Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

2.

Saturday, January 9

FA Cup Third Round: Chester versus Sunderland

”I think I might have defied the gods one too many times,” I mused, as the Sunderland players ran around hugging each other and celebrating and all that crap. It’s just a goal, mate. Get over yourself.

For the away team, the stakes weren’t high. Sunderland had been to Wembley Stadium four times in the last ten years; Chester had never been in its entire 142-year history. We had three paths to get there this year and one looked like it was about to be closed off. Nor did Sunderland need the money getting to the next round would bring; their owner was a billionaire. The fact that they were trying to beat us was actually sociopathic, if you thought about it.

”I like that you take big swings,” said Sandra, bringing me back to the present.

”Are you sure?”

My co-manager hesitated. ”I mean, this line up is bonkers. It looks like you’ve got inside your own head and you’re playing four-dimensional chess against yourself. Again. But hey, it’s early days.”

”I’m back to 4D chess?” I said. ”You mean I’m regressing.”

She smiled and patted me on the back. ”Stick to the plan,” she started.

”The plan is mint,” I finished.

The Sunderland players finished celebrating - wait, that guy wasn’t done thanking God for letting him score a tap-in against a team from the division below. I looked past the floodlights - the TV companies had moved us to a late kick-off - and shook my head. Give that striker a choice between winning the FA Cup - football’s oldest and bestest knockout competition - and being promoted to the Premier League, he would choose the Prem all day long. Me? I’d take the cup. I loved the FA Cup. The history, the romance, the actual magic. You also got free entry into the following season’s Europa League, and if you could win the FA Cup you could win that. A double dose of glory.

The away fans sang, ”Que Será, Será, whatever will be, will be, we’re going to Wem-ber-lee.” The noise aggravated me; I wanted the Chester fans to sing that one.

The Sunderland players finished celebrating and went back to their own half where they lined up in a 4-2-3-1 formation.

I was getting sick of playing against 4-2-3-1. About half the world’s professional football clubs used it or something close to it and the repetition was maddening. The formation had a back four plus two defensive midfielders, sometimes called ’pivots’ because moves revolved around them, sometimes called ’sixes’ because in the old days the guy who performed that role wore shirt number 6. You didn’t need to be a maths whizz to understand why managers liked having four defenders plus two sixes - nine times out of ten your team wouldn’t give up cheap goals.

”They’re really good,” I said. ”The players fit the plan.” Sunderland’s average CA was 130 and they had some seriously talented guys. After years of mismanagement, much of it documented in the awesome documentary Sunderland ’Til I Die, the club was very much on the right track.

Competing against a well-coached, well-managed team with no weaknesses required a bold strategy. I’d bolded my strategy, put it in italics, then underlined it. Had I gone too far?

Well, our average CA - for the biggest match in ages - had tumbled to a mere 97.3.

My thinking had started from a simple point - how to get the most out of Triple Captain and Bench Boost. The first was easy - make Christian Fierce the captain and watch as his tripled Influence literally radiated from his very soul. The second was not as straightforward. Thanks to Bench Boost, I could make five substitutions in the match and every sub who went onto the pitch would play better than normal. I reckoned the improvement was about ten percent, so a CA 100 player would effectively play at CA 110. I liked to use the boosts on my attacking players and based on the profiles I had and the oppo’s tactics, I decided I wanted to finish this particular match by playing 3-4-3. If we were going to start with weaker, more defensive players, it was logical to line up with a solid 4-4-2 and try to frustrate the opposition. I’d done this very scheme a few times before and it had worked well.

We wouldn’t stay defensive, of course. The 3-4-3 would be very progressive with Wibbers as one of the three boosted forwards. I would variously slide him left, right, or one zone back, constantly creating new problems, always trying to give Sunderland something to think about.

Five subs. Wibbers was one. Charlie ’Duggers’ Dugdale was my most creative midfielder, so he would come on and play left mid. On the right I would bring on Matt Rush. He was a right back but he loved getting forward and he was fast. Those two would generate a lot of threat and if Sunderland’s full backs were out of position we would get a lot of joy on counter-attacks.

The fourth sub would be a little bit more left-field.

Sunderland’s pressing was quite intense. They had a hard-working striker backed by three attacking midfielders and they would swarm our defenders if we tried to pass the ball around. In the first half we would have to be somewhat direct - bypassing the press by kicking the ball straight to midfield. Those passes were relatively low percentage so it wasn’t much of a strategy, but it was better than letting Sunderland snatch the ball off us close to goal.

I would use Peter Bauer to transform how we played. He was ’only’ CA 86 so in a way using Bench Boost on him was a waste, but we had to be creative otherwise we would lose anyway. Peter’s superpower was being press-resistant. Our goalie would give him the ball and he would evade the pressure and play a pass to midfield, bypassing Sunderland’s forward players in a very high-percentage way. Once Peter was on the pitch, we would have a chance to get motoring.

That left me with one sub. One last player I could boost. Realistically, even with Bench Boost and Triple Captain, even with home advantage, we were unlikely to beat Sunderland unless they fucked up. Their manager wasn’t the sort to fuck up and my recent stint as Bayern Munich manager had one negative consequence - the days when I was underestimated were over. Sunderland had named their best team and they wouldn’t remove multiple key players even when the job appeared to be done. No more freebies!

If we could get a draw, though, and make it through extra-time, we would have a chance to win on penalties. Colin Beckton would score if he was still on the pitch. Then the four Bench Boosted players would step up. Wibbers was pure talent. Duggers would stroke the ball just inside the post. I would back Rushy to put his away. Peter Bauer would slot the ball into the bottom corner and give the keeper no chance.

The mad thing was that I had a recurring daydream of me going onto the pitch in the last minute of extra time and my first kick being the first penalty, which I would fucking leather into the top corner and set the tone for the rest of the shootout.

We had a solid five, though. Was me taking a pen really worth giving up a Bench Boost slot for? I couldn’t play more than a minute - Physio Dean wouldn’t allow it. He had said I could go on to take a penalty partly because he was a pessimist who didn’t think we’d get that far. Sometimes he had good instincts.

”We can’t contain Patricks,” said Sandra.

”No,” I said.

Patricks had given the Chester coaching department nightmares the whole week. He was Sunderland’s right-sided attacking midfielder, although he had licence to roam around. He was their playmaker, a short guy with a low centre of gravity, almost impossible to get the ball from when he had it at his feet. He had a very high ceiling but had ruined his career by moving to Man City before he was ready. They had farmed him out to all sorts of other teams and it was only when he escaped the City Group’s grisly clutches that he found the right club. The Sunderland fans loved him and rightly so - he was amazing to watch.

