long as I follow the GPS. In Chester, I go where I want and I build the car, too. That’s much more satisfying.”

”Your co-manager in Chester is Sandra Lane, the most successful woman in men’s sport.”

”In men’s sport?” I said, frowning. ”Not sure. Men’s football, yes, probably.” Sandra had been in charge of three gruelling matches in five days. The first was the league win over Bradford, which was a bruising affair. She couldn’t rotate the team much in the Vans Trophy against Rotherham United two days later. That one ended 2-1 with late goals from Bark and an emotional injury time winner from Wibbers, but all the exertions caught up with us in the away league game against Leyton Orient. We couldn’t get into the match and Sandra decided to park the bus and get out with a draw. Nil-nil, very solid decision-making given the circumstances, and because of the other results we retained a 7-point lead in the table. From afar, it seemed like Sandra was having to scrap for results but that it was making her a better manager.

Hans said, ”Who else would be more successful in another sport?”

”I don’t know,” I said. ”I don’t follow lots of other sports but if there is a woman in charge of a Formula One team or something I wouldn’t want to start a beef with her by accident.”

”You would prefer to start the conflict on purpose.”

”Yes, of course.” I grinned.

”We have been researching you and there are many who were surprised you took a job in such a big club. It would seem to go against your personal values.”

”Well, you can’t ask me to stick to my principles; I’m not a politician from the 1960s. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t really want to do the job but it is in line with my values. First, there was a real risk Bastian wouldn’t go to hospital if someone like me didn’t step up. I think everyone at home knows someone who finds it hard to switch off from work. Give them half an excuse and they’ll rush to the office. You know the sort, right? The football industry is 90% that kind of person. Second, Bayern aren’t the typical evil megaclub. The two big clubs in England plotted to destroy English football. The two big clubs in Spain plotted to destroy Spanish football. When the second biggest club in Germany was in trouble, the biggest loaned them two million Euros. Bayern didn’t join the European Super League even for a second. I can’t say I like everything Bayern Munich do but they never tried to kill the sport. It’s a low bar but it’s one they pass, do you know what I mean? You can hope they lose while respecting them. In fact, my goal for this interview is a strange one. I want everyone in Germany to support Bayern Munich for 45 minutes.”

”For 45 minutes? Not for an entire match?”

”Right.”

”Will you explain that?”

”At the end, yes. Unless we run out of time talking about which pen I use to write my birthday cards, like I saw on a talk show recently.”

”You have promised to dish the dirt on the inner workings of Bayern Munich later. You will, so to speak, tell us who are the sinners.”

”Yeah, gonna drop some red meat into the water to help you get mad clicks.”

”Red meat?” said Hans. ”True blood.”

Another absolutely crazy comment that came out of nowhere! The safest thing was to act like I hadn’t heard. ”I know this interview is a big opportunity for you, and it’s clear that every other presenter and TV station wanted it but still, I appreciate you and your crew coming down to Munich at short notice. You usually work in Cologne, right?”

He smiled. ”Yes, but when we asked for volunteers from our regular team to come today, we had a one hundred percent response rate. This is a lot of fun for everyone. The others are keen to meet the famous Max Bites, but me personally, I can’t wait to use this.” He stroked the multimedia table where I would be able to scribble lines on video clips as we were analysing them. Hans’s eyes widened as he looked to our right, where a giant screen stood. ”And the jumbotron! I can’t wait to go over there. Max, I feel like a little boy. Do you get used to it?”

”So far, no. It’s super cool. What’s your plan, Hans?”

He smiled for a few seconds, then said, ”We tried to think of a way to make this interesting for everyone. People who like football, people who don’t, and we found something you said once. Every match is a chapter, every season is a book. Do you still believe that?”

”Yeah. Sometimes you can sneak three or four matches into a chapter and maybe it’s more like three books per season but basically, yeah.”

”What we decided was to pick one match and go through it. Use it as a base camp to explore other topics that people are interested in.”

”That sounds ridiculously smart. Was that my idea?”

Hans laughed. ”I’m glad you approve. But first, we need to choose the match we use as the framing agent. When we came to Munich your people gave us a crash course in modern football analytics and I have to say my mind was blown. It’s so complicated!”

”It can be overwhelming, yes.”

Hans got a cheeky look about him. ”The team at Munich suggested a little test for you.”

”Oh, God.”

He smiled. ”Nothing too serious. They said any coach who understands modern football would be able to pass.”

”They said that, did they?” I said, flatly. So the analytics team had set me up to fail. Brilliant. ”Go on, let’s see it.”

I leaned forward, and on the table in front of me appeared a match dominance timeline. It looked like a slice of a DNA helix or part of a soundwave. Hans leaned forward, too. ”It’s rather like a Morbius strip.” I tilted my head. It looked nothing like a Möbius strip. What was he playing at? ”Can you explain what we’re seeing, Max?”

”Yes. It’s like any information you see presented graphically for the first time - it looks more complicated than it is. Can I ask one question before I explain it? Have they removed the goal markers?”

Hans touched his ear, paused, and said, ”Yes, they have.”

”Just so everyone at home knows, the data team have tried to make me look like an idiot by giving me an unfair test. This is the match dominance timeline for Bayern Munich against Werder Bremen yesterday.”

Hans’s eyes popped open. ”How can you tell that? They changed the colours and flipped it upside down.”

”Yeah, okay, this graph, these lines, they tell a story. They tell a story of a football match. Let me try to explain. This line in the middle is when the match is perfectly balanced. You might think of it as: nothing is happening. Anything above the line - hey, Hans, can we get it back to the original version? This one will confuse the viewers who know - ah! There we go. Still no goal markers. That’s so lame, guys. The data people are mad I can do all this in my head which means they don’t get to go to Hungary.” I was pinching the timeline to make it bigger when something popped up on the screen. It was a part of an Instagram post. ”What’s this?”

Hans peered closer. ”That’s Adam Adebayo reacting to what you just said with three laugh-crying emojis.”

I frowned. Reacting to the reactions and then reacting to the reaction-reactions was the exact opposite of what I wanted from this event. Putting a celebrity name on screen to show that stars were watching might have been good social proof for Hans and the show, but would have been incredibly tedious for me. I made an effort to shut it down. ”Because of a medically-dangerous dopamine imbalance, I’m on a year-long social media detox. Until just now, I hadn’t seen an emoji for six months.”

Hans played along. ”We have ruined your detox.”

”It’s fine, I’ll just reset the clock to zero. Okay, my year-long medically-necessary social media detox starts... now.” I hoped that would stop them putting more posts up, but there was an easy way to lift the mood again. I looked down the camera lens. ”Adam, put your phone away and turn the light off. It’s past your bedtime.”

Hans was delighted by that. ”He’s the same age as you, isn’t he?”

”Well,” I grumbled. ”This job aged me ten years.” I noted that Adam’s Morale went up one level, just from hearing his name on the telly. Amazing. ”Okay, so anything above the line shows that the home team is attacking. The home team yesterday was Bayern Munich. Anything below the line is the away team, which was Werder Bremen. Are you with me so far?”

”Honestly, I’m reeling from the realisation that you can look at this and see that it’s a football match, and say which match it’s supposed to be. Upside down! Isn’t that what Mozart used to do?”

”There are millions of people where you show them a stock price chart and they tell you which company it is, right? Focus, Hans! Above the line means Bayern are doing something good, below the line means Werder Bremen are doing something good. Clear or not?”

”Clear, I think.”

”The farther the line is from the middle, the better the attack. Like, if someone gets the ball 40 metres from goal and has a shot, that’s not very smart, right? So there would only be a little bump. But if you have a corner kick and a rebound and a shot and a block and a rebound and another shot and another corner, there would be a big tall line, and it would get fat to show that it was a lot of danger across more time. Are you still with me?”

”I think so. This is fascinating.”

”So let’s look at the first half. We have some small peaks above the line and some short troughs below the line. This one is Bayern doing a small attack, then Werder Bremen attack, then Bayern have a few minutes of minor attacks. This little area here is about thirty minutes into the match and you can see Werder had a period where they were working hard to get a goal. Does it sort of make sense, Hans?”

”Yes. How is this calculated?”

”Ha! Answering that would be bad content, trust me. Let’s just say that as long as we don’t put too much faith in this graph, it’s a pretty decent model, okay?”

”Okay. I’m in your hands, Max Best. The lines get more extreme in the second half. Am I reading that right?”

”Yes, it’s part of my style to get more dynamic as the match progresses. What some people at home are wondering is, does this Max Best kid know what he’s doing? I don’t usually feel the need to explain myself but the Bayern fans have been very supportive, especially the ones in the stadium. I didn’t have the chance to get to know them so far so I would like to explain some of my decisions. They have heard that I’m crazy and that I do random things and I want to assure them that it’s all logical and okay I might get some calls wrong, same as anyone, but it won’t be because I’m not taking it seriously. Like, thanks for your support but you don’t need to come up to me while I’m in the supermarket and tell me what I’m doing wrong based on some twelve-second TikTok you watched.”

”Do people do that?”

”A little bit, yeah. So back to this graph. There should be a ball icon here to show that a goal was scored...”

Hans was touching his ear - which he never normally did on his own show because he was so much the master of his ship in that scenario. Here in the football studio he was like an excited little puppy. ”I’m sorry, Max. Before we talk about the match we should detail the eleven players you chose.”

I tilted my head. Something was slightly off about that. This wasn’t a football show. ”The viewers can find the starters online, if they really want to know.”

”Yes, but Max! I want to go to the big screen! I’ve been looking forward to this part so much. We can’t skip it; we got the official graphics and everything!”

I broke into a big smile; his enthusiasm was perfect. ”Yeah, let’s do that. No problem.”

Hans skipped to the wrong position. I followed and gently pulled him back to his spot. ”Unless you want me to be the host,” I said, eyebrows raised.

”No, this is better,” he said, grinning. I went to the spot the analysts usually stood in. Hans clapped with delight as the Bayern formation came up on the massive screen behind us. ”What I hear is that you don’t tell anyone the eleven until after you have given your papers to the referee. Many people think it’s madness to do it like that.”

”Yeah, well, it isn’t. Okay, so here’s the... No. This isn’t what we did.”

Hans looked panicked. ”This is the graphic that went out on TV.”

I tipped my head back and laughed. ”Hans! I don’t tell them the truth. My tactics are none of their cheeky business. This was a work of fiction. You’ve got graphics superfreaks in the control room, right? We can fix it. Guys, move this guy here, that guy there.”

”No,” said Hans, horrified. ”But Max. We were going to change it to this when you weren’t looking. To see how fast you noticed.”

He clicked his fingers and the graphic changed. Instead of having a moody-looking Max Best hovering over the virtual pitch, there was a moody-looking Hans. I stepped away and admired it. ”You look good, Hans.” I leaned forward. ”Have you got fangs?”

”Seeing me in your spot doesn’t make you angry?”

”Angry?” I said, confused. ”Why would it? Okay, let’s fix the formation. Graphics dudes, him here, him there. Him in the middle. Nudge him up a bit. No, to the same level as these guys. Yeah, that’s close enough. Okay, Hans, this is a revolutionary formation. 4-3-2-1, otherwise known as the Christmas Tree.”

He stared at the screen. ”The Christmas Tree. Yes, I see it. And why did you choose this?”

”Because it’s nearly Christmas. Duh.”

He laughed. ”No, but really.”

”That’s really why. I was feeling festive when I picked the team. But look - move these two guys to the same level as that guy. See? It’s basically 4-3-3. Most big clubs know how to play 4-3-3. You normally get these two forwards wider, but whatevs. This version is a narrow formation, we attack down the middle, bosh.”

”Can you say more about your thought process? Our viewers might be disappointed that the trainer of the country’s biggest team chooses a strategy because he is feeling Christmassy.”

”If we attack for 45 minutes down the middle, there’s a good chance Werder Bremen, at half time, will make the middle more solid. For example, they will use two of their five substitutes to build more of a wall there. After they do that, I switch to going down the wings - the sides - and now Bremen have hundreds of useless guys in the centre running around looking for something to do.”

”So you’re trying to provoke something from the other team?”

”That’s part of it, but this is also an efficient way to play. We have a very important match on Tuesday and I want my players to be as fresh as possible for it. Think about being one of these guys. You don’t have far to run, unless you need to go to the wide spaces to defend, which I tell them not to do. So it’s an energy-saving formation.”

”Because... it’s dense?”

”Yes. You’re always close to a teammate.”

”And why don’t you ask players to go to the sides to defend?”

”Because nothing bad’s going to happen from those positions. If the other team has a player with a certain profile, someone like Trent Alexander-Arnold, you can’t do this. But Werder Bremen don’t have that kind of player and in fact, they are most dangerous in the middle. Bad news for them, with this setup we have loads of players in their way so we won’t give up many chances. Soz not soz. All right, the formation makes sense and guess what? It was a surprise. Bremen didn’t think we would do that. No-one thought we would do this. It was fun watching them get confused. I hope you have clips of them running around going: What’s this? What’s this?”

”We don’t, I fear. We aren’t football experts so we chose incidents that interested us. I am starting to suspect we missed an opportunity to dig deep into aspects of the sport that aren’t often discussed.”

”Definitely. You’re going to have men in the pub going, why didn’t he ask him about so-and-so? The hipster podcasts will tear your decisions apart. Welcome to my world.”

Hans put his hands to his cheeks, horrified. ”What have I done?” He pulled a funny face and said, ”Tell us why you chose the players you chose.”

”Um, sure. So Torben Ulrich in goal.”

”There was controversy when you dropped him in your first match.”

”Really? I didn’t hear anything. Torben in goal, and can you see there are four defenders? In England we call it a back four.”

Hans pointed and said, ”One, a-ha-ha! Two, a-ha-ha!” I stared at him, my jaw hanging open. ”Don’t you watch Sesame Street?” he said.

I decided to push on. ”That’s Willi Tillmann, Pak Young, Edgar Wilde, and Cheb Alloula. Honestly, with this squad you could pick anyone; they’re all amazing. I wanted to use Edgar more than I have done so far, and the young players probably won’t get to play much for Bastian so I want to give them some play time while I’m at the club.”

”Why won’t they play?”