I watched him dismantle us one short pass at a time. Genuinely amazing.

”Maybe your first idea was best,” said Sandra. ”Stick Youngster on him.”

”That would leave us even more badly exposed.” I gritted my teeth. ”The squad’s a mess.”

I ruffled my hands through my hair and checked the match ratings and everyone’s Condition scores. Sunderland had a slight fitness advantage over us but that was only to be expected given their training ground was amazing and well-equipped. They were a rare opponent where most of the squad had room to improve. Sunderland tended to promote young players from their excellent academy, recruited misfits and randos, never spent a lot of money. It was almost uncanny, really. Sort of like looking at the Chester squad two years from now.

We could get to Sunderland’s levels in two years, I was sure.

In goal I’d picked Ian Swan. He was 25 years old, CA 106, PA 127. When he maxed out, he would be a very decent Championship goalkeeper. I would need to upgrade on him at some point but he was good for now. There was no real point looking for anyone better so long as we had a training cap in place. Swanny’s backup, Sticky, was 32, which wasn’t all that old for a goalie. He was about to hit triple digits in CA and one effect of the training cap was that he would catch up to his younger colleague. Swanny would still get more game time because he was better with the ball at his feet, but having two equally good goalies to choose from was going to be very cool.

Patricks played a clever ball between two defenders and the striker raced towards it. Swanny knew the danger, though, because we had been practising these situations in training with me in the Patricks role. Swanny raced out and hacked the ball away. Christian Fierce yelled his encouragement.

Our starting centre backs were uncontroversial - Christian (108/120) and Zach Green (106/139). Getting to be the best combo in League One, and would be able to keep improving when we got promoted.

My maddest choices were either side of those guys. To the left I had the dependable Cole Adams (103/147) but in front of him, playing left midfield, tasked with man-marking Patricks, was young Adam Summerhays. He was CA 61, a million miles off the levels needed, but I didn’t need him to be spectacular. I only needed him to do his best to follow Sunderland’s danger man.

That wasn’t going great, tbh, but it would be valuable experience for Adam and him playing the first half of a big cup tie would give him a boost in training for a couple of weeks.

Patricks got the ball, rolled it to a mate, jogged into space, took the return pass, did a 180 as though he would pass backwards, did another 180 and rolled it to the same guy he had just passed to, and suddenly Sunderland were fifteen yards deeper in our half.

Adam had covered about a hundred yards in ten seconds, and every stride had been utterly useless.

”Christ,” I muttered. ”Patricks is actually savage.”

Sandra scoffed. ”Says you. Your impression of him in training was the same but you’re taller and faster.”

The Black Cats moved the ball to the other side of the pitch, where they came across the Andrew Harrison (92/121) and Bark (91/130) combo. Neither player was a natural right back but I had found that Andrew could do a decent job there, especially if the guy in front of him stuck to his defensive tasks diligently. Bark certainly fit into that category. Magnus Evergreen would have been an option, too, but he had picked up the same bug as Brooke Star. It knocked people out for a week and was spreading like wildfire. Sadly, it hadn’t reached the football clubs of the north-east yet so the away team were at full strength.

One benefit of having Andrew at right back was that I would later move him into central midfield, and thus retain that precious fifth substitution slot. It was big-brain stuff. Four-and-a-half-D-chess.

Sunderland probe down their left.

Bark slides in but doesn’t get the ball.

Harrison is isolated against two players. He does well to hold the ball up.

Bark comes back to cover but he’s a fraction too slow.

The ball is already with Patricks. He has time and space.

Patricks clips the ball into the middle...

GOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

The striker got between Green and Fierce and hit a thumping header.

Wonderful football from Sunderland!

The Black Cats are really purring today.

Their manager looks like the cat who got the cream.

Two-nil down to a much better team. That was the risk with starting with a weakened eleven - you could lose the match before your boosted players even got on the pitch.

I glanced at Sandra. ”What did you think of Bark sliding in?”

She shrugged. ”He was trying to tackle the ball to Zach. If Zach pops it first time to midfield, we’ve got a chance to create something. Bark took a risk.”

”I think the odds are way off on that one. Stay on your feet, be patient, wait for a better opportunity. But let’s review the footage on Monday.”

”Kay,” she said, making a note. We would get the clip from different angles and discuss it as a team and if the consensus was that my instincts were right, we would do some coaching sessions around decision-making in those areas. If the consensus was that I was wrong, I would bin off the squad and get smarter players. ”What are you grinning at?”

”Nothing,” I said. ”I like those sessions where we get collaborative. And I like it when we do decisions sessions because it reveals how players think about the game. I’m absolutely sure Zach and Christian will think just like me when it comes to how the full backs should defend, but I’m also pretty sure they would dive into that tackle, too.”

”Zach would have two years ago but you’ve trained it out of him.”

”Yeah,” I said. Two years was about what it took to get players playing my way. It was fun trading players to raise funds and to lift the squad’s ceiling, but there was a clear benefit to having players who stuck around for a while. It helped with the culture in all sorts of ways, and the more my players knew each other, the more effective Relationism would be. Relationism, AKA Bestball, was a radical way of playing that didn’t have formations and emerged from the connections between players. If those connections were deeper, the style was more effective. ”Two years is an interesting time frame. The goalie, back four, and the wide midfielders will all be good Championship players two years from now. Well, Adam will need more time but he’s got the talent and we’re drenching him in Relationism training. He’s a more natural fit than Cole, for example.”

”Two years from now I hope they’d both get in our strongest Bestball eleven because it’s more effective when we have more left-footers. We’re a very right-footed squad.”

”I know,” I said, ruffling my hair again. ”The squad’s a mess.”

To distract myself I checked the match ratings, but that made for grim reading. I groaned and looked at central midfield. Youngster and Ryan Jack were rushing around trying to get involved, not very successfully. For different reasons they were the two players in my squad who had improved the least since pre-season.

Youngster was CA 109, up a puny five points. He had been the first to crash into the soft cap, but in the morning he would fly out to Munich and would get a full month training with some of the best players in the world in some of the best facilities in the world. Now that I was back in Chester I was picking up experience points by the bucketload and I was tempted to send some his way while he was out there. (I had well over 10,000 XP in the bank but was strangely undecided about how best to spend them. I was waiting for the January perk to drop before committing to a course of action.)

Ryan Jack was 38, which is 74 in footballing years. I had picked him over Omari even though they had similar CAs - Omari’s 75 to Ryan’s 76 - because I wanted Ryan’s experience out there. When he got on the ball he looked mint, but that wasn’t happening very often.