”They’re not quite ready for the big big matches and if you are a normal manager, every match is a big big match.”

”You don’t include yourself in that?”

”Not really. This isn’t my career, is it? In theory I would manage eight matches in Germany and while all eight are interesting in different ways, none are necessarily decisive in the context of Bayern’s season. It’s not that I can just turn up and lose them all - I mean, if I lost my first three matches even this short adventure would have been terminated - but generally speaking, I try to act like I have complete job security. If you have complete job security you can develop young players and you can make sure your backup goalkeeper is match sharp. Do you know what I mean? Willi and Cheb can compete against Werder Bremen. I knew that before kick off and they proved it.” Willi’s Morale... green! Cheb’s Morale... green!

”Is it courage or delusion to act like your job is safe?”

”A great philosophical question to ask a taxi driver, Hans. Okay, the midfield was Petar Gutić, Parnell Gourlay, and Beat Ritter. That’s a really nice blend of talents, loads of energy, great lads.” Moraaaaaale! I tried not to cackle live on air. To think that I wanted to skip this part! ”In front of them I picked Danny Kowalski and Claude Sonko. Danny was coming back from a minor injury, so I planned to give him the first half to make sure he’s ready for the Champions League on Tuesday night. He’s key to everything I want to do.” Give me that sweet, sweet green! ”And then the striker was Till Rehder.”

Werder Bremen’s average CA was 133. My starting eleven’s was 151. Not quite the level of dominance Bayern would normally have, but we also had Bench Boost active.

Hans was looking at the little photo of Till and shaking his head. ”Bringing Rehder into the first team is one of the more astonishing things you have done. Can you explain why you took a journeyman striker from Bayern Zwei and elevated him?”

”Sure. Football is a team game and I believe that team work is the primary factor in deciding who wins. Till Rehder is a natural leader, someone who is always trying to lift his team mates, someone who is always ready to defend them when the opposition are trying to provoke a reaction, someone who will check the scoreboard, see we are losing, and look inside himself not to find excuses and complaints but to find more determination, more heart. When I think of what a Bayern Munich player should have in his heart, I think of Till Rehder.” You get a Morale boost! You get a Morale boost! Look under your chair... everybody gets a Morale boost! ”Can I take this opportunity to read something?”

”Of course.”

I pulled out some paper. ”This is Bayern Munich’s mission statement, Hans. It’s divided into eleven sections, sort of, which might be an attempt to represent a football team. Not sure. One section says that we can achieve anything if we stand together. Till Rehder is the kind of player who stands firm alongside his mates. Can everyone in the Bayern dressing room say the same? Spoiler alert - no, they can’t.

”Another item is called ’pass the ball’. Know when to step back for the good of the team, it says. Pass the ball to a teammate who’s in a better position. Till Rehder does that. Can every Bayern player say the same? Hell no.

”I could pick out more of these phrases, but let’s go ahead and say that Till Rehder embodies everything in these mission statements. It’s interesting that the club would spend fifty, sixty million Euros buying people who would spit on these values, but...” I pretended to be confused. ”The club does believe in this stuff, doesn’t it Hans?”

”I don’t know, Max.”

I tapped the paper. ”They had a meeting and they brainstormed this and they wrote it down. It’s on their website. I read it and it’s part of the reason I agreed to come here. I read it and took it to heart. You might not think this is great content but please indulge me just for thirty seconds while I read a couple more bits. You can’t start a fire without a spark. We can only inspire others if we take pride and pleasure in what we do.” I held the paper up. ”I didn’t write this, Hans. This is from Paul Braun, I reckon. And the last part. We also show respect for diversity, acknowledge our responsibility to society, and always take a clear stance. So Paul Braun, Dieter Bauer, and Karl Lippstadt read the draft of this and thought yes, this is Bayern Munich. This is what we want to be. We won’t crumble when asked to defend these words because these words are from the heart. What do you reckon, Hans?” I looked out of the window behind us. ”Are the people who built this stadium the kind of people who rip up their mission statement the minute it becomes controversial? Or do they stick it out because they want to build a better club and a better world?”

He was giving me a very strange look. ”I am not sure.”

”Well, I’m sure that Paul Braun can’t be bullied into weaselling out of anything by anyone, and that’s why when I saw Till Rehder I knew he had a role to play because a year from now, when I go on Bayern’s website to find this mission statement, it will be exactly the same. All right, that’s the team. Shall we go back to the momentum graph?” I pointed to the table.

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Hans was still confused about my little rant, but he had an outline to follow. He gestured that we should stay in front of the big screen. ”We would like to approach the match in a slightly different manner, Max. Your pitchside persona has been very confusing for a lot of people. Your players make huge mistakes, the referee is too harsh or too lenient, and it doesn’t affect you. The things that get you animated are incidents most football fans don’t even notice. We would like to show you clips of the match where you react strongly and ask you to explain what you’re thinking. We ask what it is you do in the shadows.”

I wanted to say ’Weird,’ but went with, ”Sounds fun.”

Match footage came on screen. ”So, the highlights of Bayern versus Werder Bremen. Six minutes gone and you have barely blinked. Here we have Cheb Alloula playing a perfectly normal back pass to the goalkeeper... and here we have Max Best as angry as we have seen him in Germany.”

”You haven’t seen me trying to find a parking space at Aldi. Okay but this one is simple. Cheb has the ball and as an opponent puts pressure on him, he passes to Torben. To the goalie,” I added, because Hans didn’t seem to be following me.

”I watch a fair amount of football and this looks normal.”

”So? I don’t want normal. What’s normal got to do with it? I want it right.”

”What’s right?”

”Let’s go back ten seconds.” The producers obeyed. I think they had some Bayern guys helping them to press the buttons. ”Go forward slowly. Okay, pause. Hans, here. This guy is going to pressure Cheb, and this guy is going to pressure Torben. Which player is under the most stress, do you think?”

Hans frowned. ”I couldn’t say. It looks about the same to me. Either way would be horrible,” he said, blinking at the nearest lens.

”Yeah, about the same, that’s right. So why is Cheb putting the goalie in a position he himself doesn’t want to deal with? There are goalies who are good with their feet, such as Torben, and people love to say things like wow he’s so good he could play midfield. Sorry, Torben, sorry goalies worldwide, but no. No, they couldn’t. Cheb is many levels better than Torben in that scenario and he needs to take responsibility instead of dumping someone else in the shit.”

”Ouch,” said Hans. ”Isn’t that quite harsh?”

”No.” I monitored Cheb’s Morale as I spoke, but it going down in this particular circumstance wasn’t necessarily a problem. Sometimes you need to feel like shit to make a change in your life. ”Cheb agrees with me in principle. It’s that thing of job security. Cheb doesn’t want to be the one who makes a mistake because he’s trying to get into the team, right? It’s terrible for his career if he is caught on the ball ten times in his first three matches. If he takes responsibility and makes a mistake, he’s out. Which, by the way, is stupid. He’s a top talent and you need to have the culture to let him develop. What normally happens at Bayern is that these moments where he tries to do the right thing but makes a mess - in other words the process whereby he becomes a better player - should happen in Bayern Zwei, far away from the public eye. The only problem is that this lunatic Max Best has thrown him into the first team far too early.”

”If it’s too early, why have you done it?”

”Because it isn’t too early! We have two centre backs here in shot, plus the goalie. If Cheb loses the ball all the way over here on the right touchline, I expect every Bayern player to sprint back, flat out, hundred percent, to help him out. Anyone not willing to do that shouldn’t be around. I’ll tell you one guy who will sprint to help his mate.”

”Till Rehder.”

”Absolutely. He understands this better than anyone in Bayern, I think. Do you want outstanding young players? There’s a cost. The cost is you need to scrap and work and get him out of the shit and not get on his case when he tries something that doesn’t go to plan.”

”This is Bayern Munich, though. It’s a place for players who have already made these mistakes and learned these lessons.”

”I don’t give a shit. I’m in charge and until I get kicked out, I’ll do it my way. I assume all the clips you’ve got lined up are ones of me being angry, but most of this Werder Bremen game was us playing beautiful football. It was a fucking festival of togetherness and grit. You can see the team spirit, you can see the players storming around helping each other out. I don’t care who’s ready and who isn’t. That was a performance that fits the mission statement. You can only inspire others if you take pride in what you do. Those players were proud to pull on those shirts and the fans felt it. I normally tune out what the fans are doing so that I can focus on the strategic overview, but on Saturday the place was rocking. It was absolutely deafening in here, Hans, and that’s because the fans saw eleven players who were as committed and passionate as they were.”

Hans lifted a finger. ”Actually, while that I’m sure was true, it was also true that you yourself were committed and passionate.”

”Nah, I’m a technocrat,” I said, shiftily, aware that I had got a bit hot just now.

”Really?” Hans stepped back and the screen cut to a new scene. There was a foul by Parnell Gourlay in the midfield and while the ref tried to calm things down, the Bremen pricks tried to pressure him into showing a yellow card. Bremen’s awful head coach sprinted almost onto the pitch and waved an imaginary yellow card. I didn’t like that much and told him so.

”I think I’m pretty calm,” I said, watching it unfold from different angles.

”Are you sure? I wouldn’t like to see you when you’re not calm.”

”What?” I said, shrugging. ”In England if you demand a yellow card for someone, you get one yourself. It’s supposed to be a sport, after all. A contest of skill, not who can manipulate the referee better. There should be some basic sense of fair play and decency; a grown man doesn’t run to daddy asking him to confiscate his brother’s toys.”

”You started taunting him from this moment.”

”Hans!” I complained. ”What are you talking about?” I saw in his expression that he had a relevant clip, so I changed tack. ”If he’s so fond of waving imaginary yellow cards at people, I thought I would try it myself. Turns out, he doesn’t like it as much as he thought he did.” I laughed.

Hans said, ”Roll the montage.”

”Montage?” I said, worried.

Various scenes played out, all of which ended with me moving towards the enemy manager while waving imaginary yellow cards at him. Hans said, ”I think this is after Bayern’s first goal. You celebrated by giving him a yellow. A few minutes later, a yellow. Second goal, yellow. At this point, the referee asks you to stop, while you hold the pretend card behind your back so he can’t see it. Soon after... what’s this, Max?”

”I’m coughing. Got a nasty cough, suddenly.”

”It looks to me like you are coughing into your fist but the cough is, how can I say it, not so real? And your fingers are somehow shaped like they are holding a small rectangle. And here a few minutes later you are on the giant screens in the stadium, looking thoughtful. Thumb and index finger pressed together on your lips as you - oops! It’s a yellow card.”

”You have a feverish imagination.”

”Me and 75,000 fans in the stadium.” Hans was enjoying himself but he changed topic suddenly. The footage on the screen jumped back to the second goal. ”This is the penalty, which was taken by Danny Kowalski. What do you think of his method?”

Danny stepped forward, slowly, stuttering his run-up, trying to confuse the goalie but mostly confusing himself. The goalie dived the right way, got a big, meaty paw to the ball, and was unlucky that it went in.

”Er, it’s too high on the ’look how cool I am’ scale and too low on the ’let’s definitely score a goal’ scale.” Danny’s Morale dropped a level. Worth it. If you want praise, don’t take shit pens on my watch.

Hans laughed. ”We have some footage of you in training. The players say you’re a much better player than they expected.”

On screen, I scored five penalties in quick succession against Bayern’s top four goalies. ”You cut out the other 90 shots that missed.”

”I don’t think so, Max. In these clips you slice through goalkeepers like Wesley Snipes in Blade. Just how good are you?”

”At penalties? Pretty good. Used to be better before someone smacked me over the head with a metal bar. Free kicks I’m all right. Adam Adebayo’s better. So’s Claude Sonko. Actually, most of those forwards are.”

”I’m glad you mentioned free kicks,” said Hans, sadly. ”We also got this.”

The production team played a collage of me firing shots that flew off at all angles.

”No,” I said, looking towards the control room. ”You’ve got the wrong end of the stick on this one. That isn’t me doing my free kicks. That’s me trying a completely new method.”

Hans frowned. ”What... I don’t understand.”

”Okay,” I said, also frowning. There were times when our training sessions were recorded, and times they weren’t. I had been careful to do my personal training when the cameras were off. ”I’ve got two main ways of taking a free kick. One I call the Beckham, for obvious reasons. One is called the cannonball because that’s the trajectory the ball travels at. Travels on. With? Is my English getting worse? So the Bayern goalies have been very kind and they are letting me practice on them. Not a big session, right, just like five pens, five free kicks, five corners. Just to keep my skills up for when I go back to Chester.”

”You have been hitting the gym hard, too, I hear.”

I frowned more. ”I hope you don’t have footage of me lifting teeny tiny weights. I’m just getting my abs to pop, you know what I mean?”

”We don’t have footage, Max.”

”Huh. Back to free kicks. I’ve been upping my training times bit by bit. Torben Ulrich, the German national team goalie, at first he was like yeah, not bad. You know, like I’m his three-year-old son kind of thing. Good little Max! So cute with his powderpuff shots! But after a while it started to come back to me, you know, a bit like the old days before I was in the coma. Torben is miles too good for me but I can score against him sometimes. He, ah, stopped treating me like a talented amateur, if you get me. Now, the next part of the story goes to show what football can be like. It isn’t all shitheads and people clawing everyone else’s eyes out. Torben said, you know Max, you’ve got good technique. I wonder if you could do the Pirlo.”

”The Pirlo?” said Hans.

”Yeah. Named after Andrea Pirlo, the Italian playmaker. I knew he was good at free kicks but I didn’t know he had a whole special technique. He learned it from a guy called Juninho, who was the free kick master in those days. I watched some Juninho videos and it’s hard to be impressed because the balls were so weird back then, but my philosophy is that the best guy in any era would do well in any era. Give Juninho the modern balls and there’s very little doubt he would adapt. Anyway, Torben heard Juninho’s secret from an Italian international who was at Bayern but couldn’t get it to work. Torben very kindly told me the secret. What you do is you strike the ball with three toes.”

”Three toes?!” said Hans.