Up front we were very solid. Colin Beckton (109/187) was sharp and hungry, while Dazza (109/138) looked a handful against a defender who was the same age as him. He always played well against his peer group - it was the wily old defenders who knew every trick in the book he struggled against.

Decent goalies, great strikers, too many central defenders, not enough left-footers, no oven-ready central midfielders, and somehow we had thirty players in the first team squad, including those who were out on loan.

”The squad’s a mess,” I mumbled.

”Yep,” said Sandra. ”So what are you going to do about it?”

”I was thinking of running away to Sweden and leaving you in charge.”

”Hmm. Good plan. Or how about you spend some of that budget surplus? For example, on a tall box-to-box midfielder.”

”We could pay someone’s wages but we don’t have a transfer fee for anyone who would make a difference.”

Sandra yelled some instructions to Adam Summerhays, watched him closely for ten seconds, then relaxed. ”What about Pete Visick?”

”I’m off him.”

”I’m not.”

Pete Visick was a quality central midfielder whose most recent club had been in the Championship. The club had been relegated and he had picked up a bad injury near the end of the season so his contract hadn’t been renewed. No-one wanted to sign an injured guy but he was healthy again and had been training at FC United of Manchester to keep his fitness up.

I had spotted Visick when I’d popped into a training session to check on my first ever client, Ziggy. Visick was CA 115 and really popped in matches where Ziggy’s CA 58 was one of the next highest. I reckoned the midfielder had probably been 125 or 130 before his injury. At the right club, he would return to those levels fairly quickly. Not at Chester, though, because we had the training cap. And he was 33. He wanted five thousand pounds a week and while he would fill a fairly big hole in the team, even a short-term contract would cost us a hundred thousand pounds.

”He’s too expensive, has no resale value, and he’d block the progression of Omari and Andrew.”

Sunderland played a few simple passes that took Ryan Jack out of the game. All too easy. Sandra grimaced. ”Fine. What about a loan? For five grand a week in wages we could get another guy of Rushy’s level but in midfield.”

”You’ve known me long enough to know this is the time of year I swear never to loan a player again. No, Sandra, I’ve decided to use the spare budget to send the lads to training camps. That twenty grand a month we’re saving, we’ll use it to hire The Vale for three days.”

”Oh my God,” mumbled Sandra, and not because Sunderland were carving us open again. Patricks fired a shot that went about a yard wide of the right post. ”This again. You want to spend our budget on a luxury hotel?”

”Yes.” The Vale was where the Welsh national team trained. My idea was that we would play a Tuesday night match, get on Sealbiscuit, and drive to beautiful south Wales where we would spend three days training in five-star facilities. If we did that four times, spread out, I hoped all the ’blocked’ players would accrue another four points of CA. That was going to add more value to the squad than letting yet another stray into our home. ”I don’t want to be a cat lady.”

”I don’t know what that means, Max. It’s so expensive. MD had kittens the first time you pitched it.”

Although we were two-nil down, the Chester fans were in good voice, cycling through some of their favourite songs. The away fans were noisy, too. It was a cracking atmosphere. Just a shame we couldn’t match it with how we were playing. ”This part of the project is tricky. We’ve been running flat out and now we’re on a thin little beam so we have to slow down but we have to keep our forward momentum or we’ll topple over, do you know what I mean?”

”No.”

”We’re going to The Vale. It’s actually a good deal we’re getting.”

”Twenty grand for three days is not a good deal.”

”It is.”

Sunderland sliced through our midfield, Patricks slid a pass through to the striker, Swanny came out to intercept, made a mess of the timing, gave away a penalty kick.

Sandra punched me in the arm. ”I want a midfielder.”

I pointed to Andrew Harrison. ”Make one.”

We stood in frosty silence for a while until Patricks took the penalty. I saw the midfield schemer get a cheeky look in his eye - he was going to chip the ball down the middle! He glanced at someone behind him and visibly changed his mind. Patricks slotted the pen to his right, Swanny’s left.

Three-nil.

There was a disturbance behind me. I checked my bodyguard, Briggy - she was eying the ruckus but didn’t seem bothered - and realised some Sunderland fans had got tickets in our main stand. The match was our first complete sell out. 8,200 in the Deva Stadium and we probably could have doubled that.

I opened my mouth to say that we desperately needed a new away end, but given the choice Sandra would want me to buy a couple of 2.5-million-pound midfielders instead of investing in a new stand.

”Why are Sunderland called the Black Cats?” she said.

”No-one’s totally sure. There was a big cannon called the Black Cat near their old stadium, though why you’d name yourself after some vaguely adjacent artillery is beyond me. Another story is that it’s because someone snuck a black cat into Wembley for the 1937 cup final but they were already selling loads of Black Cat merch decades before that.”

We watched as Adam Summerhays hacked the ball away, inexpertly, and it came whizzing back up the pitch, leading to a shot that Swanny got a good hand to. Sandra gritted her teeth before yelling, ”Go again, Adam. Head up! Keep going!” I watched as Adam’s Morale nudged up a level. Sandra covered her mouth as she said, ”Are you sure about him?”

”Yeah,” I said. ”He’s a slam dunk. It’s just getting harder for us to give minutes to kids like we’ve been doing. The cost is getting higher, innit? We need to, though.”

”Maybe not in an FA Cup Third Round match, Max.”

”Maybe.” Maybe the best way to use Bench Boost going forward was to play it straight - pick your best team and not rely on subs to save the day. That didn’t sound like much fun. “This same tactic has worked before, though. I’ve done it, like, ten times. Hang on,” I said, digging my index finger into my temple. ”Maybe I’ve used up all my nine lives. Nine mad tactics that worked through dumb luck starting with the false midfield against you. Now I have to stop messing about and play properly.”

”You’re going to stop messing about? From when?”

”Startiiiiiing... now.”

***

It was only three-nil at half time, which felt like getting away with a minor crime, but we hadn’t created a single chance of note. The mood in the dressing room was low, as you might expect, but there was no anger, just a sense that we had been taught a lesson by a much better team.

I gave the lads some space to decompress while I fiddled with the tactics board. I slid the magnets off and pushed them back on, imagining the team in two years.

We would have lots of players with CA 120 to 130. Maybe Wibbers and Youngster would be a step above. Actually, I had the makings of a very good spine, didn’t I? Peter Bauer as the super-slick defender. Youngster as DM. Dan Badford as a silky-smooth playmaker. Wibbers being Wibbers. Gabriel, an all-round striker par excellence. We would be as good as this Sunderland team but with more than one standout player.

The thought was pleasing but not quite satisfying. I wanted something else. What, though?

I slapped myself in the face a few times to get me back to the present.

”All right, shut the fuck up,” I said, as I paced the space, pushing bags further under benches as I went. There wasn’t enough space to swing a cat in there. ”My favourite movie is The Black Panther.”

”If it was your favourite movie,” said Youngster, ”you would know that it is called Black Panther.”

”That’s what I said.”

”You said The Black Panther.”

”What is happening?” I wailed. ”Can a medical professional check Youngster’s temperature, please? He’s delirious. Oh, fuck,” I said, suddenly worried. What if he caught the bug that was going around and couldn’t go to Germany? We didn’t need him in the next month or so. The next match we would play against a team with a similar CA to ours would be Lincoln on Feb 13th. The division’s best defensive midfielder coming back supercharged for the rest of the season was a mouth-watering prospect.

”Boss?” said my captain, Christian Fierce, because I had spaced out. ”Black Panther?”

”Black Panther,” I agreed, snapping my fingers. ”It’s about a country that pretends to be underdeveloped but it’s actually super hi-tech. The plot is based on the real-life true story of Chester Football Club, who once spent 45 minutes of a sold-out cup match pretending to be shit before in the second half revealing that they were, in fact, top and mint. What we’re going to do in the second half is switch to - ”

”Hol’ up,” said Christian. ”Is that the end of the Black Panther talk? It’s almost the first time I’ve seen one of the films you bang on about.”

”Er, you want me to talk more shit?”

”It’s my favourite movie, so... yeah.”

”Oh.” I closed my eyes while I tried to remember more of the story. ”Okay, so it’s my favourite film because it speaks to me about my life.”

”Black Panther speaks to you about your life?” said Sandra.

”Yes. First, it made a billion dollars and I’m going to make a billion dollars, pounds, or Euros, whichever is easier. Second, it’s about a king - me - who unites five different tribes. The goalies, the defenders, the midfielders, the strikers...” I counted on my fingers. ”Er... and the Wibbers.”

”What?” said Wibbers.

”I loved Black Panther,” said Youngster. ”I know a funny story about it. When Killmonger - portrayed by Michael B. Jordan - removed his shirt for the first time, a teenage girl gasped so hard her braces disintegrated! Michael B. Jordan heard about it and paid for them to be repaired.”

”Yeah, so?” I said. ”When I took my hoodie off in the Champions League, five German girls lost all their teeth. They just fell out, top and bottom.”

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

”Michael B. Jordan has way better abs than you,” said Livia, our second most senior physio.

I took a step away from her, making a cross sign with my fingers. ”Christ, the sickness is spreading. Look, the main message of Black Panther is that if you get knocked down in the first half, you get back up in the second half. Am I right, Christian?”

He got a little more serious. ”Yeah.”

”Another thing we learn from Black Panther: if you want to win, it’s not enough to have eight out of ten abs and sure, an actor might have better biceps than me, but guns are so primitive.”

That last part was a quote from the movie. Christian got the reference and smiled. I gave him a cocky double finger-gun blast and continued.

”To succeed, you need a team. You need togetherness and you need belief. And maybe some plot armour, I guess, but hey!” I bent over the nearest kit bag and took out one of the spare shirts. I showed it to the room. ”This is our plot armour. When we wear this, incredible things happen.”

Something incredible happened right there and then - I started to believe what I was saying. I clicked into a higher gear, paced faster, spoke louder.

”We’re still in this match. We’re right in it. If we get the next goal, get the fans up, anything’s possible. Don’t go chasing it. Let it happen. If we’re into the last ten minutes and we haven’t scored, that’s fine. We will score and they will crack. Listen out for their fans moaning and groaning - that’s the sound of them folding under the weight of their own expectation. Fuck,” I said, stopping dead as I imagined the scene. Just like in Sunderland ’Til I Die, with the away fans spitting venom at their players as they threw away a three-goal lead. ”It’s actually perfect we were so shit in the first half. The manager can gee them up all he wants but he won’t get through to them. They’re gonna slow down five percent, we’re gonna speed up five hundred percent. We’re gonna do this. I’ve got goosebumps. This is happening. Oh my fucking God, we’re doing it.”

The entire dressing room was watching me monologue, spellbound. Sandra smiled a fraction as she said, ”Maybe tell us the plan just in case, boss.”

I pointed at her and grinned. ”No need, but okay!” I floated to the tactics board. ”Cole, Adam, Ryan, and Bark are off. We move to 3-4-3. Peter in the middle of the back three. Duggers left, Rushy right. Wibbers up with the strikers but also dropping to CAM, moving left and right. Andrew central midfield with Youngster. Lads, use your brains, yes? We get three goals it’s extra time. That’s a hundred and twenty minutes for Christian, Zach, Andrew, Youngster, Colin, and Dazza. There’s no point going hell-for-leather to equalise if we empty the tank. Sunderland will slow the game down when we turn the screw. Don’t shout at the referee - those breaks are better for us than they are for Sunderland, right? They’re actually helping us win.”

I paced around, feeling the fires burning behind my eyes.

”Fifth sub. If there’s an injury, we use it. Course we do.” I tapped the board. ”This is perfect, though. This rocks. If we can get to the end, I’ll come on to take a penalty.”

Sandra said, ”Are we making those four changes now, boss?”

”Yeah. Let’s go out early. Let them know we mean business. Captain.”

Christian Fierce stood up, slapped himself on the chest, and yelled, ”Chester forever!”

The roar that followed nearly made my head explode, but in a good way. ”Fucking A,” I growled, flexing my fingers so hard they turned white as snow.

***

I went back to my little technical area and paced up and down. This was going to be so epic!

Sunderland restarted the match, passed the ball around with ease, worked an opening, and their striker snatched at a shot that went over. ”Fuck,” I said. ”That wasn’t in the script. Is it just me or was that far too easy?”

”That was one of our nine lives for this match,” said Sandra.

I was fixed into place. No more pacing. Truth be told, I was wracked with doubt. This was pretty much the best eleven I could put out and they were only CA 104.2. We were miles off Sunderland’s level and as predicted, they hadn’t weakened themselves at half time. To make things worse, they didn’t seem to have come out even the slightest bit complacent. Maybe their manager had got them fired up enough to get the fourth goal that would end the contest. Maybe he had been in the dressing room warning them about Killmonger’s mistake in Black Panther - not checking his opponent was actually dead.

Swanny took his time over the goal kick, which surprised me until I saw Christian Fierce yelling at everyone. Waking them up. Leading.