”I know, it’s a real headscratcher. First you think, why? What’s the difference? But mostly I was thinking... which three toes? It drove me insane for about an hour. That footage is me trying all kinds of ways to strike the ball, the weirder the better. It wasn’t completely futile. I’m pretty sure I know which three toes and I’m pretty sure I understand the basic method, but can I get it to work? So far, no, but I have had a lot of fun putting in the time trying to get the ball to obey me. It’s not often I get to focus on one task, you know, just one simple thing, and not have to worry about fifty other things like which players are going to stab me in the back next. It reminds me of when I was just starting as a professional and I was getting my Beckhams and cannonballs to work. My life was simple, then.”

”We must take a break shortly, but first, a quick fashion segment.”

Great, some superficial bullshit. I sighed inwardly and while I couldn’t force a smile onto my face, I think I was able to stay mostly neutral.

Hans noted my shift in energy but ploughed ahead. ”You said at your first press conference in Munich that you like to wear a hoodie. You’re wearing the same one now you wear while managing matches.”

”It’s not the same one. I have like ten of these. Clothes don’t matter. They don’t mean anything. It’s just surface stuff that doesn’t tell you anything about a person. I can’t imagine a situation where what I’m wearing would really make a difference.”

”You have opinions, though, about what other people wear.”

”Not strong ones. If I see a genius kid playing football in the park, doing amazing skills with great balance and control, the last thing I do is look to see what brand he’s wearing. I don’t have a boot deal because they want to put my name on a twenty Euro shoe and charge 200 for it. That thought doesn’t bring me pleasure.” I pulled at my toggles. ”If my fans want to look like me they can, for 29 pounds. It’s not a big contribution to society but it’s one little thing.”

Hans smiled - how do these guys make it look so real? - and said, ”There are two types of German head coach. Those who dress like coaches and those who dress like fashion victims. Here’s your first match in Germany. The head coach of SV Elversberg.” The guy was wearing a black puffy jacket with tracksuit bottoms.

”Completely appropriate attire to coach a football match in the rain,” I said, hoping that if I engaged with the chat it would end sooner.

They skipped Evaristo in Bologna, presumably because he wasn’t German, and went to Kiel. Kiel’s trainer was in a slightly baggy white top, almost a t-shirt, with soft grey trousers and white trainers, which for the next two minutes I will call sneakers to avoid confusion.

”Yeah, that’s his style. It’s half-tennis, half-golf.”

”This is the moment you first lay eyes on him. Can you describe what you are thinking at this point?”

”It’s just... a very cold and wet day. You can almost see him shivering. I was distracted wondering when he was going to put a jacket on. I mean, he’s a guy who spends a lot of time running around the touchline shouting at everything, but there were ten minutes where he just sat down in the shelter. It’s like, at that point your fashion choices are interfering with your ability to do your job. Do you know what I mean? I find it incomprehensible.”

”We found your reaction to the moment he came out of the shelter wearing a big coat.”

They put it on the screen. In the clip, I spot the coat, turn away, and try not to laugh by means of biting my bottom lip. I repeated the gesture in the studio. Even a cameraman laughed. Okay, this segment wasn’t terrible. ”It suits him.”

”One more quick one.”

Werder Bremen’s head coach came up. He was wearing skinny jeans with flecks of paint artfully splashed over the thighs, while the knees had been scuffed up with a wire brush. He sported snow-white sneakers, thick black gloves, and a rare double-hoodie in two shades of pale green.

”He looks great and he’s warm. Coach the match, then meet up with your fellow kids in the nearest park. Ten out of ten.”

”Ten, really? That’s not what your face said.”

”My face? Oh, God.”

They showed a clip of me spotting my rival in the pre-match activities. In the clip, my eyes bulged comically. Hans said, ”Do you stand by your rating?”

”I mean, yeah. Okay, look, his jeans are too tight. They’re too tight! Come on, am I going crazy here? You pull those on you’re cutting off the circulation to half your body!”

”Max,” said Hans. ”It has been - ” He paused and looked at the screen again. They had changed it to show Pascal Bochum managing Chester women. He was in a black polo neck, dark blue jacket, loafers, no socks. Oh, and sprayed-on red trousers. Hans gave me a disappointed look. ”Isn’t this the manager of Chester FC’s women’s team? Don’t you find his trousers are too tight?”

”Oh, Pascal,” I said, sadly. ”Look, Hans, this is a reflection of the German coaching culture Pascal grew up in. You can take the man out of Mannheim but you can’t take Mannheim out of the man.” I clicked my tongue and brightened up. ”The difference between Pascal and the other guys is... Pascal’s team wins.”

”We’ll be right back after these short messages.”

***

I went over to the left side of the studio, where Emma was hanging out with her new best friend, a make-up artist. The latter powdered my face while Emma told me I was doing well.

That was good to hear, but I worried we would run out of time because of all the superficial bits. I said, ”Are you having fun, babes?”

”Max, you know I love this. Seeing how it all gets made, it’s amazing. Never thought I’d be allowed in a place like this.”

”You’ve got an open invitation to be on Love Island.”

”You need to stop teasing me about that. So have you,” she said, thumping me on the arm. ”I’m off to the bathroom. Hey, Mathilde! Make him really, really pale! Let’s lean into the whole vampire thing!”

”Vampire thing?” I said, but she rushed off.

The make-up artist said, ”I thought he looked good.”

”Who?”

”The pale boy in the last photo.”

”Pascal? Yeah. It’s just some light teasing. Actually, we like seeing what he comes up with. We’re not a stylish bunch, in general.”

She decided my face was more or less tolerable and left me alone. I thought about the video call I’d had with Pascal. I had already informed him that Bochum wanted his services, and he’d had a couple of days to think about it.

”Mate,” I remembered saying. I was moving around my hotel room, but I stopped so I could gauge Pascal’s reaction to my next words. ”Bit of an update.” It seemed to me that his face fell. The buying club were no longer interested? I resumed my pacing. ”Basically, if you go in January they’re going to give Clive a job, too.”

That was a bombshell in the best possible way. Clive O’Keefe was Pascal’s girlfriend’s father, an amazing coach who had worked in Germany before. He was struggling with his mental health these days but Pascal was keeping an eye on him and I wanted that arrangement to continue if poss. ”How did you arrange that?”

I shrugged. ”I just outlined the situation. It’s not very expensive for them, is it? Clive isn’t going to be on Pascal money.”

”Pascal money!” said Pascal, eyes closing slightly. He knew I’d be using that phrase around him from now on.

I said, ”I think Clive was really happy in Germany and didn’t want to go back to England. When he did and his marriage ended anyway, that was a double hurt, right? I’ve been sort of trying to recreate a Germanic environment for him when he goes to Bumpers Bank to do sessions for us but you know what’s an even more authentic Germanic environment?”

”Germany.”

”Yeah. He’s a great coach so Bochum are getting a really sensational deal there. You’ll tell them if he’s working too much or too little or whatever.”

”What about Tiggy?”

”Her boyfriend and father have moved to Germany. What do you think she’s going to do? Don’t worry about Tiggy. She’ll rant about me for ten minutes and then crack on finding a job over there.” I smiled. ”You can’t bring your Spanish teacher, though.”

He looked to the side and mumbled, ”That’s one reason to stay in Chester.” I shut my gob for a minute; this was all about him. ”So... if I leave in January, what will happen to the women?”