I got the tiniest chill down my spine and all the noise and colour died down until my focus was on one small area around the ball.

Peter Bauer strolled into the penalty area. The Sunderland players weren’t allowed to go inside until the goal kick had been taken. Swanny passed the ball to Peter, and Sunderland’s four forward players sprinted in a rehearsed pattern that would suffocate Peter, giving him nowhere to go. Behind them, the rest of the team moved into position so that, at best, we would be squashed into one small part of the pitch where they could smother us.

Peter ambled forward, pointed, and fizzed the ball inches away from the onrushing striker. The hapless striker made a cartoonish ’uh?’ face. The ball hit Youngster’s right foot, which he had angled towards Andrew Harrison, who was a couple of yards behind Youngster at that moment, just as we had practised. Andrew had a great view of the pitch ahead of him. He was supposed to give the ball to Wibbers at that point but decided the best move was to run with it.

He did just that, and when Wibbers made a diagonal run across Andrew’s path, the young forward attracted some of the defenders. Andrew drove right, waited for a challenge, and slid the ball to Colin Beckton. The striker hammered the ball first time... against the bottom of the post!

The crowd went nuts.

If I’m being totally honest, so did I.

When I had put Sandra down and apologised for squeezing so hard, I paced up and down, gibbering like a madman. ”This. This is it. This is what I want. We’re doing this. This this this this this.”

Sandra, smiling, said, ”You know I love 3-4-3. What about the full backs? Cole? Nasa?”

”Yeah yeah yeah they’ll get minutes. Cole can play left CB sometimes. Adam and Nasa can play wide mid. It’s basically wing back, isn’t it? They can do that. But look. Youngster and Andrew as the central midfield. That works. It’ll fucking work in League One, won’t it?”

Sandra tilted her head. ”Yes. It will.”

I stopped and looked at her while pointing behind me. ”This is how we’ll play at home. Away we’ll see what the pitch is like, who we’re playing. We’ll be more defensive, aim for clean sheets, spread minutes around.” I turned and saw something that quickened my pulse. Sunderland’s goalkeeper was drinking from his water bottle. He dropped it, picked up the ball, and took it to the other side of the six-yard box before placing it down with extreme care. ”They’re time-wasting already! They know. They know!” I left my technical area, rushed to the side of the pitch, one foot actually on the playing surface. ”MEN! THEY KNOW! THEY KNOW!”

***

Blood, thunder, action, music. We punch you in the face, you punch us in the face. Around the pitch, duels were being fought.

Andrew Harrison aimed his bow at Youngster, who punched a baddie in the chest while Andrew’s arrow zipped past and hit the guy behind Youngster. Zach Green kicked a dude in the face before Matt Rush leaped and used Zach’s bouncy abs as a sort of trampoline to smash into an oppo from a great height.

Or, you know, something like that but with a football and slick, short-range passes.

55’

Swan takes the goal kick short to Bauer.

Bauer is put under pressure. He glides to his left and clips a pass to Dugdale, who is in acres of space.

Dugdale drives forward, one-on-one against the right back.

Roberts is on hand to offer support.

Dugdale passes to Roberts. Roberts slides a pass behind the defender.

It’s perfectly weighted for Dugdale. He looks up and curls the ball to the far post.

Darren Smith is there...

His header crashes against the crossbar!

Beckton is first to the rebound. He controls the ball on his chest. A defender throws himself in the way of the shot.

Beckton flicks the ball to his left foot...

And scores!

An unerring finish, low into the corner.

The home team are right back in this contest!

Sandra got her revenge by trying to pick me up and spin me around. She managed approximately zero centimetres.

”Ohmygodohmygod,” I said, when she let me go. I rushed up and down faster than ever. ”What do we do? What do we change?”

Sandra stopped me and jabbed a finger into my chest. ”Don’t you change a fucking thing, Max Best! We had to suffer through the first half. Let us have our fun.”

”Us?” I said, confused by her language. ”We are us.”

”Stop talking shit and get back to prowling around like a panther. That’s intimidating.”

”I don’t prowl around like a panther,” I said.

”Fine. Let me stand there.”

”What?” I said, looking down. ”Um... no. This is my spot.”

Sandra grinned. ”Territorial. Big surprise.”

I couldn’t quite work out what she was saying so I adjusted my black hoodie while I checked the match ratings. Sunderland’s levels had dipped a fraction, while ours were racing higher. Peter’s was interesting. 7 out of 10. The curse didn’t quite understand what it was seeing. It knew that Peter had played a few accurate passes, but it also saw that he had lost a couple of headers and hadn’t won any tackles. In short, he wasn’t doing what a centre back was supposed to be good at, but the inarguable fact was that he had utterly changed the complexion of the game. Yes, Duggers, Wibbers, and Rushy were catching the eye but only because the ball was moving to our midfield in situations where Sunderland didn’t have a structure, and that was because of Peter.

Interesting. I wondered if his talent had been similarly misunderstood at Bayern Munich. It was hard to believe - they weren’t stupid. I should have asked about Peter while I was over there, but I had other things on my mind.

What decisions did I have left to make? When to use my once-per-game perks was a topic. The worst thing would be if Sunderland scored a quick goal in reply to our one, so I hit Seal It Up to give us a little extra defensive solidity for 15 minutes. I often used it at the very start or end of a match, but this felt right. Then I noted that Sunderland’s manager was asking one of his DMs to mark Wibbers. I moved Wibbers from CAM to the right of the strikers, and linked Rush and Wibbers using Cupid’s Arrow. Their interplay would be more effective for a quarter of an hour.

What about the fifth sub? The option with the highest CA was Gabby. These days the Brazilian striker was only four points behind Dazza in terms of CA, and if he came off the bench he would play better than the Aussie.

A mad option would be to replace Swanny in goal with Sticky. If the bench boost was really ten percent, that would put Sticky just ahead of Swanny, and the older guy was better at saving penalties, too.

I tapped my lips as I scanned the pitch. Sunderland had made a couple of tiny tweaks. Their full backs were a little higher, and the CAMs - including Patricks - were a touch deeper and wider. The intention was to stop us getting as much joy out wide. A defensive move, which pleased me. First because it showed how well we were playing. Second because it was the first thing my opposite number had done wrong. Don’t use your sword as a shield!

In response, I used the With Ball/Without Ball screens to nudge Matt Rush up a fraction, while moving Duggers back an equal amount on the other side. My idea was that we could increase the pressure on the right a little more - in case of a counter, Rushy was fast enough to sprint back and help out in defence - while Duggers would add a fraction more to our left-sided defensive efforts and reduce the threat from Patricks.

The last thing was to set our attacks to favour the right.

66’

Patricks dribbles past Dugdale.

Fierce moves across to cover, but Patricks fires in an early cross.

Bauer slides to intercept but at the last second, pulls his leg out of the way.

At the back post, Green is trying to keep up with the striker...

The ball goes through everyone!

Bauer gets up and breathes a sigh of relief.

If he had made any contact with the ball, he might have scored an own goal!

Deeply unlucky from the Black Cats’ point of view.

67’

Rush takes the throw in.

Green controls the ball and looks to give it to Bauer, whose distribution from deep has been so impressive.

Bauer has two Sunderland players watching him, so Green strides forward.

Still he moves up the pitch. Finally some pressure comes, so he gives it to Youngster.

The Ghanaian youth international is quickly pressured, so he moves the ball to Harrison.

He goes wide to Rush, who had sprinted forward.

Rush combines with Roberts.

Rush continues his sprint down the line.

Roberts looks to thread the pass through the eye of a needle...

No! At the last second, he changes his mind and floats a lovely cross-field pass to Dugdale.

Dugdale checks his options, spots a runner, and crosses.

Smith outmuscles the defender and controls on his chest. Beautifully done...

And what an opportunity this is for Harrison!

Smith controlled the ball right into his path, and kept the defender away from the ball, too.

Harrison can’t miss!

Saved!

Beckton pounces...

Saved!

Astonishing.

The ball is hacked clear...

Youngster touches it to Roberts, who is playing with quite some swagger. He points to where he wants Matt Rush to go...

But Roberts shoots from distance!

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

The Deva Stadium erupts!

It has just seen one of the all-time great long-range blockbusters.

That exploded from Robert’s right boot and gave the goalkeeper no chance.

Chester’s dreams of Wembley are still alive!

Wow. What the hell happened there? I hadn’t set Wibbers to take long shots, but he had seen the keeper was out of position, or the ball had just sat up nice, or whatever. When I came to my senses, I was halfway between the dugout and the Harry McNally terrace.

I walked back with my hands in my hair, still unable to believe the quality of the goal.

He had absolutely boshed it. Gorgeous. ’Add another million to his transfer value,’ the commentators were probably saying.

”Wow,” said Livia, as I grabbed the nearest bottle of water and took a swig.

”Yeah,” I said. I suspected the exact same conversation was happening all around the stadium.

I went back to my spot (I had to move Sandra a few feet to the right, which made her laugh for some reason), and looked to the left. The away fans were shell-shocked. Their three-nil lead had turned to three-two. Would they turn on their players? I doubted it. Wibbers’s goal had been too good - you couldn’t blame your players for something like that. It was basically an act of God.

”We need a defender to fuck up,” I said.

Sandra put her hand over my mouth. ”Don’t say things like that! Stop defying the gods!”

I pulled her hand away and laughed. ”One of theirs!” I said. ”So their fans can get on their backs. That’s what always happens in the documentary.”

”That’s edited,” said Sandra. ”They’re no more loyal or unreasonable than any other set of fans. Anyway, it’s not like the old days when supporters would lose their minds if tiny Chester dared to score a goal. There’s no shame in losing to the Soccer Supremo.”

I shook my head. ”Are you teasing me?”

She mimed that she was holding a laurel wreath over my head. ”Remember you are only human, mighty one.”

”Oh, my God.” I tried to draw her attention back to our current setup. ”What do you think?”

”I’d like Wibbers back in the middle.”

”Yeah,” I said. His match rating had hit 10. Duggers was 9, Rush was 8. If we moved Wibbers to the centre we would have danger from three angles. ”They’re aware of Duggers, they’re trying to stop Wibbers, but they’re not doing anything about Rushy.”

”Unleash Rush!” cried Sandra. Her cheeks were flushed; our comeback was making her giddy.

I smiled and gestured. ”Go on, then.”

While she yelled at the pitch, I crouched and adjusted the icons on my tactics screen, rebalancing Duggers and Rush while I was there. My attention lingered on the Relationism toggle. We could mix things up with some free-form football for a while... I dismissed the idea. We were going toe-to-toe with a really good Championship team. Why change?

71’

Sunderland’s goalkeeper sits down.

The action pauses while he gets treatment.

The ’injury’ was completely fake - Sunderland’s manager simply wanted to gather his players and give them new instructions. These fake injury time-outs were an absolute plague and I hated them. I wandered over to listen in to what the manager was saying, which caused some of his coaches to react badly. The commotion had one effect - it stopped the impromptu team talk.

”You need another fake injury!” I cried out as Briggy pushed me back to my spot. Actually, Sandra was in my spot, so I sat in the dugout. About twenty seconds later I was gently easing her out of the way.

***

My intervention in the team talk came too late, because enough of the manager’s instructions made their way to the pitch. ”I should have let him finish,” I said, scanning from left to right. ”He’s turtling up, which I don’t mind one bit.”

”Wibbers long shots,” said Sandra, instantly.

”Do it,” I said.

While she was sending out the signal, I pushed our defensive line five yards higher. If poss, I wanted the entire rest of the game to be played in Sunderland’s half.

On a whim, I decided to set our attacks to go down the left. We would do that for a while, and I’d nudge Wibbers to the left, too, and then suddenly I would switch to the right. That kind of thing sometimes worked.

***

79’

Offside.

Indirect free kick to Chester just inside their own half.

Bauer rolls it to Youngster, who gambols forward.

He goes left to Dugdale.

Both teams have a lot of bodies on that side of the pitch.

There’s no way through.

It’s with Harrison, who floats a ball to the left.

It’s headed away and recovered by Youngster.

He touches the ball back to Bauer.

The German centre back fizzes a low pass into the path of Matt Rush.

Rush has space on the right.

The defenders slide across the pitch.

Rush shapes to cross but nudges the ball towards the byline and chases it.

He gets there first and -

Goal! Goal for Chester!

It’s in!

Rush crashed the ball into the six-yard box where it hit a defender and veered goalwards.

The keeper got a hand to it but it went in!

Matt Rush is mobbed by his teammates.

Chester have done it!

The comeback is complete.

”Chester! Chester!” The home fans were noisy as fuck and the older parts of the stadium were creaking and groaning. Noise was swirling around. Victory was in the air. All we needed was sharp teeth, claws.

”No!” cried Sandra.