”I’ll manage them for the rest of the season. Sandra will do the men while I install a hammock in the dugout and sleep there during our matches. Wake me up in case of emergency.” I was pretty sure the co-manager hack meant I would gain the full amount of XP even if I wasn’t really doing anything. ”If I need to pop to Norway to look at the next Haaland, we’ll work something out. Peter Bauer can step in for a match or whatever.”

”Bochum don’t have a team they will let me manage.”

”Not now, no, because you need to do your badges. They’ll pay and support you through all that; you’ll have your Pro licence by the time you’re my age and they’ll give you chances. It’s easy to imagine you being the caretaker manager for the last matches of the season after they sack the head coach, but what they need from you now is to concentrate on playing so you can do a job for them this season. In some ways the timing is bad, right, but in other ways it’s ideal. The Chester guys are slowing down with their improvement but you’ll get afterburners fitted.” He had crawled up to CA 108, and being PA 133, he had plenty of ceiling left.

He said, ”What about Wales? They have been good to me but if I leave I won’t be able to repay their kindness. I don’t want people to think I’m, you know, a vampire. I don’t take without giving back.”

”Don’t worry. One day in the future you’ll come back for a week and do some workshops and seminars but you’ll be the Borussia Dortmund manager so it’ll be even cooler.” I smiled at the thought. ”Plus there are millions of ways you can help before then. Imagine you play against a Polish defender the week before Wales fly to Warsaw.”

”I could put him out of action for a couple of weeks.”

I laughed. ”I was thinking you could send one of your scouting reports but sure, violence works, too.”

He was quiet. ”It sounds like you want me to leave.”

”I don’t want you to leave but you know we need some money from somewhere. There’s that old German saying: a million pounds now is worth two million in the summer. I’m open to it, but I haven’t started mentally spending the money yet; it’s your call. I would say it’s 52-48 from my point of view. A lot of what you’re mentioning is superficial. You’re worried what the women will think if you leave mid-season. They’ll be proud of you, mate, and slightly annoyed because they know how to manipulate you but their tricks don’t work on me.” I laughed, and he shook his head, smiling. I said, ”I think we can sum this one up as a rare - very rare - occasion where you can do what you want and there are only upsides. No need to feel guilty. You can be entirely selfish.”

”What do you think I should do?”

”You should probably go. You’ll get six months to learn the Bundesliga and next season you’ll start your reign of terror in earnest. You won’t harm your coaching prospects in the slightest because you’re already on people’s radar and you’re in the documentary. And by pocketing Pascal money for a few years, when you finally get back into management you’ll be able to afford trousers that fit.”

”My trousers fit and they’re a hit,” he said. ”How long do I have to decide?”

”There’s no deadline except that Bochum are really in the hunt for guys with your kind of profile. They’ll take the first one they find so you could wait until December 31st, in theory, but in practice, yeah, hurry up.”

”Hurry up,” said Emma, pulling me to my feet. I was back in the studio; the break was over.

***

”Welcome back,” said Hans, from behind the table. ”We’re with Max Best, caretaker head coach of Bayern Munich. Before the break we were going through the match against Werder Bremen in order to learn how Max manages. At half-time it was two-nil to Bayern. What did you say in the half-time speech?”

”There isn’t always a speech. Normally I like to have a few quiet minutes because the players are high on adrenaline and emotion and they aren’t receptive to feedback. A few minutes to let them clear their heads, take on nutrients and water, talk to the physios about knocks they picked up in the first half. Then when there’s calm I might point out a few things we’re doing well, or not, and outline the plan for the second half. Five to ten times per season there’s a need for something bigger, more theatrical, more emotional.”

”Was Saturday one of those days?”

”No. We had a lot of control against Bremen. I guessed that their manager would wait before making his first changes. Experienced managers try to put pressure on me by hoping I make the first changes and then they quickly respond, like, ha! I knew you were going to do that! Two slight problems. First, I’ve seen it a hundred times. You aren’t original, mate. Second, I’m two-nil up and my players have barely broken sweat. I’m cruising. You have to make the first change if you want to get anything from the game. Bremen had to decide if they were happy to lose two or three-nil or if they wanted to go for it.”

”They chose to go for it.”

”Yeah, which is right, but I can’t help but feel it was because I was annoying their coach, you know? He let it get personal.”

”Did I hear it right that you had planned to change Danny Kowalski at half time?”

”Yes, but he wanted to stay on a little longer and I had this battle with the opposing coach going on so I didn’t want to make the first move. You’ll see that when Bremen make their first changes, Danny comes off immediately. Also, because he wasn’t using up a lot of energy there was no harm in letting him stay out there. I have to say one area in which Bayern are amazing is the post-match recovery work. That’s pure science, that. That’s a tangible advantage to being a big club and having the resources to give the players absolutely every ounce of fitness by the next game.”

Hans gestured to invite me over to the big screen. ”There was a very interesting moment when you lost your temper with Kowalski. Can you talk us through it?”

”Sure.” I wandered over and while the incident played out, and I kept a very close eye on Danny’s Morale during this segment. I felt his response could tell me a lot about him. ”So he gets the ball ten yards in our half, dribbles, beats that guy, beats that guy, it’s all amazing so far. World class, in fact. Pause, please. Go back a fraction. Now here, Hans, see we’ve got three against three? Danny has to play the ball wide right to Claude. Claude is on the line of the defenders, yes? With that pass, the move would continue, the pressure would build. Probably we would at least get a shot, and maybe a goal.

”But Danny has had four magical seconds and he doesn’t want to let go of the ball just yet. He wants to do one more thing, wants to put the cherry on the cake and the sprinkles on the ice cream, so he turns away from the pass to Claude and bosh, three midfielders smash into him and the chance is gone. Even if he kept the ball, now there are six defenders between the ball and the opposition’s goal. From a potential goal to nothing in one decision. You’re going to say this kind of sequence is normal but it isn’t. This is pure self-indulgence by Danny. This is ’look at me’ football at the cost of the team. I nearly subbed him off right there and then but I was more angry at Bremen’s manager from his shitty yellow card waving than I was mad with Danny about this.”

”And what does Danny think about being reprimanded in this way?”

”I don’t know,” I said, noting that his Morale hadn’t budged. That... could mean one of two things. ”I vented and that’s it. If he was a Chester player I might have gone into it some more afterwards, or it might come up in a video session the next Monday. Some players take criticism badly, sure, but Danny’s stated ambition is to be the best player in the world. The best player in the world makes the right decision almost all the time. It’s my job to complain about this because who else is going to do it?”

Hans nodded and the screen changed. It filled with headlines from Bild, plus YouTube and TikTok thumbnails with one word highlighted - bite. ”Max Bites, your nickname. How do you feel about that?”

”I don’t feel anything about it.”

”Do you think it is unfair?”

”Unfair in what sense?”

Hans for the first time struggled to formulate his question. ”Is it an accurate characterisation? In these clips, we have seen you bite Cheb and bite Danny.”

”No-one likes being told off or singled out but as I said, it’s my job. Cheb wants to play for Bayern Munich every week. Danny wants to raise his level and his level is so high that is really hard. The football pitch is one of the few meritocratic spaces left in our society and out on the grass no-one gives you anything for free. It’s a public job so you get, you know, judged in public but also some of the feedback I give has to be in public because it has to be immediate. Watching this on a Monday morning long after the match is over isn’t the same. You’ll notice I’m not screaming my head off when a player makes a technical mistake because that is something we can handle in day-to-day training. Anything that’s more of a mentality question, that’s where I can have an input. I don’t think the players perceive it as a bite; everyone wants to be better. The players who don’t want a random English guy giving them feedback are out of the squad.”

”Ah. Do you think that’s where the stories are coming from? The players who are out of the squad?”

”Hans, dude, I don’t care about these stories. Social media is not reality. I don’t go round Munich biting people’s heads off. One of the most scandalous things I do is to ask everyone to leave the dressing room so I can talk to the players without being surrounded by haters. I’m quite polite and there’s absolutely no biting involved.”

”Okay,” said Hans, ”let’s move on.”

With impeccable comedy timing, the screen changed. The image that came up had been done on PhotoShop or with AI. It showed a bedroom at night, moonlit, with an open window and flowing net curtains. I was dressed as a vampire - the fuck? - and Emma was in my arms in a pure-white nightgown with one shoulder strap torn to expose her neck - and breast - to make her even more vulnerable and the scene even more lascivious. Rage flooded into me, but before I melted down completely I noted that it wasn’t Emma. The woman was merely Emma-ish.

One of the costs of being famous is that you don’t exist on a level playing field. If I complained about the image I would be seen to have no sense of humour, and it would also show that Emma was my weak spot. Whatever I did to defend her would cause more copycats to arise, would lead to more attacks on her, not fewer.

The way to deal with this - whatever it was - was to deny it oxygen. To deny Hans whatever reaction he was hoping to get.

I walked away from the screen and sat at the table. The momentum graph was still there. I picked up the special pen and drew circles to show where the goals had been scored. ”So we scored two goals in the first half, here and here. The amount of attacking play remained consistent until the 60th minute, when Werder Bremen made their changes. I responded by changing four players, introducing Adam Adebayo, Didier Cartier, Zoran Bratko, and the Austrian goal machine, Jost Benn. We changed formation to 4-2-4, which means a lot of attacking down the wide spaces, as I mentioned earlier. That worked nicely as you can see with the big spike in our attacking output and with goals three and four coming here and here. Bremen shifted again, using up more substitutions, so I moved to a more balanced 3-4-3. Kumba Viera came on to enthusiastic applause and he created the fifth goal with a powerful header from a corner that Zoran diverted home. Adam Adebayo added a sixth deep into injury time.”

Hans had rejoined me at the table. What else could he do? ”Your record is now played five, won five, with scores of 1-0, 3-2, 3-0, and two six-nil wins in your last two matches. Can we expect the same in Hungary?”

”No, it will be much more.” Now that he knew he couldn’t rile me up, I decided to engage with him about the image. The delay between seeing it and talking about it showed that I was in control, and I could further de-fang this attack by getting weird about it. I gestured back towards the big screen. ”You know, Hans, that was disrespectful.”

He turned to his right, where the image that had offended me had been taken down. ”Max - ” he started.

I talked over him. ”There are thousands of content creators worldwide who work hard, who struggle, who create fiction and fan fiction in an attempt to educate you about vampires. Even a cursory glance at the literature would tell you that I would never be turned into a vampire and if I was, I would never abduct a blonde woman.”

He hadn’t been expecting this turn. ”Why wouldn’t you be turned into a vampire?”

”Vampires are gay. A handsome gay vampire flies around, goes to parties, and once every hundred years he sees a super-hot dude he wants to spend the next century with. That dude is also gay, of course, because why would a straight man want to spend a hundred years living with a gay vampire, and vice versa? I wouldn’t be picked because I’m not hot enough and I would refuse the offer because I absolutely love looking at myself in mirrors. It makes no sense to portray me as a vampire. You might as well PhotoShop me into a Manchester City kit - it’s never going to happen. My style is hot-but-safe. Vampires are hot-and-dangerous. Think about it. It gets unbearably boring as an immortal creature of the night so you choose a mate who might kill you just because he’s bored and it’s something to do. Yeah, okay, it would be stupid for him to do that because you haven’t told him all your vampire secrets, but you absolutely need to have that danger, that thrill, otherwise your life is completely empty.

”Then, even if I was a handsome gay vampire, why would I choose as a victim someone who has the most protection and value in society? I wouldn’t because I’m not stupid. Five seconds after flying out the bedroom window with a hot blonde, every cop for fifty miles would be on the case. I wouldn’t make it to the nearest bridge, Hans. Have you seen the numbers on true crime podcasts? The episodes with attractive blonde women get twenty times the downloads. You don’t need to do much research to know that vampires prey on the least protected members of society. The homeless, ladies of the night, anyone who is marginalised. I recommend a ten-part online course where you can learn about the topic. Lesson One: The Curious Case of Peter Plogojowitz.”

”Does such a course exist?”

”Don’t know, but if it does, use the offer code ’I had one shot at getting into the lucrative world of sports broadcasting and I blew it’ to get 20 percent off your first month.”

Hans put up his hands. ”I apologise to all the content creators, Max, and to you. We didn’t create the image. It went viral in the last few days and we assumed you had seen it.” He waited for me to comment, but as far as I was concerned, I had already said everything I would ever say on the topic. Incredibly, Hans wouldn’t let it drop. ”The implication is that you are the vampire and it is Bayern Munich’s blood you want to feast on. Similar images have you as a leech, inflating your own brand, like a parasite.”

I fell into the trap. Got heated up. ”What does that even mean? Bayern were one point clear at the top of the table when I arrived, and now the gap is four. They made two million Euros from winning in Italy and they’re through to the last eight of the German cup. They’re in an amazing position and I’ve done it on minimum wage. Like, twelve Euros an hour or something, plus minor expenses. Is parasite one of those words that means opposite things in this country? This is why I don’t want to engage with the media. It’s so juvenile and stupid. This is why the world’s in such a mess. Crap like this.”

”As it happens, Max, I agree. I think a lot of people will hear this response and be satisfied. You know, you might consider defending yourself a little more.”

”I’m too busy winning football matches.”

He brought his hands together, delighted. ”Okay, this is good. This will go well. And in raising the topic I learned what it feels like to get bitten.”

”That wasn’t a bite, Hans. That was barely a chomp. How long’s left? I need to build hype for Tuesday’s match.”

”You promised you would, ah, chomp some Bayern Munich players. We have time for that.” He waggled his eyebrows at the nearest camera. ”And if we don’t, we’ll make time.”

I spoke faster. ”Okay, speed round. Fabian Fromm has a very minor injury but he denies it. He denies it but he won’t get in Bayern’s scanner. Okay! Make of that what you will. It’s a shame because he’s a great player and I’d love to work with him but he doesn’t want to work with me. Cool.

”Diogo is only interested in his next contract and is too stupid to realise that Petar Gutić is six months away from being just as good as him and Beat Ritter is seven months away. Both of those numbers are coming down rapidly because those guys are now getting the minutes that were going to Diogo. Absolutely hilarious self-sabotage from the guy, which makes a nice change from him sabotaging the team.