I blinked and realised Sunderland were attacking. Patricks, who had been anonymous for about half an hour, had switched to the other flank and dribbled past Matt Rush. Patricks thrashed the ball across goal, just as Matt had done, at such an awkward angle and at such pace that Zach Green couldn’t do anything but redirect the ball towards goal...

We had worked so hard to get back into the match but our joy had only lasted -

The crowd roared. Ian Swan had thrown himself to the side and shot out a hand. He tipped the ball over the crossbar.

”Fuck me,” I said. ”How’s he done that?”

”I can’t take this,” said Sandra.

We had to take it. That one classy move from Patricks pushed memories of our attacks into the past, and what everyone in the stadium knew was this: it was Sunderland’s turn.

***

80’ - Corner to Sunderland.

81’ - Corner to Sunderland.

82’ - Shot off target.

83’ - Shot on target, corner to Sunderland.

84’ - Last five minutes possession: 89% to the away team.

85’ - William Roberts breaks clear, looks to set up Darren Smith, but the Englishman is tackled.

It was relentless. I felt a Sunderland goal was inevitable so the next time we got the ball I switched us to Relationism. My players huddled together on the side of the pitch, using the touchline like an extra defender. Instead of giving up a series of corners, we won a series of throw-ins. The clock dragged its heels as it approached 90. When normal time was up I switched us back to normal football, to a straight 3-4-3 with my players instructed to counter-attack and hit direct balls to the forwards. It was a low-percentage tactic but I’d been lucky as fuck in the second half.

I nudged Sandra. We were both trying not to bite our nails. ”Is it lucky to see a black cat where you’re from?”

”We’re both from Manchester,” she said. ”We have the same superstitions.”

”Really? You don’t whistle at night, either?”

”What?”

”Whistling at night lets ghosts know where you are.”

The incorrectly-named ’final whistle’ finally blew. Sandra sagged. ”I can’t believe we’re gonna have thirty more minutes of this.”

***

The players gathered around me and I had to shout to be heard over the buzz of eight thousand two hundred people, plus all the ghosts the referee had summoned by whistling in the dark. ”All right, lads, listen up. My favourite movie is Black Panther but it’s 30 minutes too long and so’s this match. We got smacked up there at the end, didn’t we? We have to take our medicine. 4-5-1, men behind ball, see if we can hold out. It’d be stupid to do that for thirty minutes, though, so we’ll go back to 3-4-3 sometimes and throw in some Bestball. That’s just to stop them throwing the kitchen sink at us, right? We’re playing for penalties, soz not soz. Get yourselves ready.”

***

Crosses came in that we headed away but they seemed to get more whipped, more angled by the minute.

Intricate passing sequences outside the box pulled my players out of position leading to Christian and Zach throwing themselves in front of shots. The blocks got more and more strained, more and more heroic.

Long shots came in, deflecting at mad, pinballesque angles, but always getting closer and closer to goal.

When I couldn’t stand it any more, I switched to Relationism. That ate a couple of minutes.

We survived the first half of extra time. Fifteen minutes to go.

The lads drank and took on water. I slipped my shinpads down my socks. ”Men,” I called out. ”Hold out and we’ll win this. We’ll win this on pens.”

The wind whipped up as I spoke. Someone had found a few extra quid for the special effects budget.

The guys trudged away, back to the grind. I fretted about using the last sub to replace someone. Gabby for Dazza? No point - we could barely get the ball up there. Fitz instead of one of the centre backs? They were tired but not exhausted. Changing one might disrupt our shape and wouldn’t help us in the shootout.

We had to hold fast.

A corner led to a scramble and I was sure someone had poked the ball into the net. The referee ran around behind a mass of bodies like they do in rugby - he was satisfied that Swanny had control of the ball just on the goal line.

The tension had got so intense I could barely move. How was I going to take a penalty if I couldn’t even move my fingers away from my eyes?

”Max, do you wanna...?”

I gawped at Sandra, then realised what she was saying. 118 minutes on the clock! 2 to go. I had to get on the pitch now - you couldn’t make substitutions after full time.

I told the assistant ref that I wanted to go on. He got the board ready but suddenly the Sunderland bench - manager and coaches - were on the touchline furiously waving. They were telling their players to keep the ball! If the ball stayed in play for a minute and a half I wouldn’t be able to get on the pitch. It was so sneaky and so unexpected that I actually froze. Some hero. Sandra was focused on the pitch and didn’t notice my distress.

”But,” I croaked. It was all I could do.

My plan was so mint! We had come back from the dead and scrapped our way to a penalty shoot-out, but the best penalty taker in the match, maybe the actual best in England, wouldn’t take part in it!

Zach Green rushed out of defence, grabbed a Sunderland player right in front of the referee, and shoved him to the floor.

The ref, astonished, blew his whistle, gave Zach a yellow card, and got the message from his assistant that there was a sub waiting.

Dazza walked off, and I went onto the pitch.

I felt the relief like heavy chains falling from my neck. I couldn’t get too involved in the next minute because my arm was very possibly not quite fully healed, so I stayed up by the halfway line. That proved to be helpful anyway because Sunderland kept two players back to watch me.

They floated the free kick into the box, where Youngster nodded the ball away. Matt Rush raced onto it and dabbed it forward to Wibbers. He burst clear and suddenly we had a break on.

Last minute winner? Don’t mind if I do!

I sprinted to the left to give Wibbers more space. Rush overtook him on the right of the pitch and Wibbers pushed the ball into his path. When Rush got level with the penalty box he cut the ball diagonally back to Wibbers. The goalie ran off his line, thinking he could narrow the angle. Opportunity! I stopped veering left and cut towards the ball, running parallel to the goal line.

Wibbers saw my move and rolled the ball to me just inside the D. I wrapped my foot around the underside of the ball, chipping it with mad spin so that it would dip hard.

It went over the goalie and bounced on the six-yard line, dead centre of the goal. Perfect! The fans in the Harry McNally rose as one to celebrate.

The ball spun.

And spun.

It brushed the outside of the post as it went wide.

The ref finally ended the match. It would be penalties after all.

***

Christian lost the coin toss to decide which end we would shoot towards, but he won the one that decided who would shoot first.

”Did you do tails?” I demanded. ”Tails never fails. The expert told me.”

”I did. It’s almost like it has a fifty-fifty chance to work, boss.”

I shook my head. ”We need an edge on these coin tosses. Make sure you work on that.”

”You should be deciding who takes the pens.”

”I decided that eons ago, long before the dawn of time.”

”Great,” said Christian. ”Could be good to tell the referee.”

”He knows,” I said.

”What?”

”I gave him the list before kick-off.”

”You’re joking.”

I realised I was getting close to being burned as a witch. ”Haha,” I said, and wandered over to pretend to talk to the ref. I returned to the space in front of our dugout where half the lads were on their backs and some were getting quick calf massages. ”Lads, here’s the order. Me, Wibbers, Colin, Duggers, Peter. Rushy’s number 6. Swanny, come with me a second.”

I took the goalie away from the huddle. His eyes were shining - goalies loved penalty shoot-outs because they had the chance to be the hero for a change. ”What’s up, gaffer?”

”Patricks will do a panenka if he thinks it’s on.” Antonín Panenka was a Czechoslovakian midfielder who scored a penalty against West Germany by chipping the ball, very very slowly, right down the centre of the goal. Only players with great technique and balls of steel would try such a move in a decisive moment. ”Make sure you dive left or right for everyone before him. Try to guess correctly but the main thing is that you fucking throw yourself as far as you can, yeah? Then when Patricks takes one, stand up, catch the ball, off to Wembley we go.”

”You sure, gaffer?”

”Of course I’m not sure. How could I be sure?”

”What if he goes first?”

”He won’t. I reckon he’ll go fifth so he can score the decisive pen. That’s how these guys think. He’s not like me, a selfless team player.”

Swanny nodded. ”Okay. Because he’s not a selfless team player who brought himself on with two minutes to go... he’ll shoot fifth. I think I see how it works.”

I laughed. If Swanny was rinsing me that well, it meant he was thinking clearly.

We went through the rest of the rigmarole that comes with a penalty shoot-out, until at last it was time for me to show who was the king of this seemingly underdeveloped region.

I strolled to the penalty spot and surprise, surprise, Sunderland’s goalie had come all the way to the penalty spot in an attempt to get under my skin. I walked around him and went to stand on the goal line, where he should have been.

The referee came over, sighed, and said, ”Best, what are you doing?”

”Their goalie is gonna take the pen, right? That’s why he’s over there? Or is it that you’ve lost control of the shootout before it has even started?”

He closed his eyes for half a second, sighed again, and went to tell the goalie to get back on the line.

While that was happening, I wiggled around the way goalies did just before a penalty was shot, and I would have flung myself to the left and pretended to make a save but I remembered I had a broken arm and wasn’t allowed.

The keeper was trudging backwards, confused that his mind games had gone so awry. The guy he was trying to put off wasn’t even in his eyeline!

I jogged around him and picked up the ball. The goalie stepped towards the penalty spot again so I dropped the ball and rushed back onto the goal line. ”I’m ready, ref!” The referee, inexplicably, got his yellow card out and showed it to the goalie... and me. ”What the actual fuck are you doing?” I said.

”Get on with it, Best!”

”How can I when this guy is on the fucking penalty spot! Get a fucking grip! Send the twat off!”

The ref gritted his teeth, pushed the goalie back a few steps and gave him a stern talking to. While that was happening, I put the ball down on the penalty spot and was thinking about kicking it into the net and running around celebrating when the ref saw me and yelled not to.

Spoilsport.

Yeah, anyway, all four sides of the ground were going mental by now. The Sunderland fans were right in front of me. I picked one out - I would imagine that I was kicking the ball right into his stupid gob.

The keeper was on the line. The referee was in place. He blew the whistle.

I took a step back from the ball.

I took another two steps back.

I took six more steps back.

I sidestepped to the left, breathed massively, and sprinted at the ball. When I arrived, I Pirloed it, three-toed, top left corner, top bins, absolutely perfect, nailed on the best penalty kick of all time. Max Best plus Bench Boost equals eternal glory - that’s Maxematics. (That’s terrible; cut that.)

I jogged towards the keeper, said something along the lines of ”Unlucky, my dear old chap,” and ran left and right in front of the Sunderland fans doing the Alan Shearer goal celebration. Shearer, of course, played for Sunderland’s arch-rivals Newcastle, and celebrated his many, many goals by raising one hand and running in a straight line. Simple, but iconic. Judging by the debris that came my way, the away fans understood the reference.

Yeah that all took about four minutes. A Sunderland player walked forward, put the ball down, and scored, all in about fifteen seconds.

Next up was Wibbers and I was so confident he’d score, my attention started to wander. He approached the ball perfectly, struck it with venom, and I was wondering who we would get in the Fourth Round when I realised the Sunderland fans were cheering. I went into the commentary to check if I had seen it right.

Roberts to take Chester’s second penalty.

He steps up...

Strikes it hard, aiming inside the post, halfway up...

But it’s saved!

An astonishing save by the Sunderland stopper!

He displayed cat-like reflexes.

Wibbers strode back to the halfway line, trying hard to show that his miss didn’t bother him. I knew him pretty well; he was taking it hard and a quick check showed that his Morale had plummeted. When the time was right I would remind him that we only even got to the shoot-out because of him. ”You’ll never be the Black Panther,” I would say. ”But they might call you the White Pelé.” That would cheer him up a bit, but how much depended on whether we won or lost. I still thought we would do it. Swanny would save Patricks’s penalty and our sixth taker, Matt Rush, was bound to be ten times better at pens than whoever Sunderland had up sixth. I was feline amazingly confident... until I saw Sunderland’s captain glaring at me and talking to their goalkeeper coach behind his hand.

Sunderland’s next guy strode forward, and scored. Two-one Sunderland. To wrap this up soon we needed Swanny to make a big save, or for someone to choke and put their shot wide.

Colin scored, but so did the Sunderland guy. No biggie.

Duggers scored, but so did the Sunderland guy. Hmm.

Peter scored, and then up came Patricks.

I saw Swanny stiffen, which to me seemed to give the entire plan away, but on reflection only I would have noticed.

Before he had gone five yards, though, Sunderland’s captain rushed towards Patricks and gave him an earful. My heart sank. I knew what was happening. The captain was telling him - ordering him - not to do what he longed to do. I could just imagine the speech. ”I know what you’re thinking. Fuck all that fancy crap and put it in the corner. If you fucking do a panenka you’ll spend the rest of the season eating through a fucking tube.”

Patricks, it seemed to me, turned a little paler, but he trudged forward, picked up the ball, placed it on the penalty spot, went through his motion, and passed the ball into the bottom left corner while poor Swanny stood tall waiting to catch a slow, soft chip.

The Sunderland players rushed towards their fans to celebrate.

Our guys stood in a line, arms around each other’s shoulders, for a few more seconds before dispersing. Several went to hug Wibbers.

In the Black Panther movie, Killmonger dies without ever playing at Wembley Stadium.

We were out of the FA Cup. Only two more routes to Wembley remained.