”His buddy Rui Santos is so overrated it actually gives me comfort. If guys like him are getting into Bayern Munich’s starting eleven, there’s no reason Chester FC can’t be the number one team in Europe. Willi Tillmann is raw but he’s going to be a star for the next decade. Don’t hire shitheads that block his path. Or do and let me take Tillmann to Chester.

”Then there are a couple more players, coaches, physios, etc, who didn’t get the memo on this whole period. I was picked to do this job by Dieter Bauer, Paul Braun, and Karl Lippstadt. Any player - and I am very carefully not naming Henno Wald here - or member of staff, coach, physio, anyone who thinks I shouldn’t be in the position is saying he or she knows football better than those three great players. That’s fff... flipping crazy. That’s borderline insane. When Dieter asked me to do this job, I said guy, come on, be serious, I can’t do it. When he said that all three guys knew I could, I thought okay, fine, that’s enough for me. Because they would know, right? On the morning I arrived, we had a team meeting in which I said all I wanted was for the first team squad to help me win matches so that Bastian could convalesce. Some of the players and staff turned against that immediately, some turned a little later. If they feel I was harsh with them, believe me, they got off lightly. They embody none of the qualities I read in that Bayern Munich mission statement.

”The players in the squad now, the ones going to Hungary with me, they’re mint. They’re class people, great players, good examples to the young people watching. I think we’re starting to really have some fun together, you know? Vampires don’t have fun. They doomscroll on social media and write nasty comments. What I’ve done is quickly get to the heart of one simple question - are you a team player or not? The guys who are in my Bayern team love being in a team, and they know that how they’re playing now is repeatable if they stick together, back each other up, lean on each other’s strengths. It’s glorious stuff and they love it.” Squad-wide Morale boomed. That part of my plan had gone great. Now to stick the landing...

Hans was smiling, carried away by my mad energy. ”This isn’t the FC Hollywood I know and hate.”

”I’m glad you mentioned that. The Godfather Part Two, Paddington 2, Aliens... sequels that surpass the original. I’m writing the script for FC Hollywood 2 and it’s way better than the first one. The climactic scene is coming this Tuesday. For 45 minutes, everyone in Germany will be a Bayern Munich fan.”

”Yes, you teased us at the beginning. Is this something to do with Bestball?”

A clip played. They had picked some footage from the Chester under eighteens team. The lads drifted together until they were almost all on one side of the pitch, squashed into a rectangle. ”This is called Relationism,” I said. ”We can call it Bestball as long as everyone understands that I didn’t invent it and don’t like the name.”

Hans was entranced and watched quietly for a few precious seconds. I wasn’t sure how long we had left - not long, how could we start a new fucking topic?! - but I couldn’t let my panic make it to my face. Hans pointed at the screen. ”What is happening?”

”Managers and head coaches want players to occupy space. It’s a very top-down way of thinking, just like with the German football fans. The managers are the conductors. Footballers obey instructions. But maybe a bottom-up approach is better? After all, players like Pascal who think in terms of space are rare. Most players instinctively want to connect with other players. When you let players do things their way, this is the logical conclusion.”

Hans frown-smiled as the patterns on the screen collapsed and re-formed. ”If the players are in charge, what is the role of the trainer? What do you do?”

”I stand in the technical area and think about what I’m going to buy with my win bonus.”

”Will we see some Bestball on Tuesday night in Hungary?” I opened my mouth to reply, but he added, ”We have some unseen footage of you training this with the Bayern Munich players.”

I frowned quite hard. Nothing from that session should have been filmed, and certainly nothing should have found its way into the hands of this TV company. I inwardly fumed. Paul Braun was up to his old tricks, the messy bitch. ”Oh,” I said, flatly.

We watched as I led B2 training in the ’secret’ pitch. Some players were in yellow bibs, some in green, with a couple in blue. I was in a blue bib, meaning I played for whichever side had the ball. Points were scored by lining three players in a row, with the first passing to the third while the second let the ball run through his legs. This was a ’river’, sometimes called a ’ladder’, and it was a fundamental part of Relationism.

Hans said, ”Can you describe what’s happening?”

”I can,” I said, ”but I won’t. This is a billion-dollar technology. I’m not going to give away my secrets. If you want to know how to do it, do what I did.”

”What’s that?”

”Go to Brazil and find the biggest chain-smoker in town. Pay him silly money to put on a coaching session and then tear your hair out while trying to reverse-engineer what he’s doing. Finally, when you’re at your lowest ebb and you’re in a complete despair, get your French best mate to explain it.”

Hans said, ”I’m not sure there will be a big rush to follow your advice. Is this what we will see in the Champions League on Tuesday evening?”

I went into my dreamy, wistful voice. ”Too much of modern football is robotic, grey, washed-out, monotonous, and monochrome. I want to present a more vivid, more colourful approach. Tuesday’s Champions League match kicks off at 8 p.m. If you’re a football fan, tune in and watch. If you’re not a football fan, the second half will start at about 9 p.m. I guarantee you will see something you have never seen before. I promise you will see something stupendous, an absolute feast for the senses. The entire country will be talking about what happens in Budapest that night. Do not miss it.”

Hans’s eyebrows rose just a fraction. ”If it’s so good, why not do it here, in the Allianz Arena?”

”One reason I was given the Bayern job was that the schedule was relatively easy, but it also meant that I had two away matches in the Champions League. The Champions League is the biggest tournament in world sport, it’s the event with the most viewers, so it’s the right place to do something big. Also, it is operated by UEFA, whose mission statement is very similar to Bayern Munich’s, as I encourage you to read in the next couple of days. Also, Hungary played a key role in the development of football with the Magnificent Magyars team, so it’s a kind of romantic location to showcase an evolution in the game. Best of all, the Prime Minister of Hungary will be there. He’s a big football fan. Loves his football. It’ll be cool to make a statement in front of him.”

Hans’s expression became fixed. He clearly despised the authoritarian ruler of Hungary and found my enthusiasm to meet that gentleman distasteful in the extreme. Perhaps that’s why he turned slightly hostile. ”I understood that you were someone with an interest in gay rights.”

”Who isn’t? It’s shameful that there are no openly gay players in major European leagues.”

”Maybe you can discuss the topic with your friend the Prime Minister, since it is despots like him who contribute most to the fear of coming out.”

”I don’t think I’ll actually get the honour of meeting him, and even if I did, I have promised not to say anything political in my time as Bayern Munich manager. I will abide by the values of Bayern Munich wherever I am, for as long as I am technically the head coach.”

Hans opened his mouth to retort, but something made him pause. Was he getting goosebumps on the back of his neck as I was? Perhaps not; his voice was still harsh. ”You have, in essence, promised to win by more than six goals. There is a saying: pride comes before a fall.”

”I know another saying: Don’t invite vampires into your house.”

”What do you mean by that?”

”Tuesday night, 8 p.m. kick off. 9 p.m. second half.” I smiled down the camera lens. ”Stock up on popcorn, Germany, for the thrilling conclusion to FC Hollywood, the sequel.” I closed my eyes, slowly, and opened them knowing I had done what I set out to do. ”The budget is bigger, the cast is bigger...” I nearly ruined the next line by laughing. ”The stunts are bigger.”