6.
EXTERIOR: A soft net is held up by light, wooden poles. It could be a five-a-side-football pitch?
MAX BEST is in his trademark black hoodie and is holding a football. He's pacing around, scowling. The words: Max Best (Player-Manager) appear on screen.
MAX
All right, you animals, listen up. We've got a tough game today but don't let them ruffle your feathers. Remember to use the wings and let's use our advantage in the air.
[CUT TO: A flamingo, an ibis, and some ducks.]
MAX
Half the pitch is waterlogged so that'll suit us. [He points.] And you! None of this fancy-dan show-off stuff!
[CUT TO: A peacock strutting away. He's not listening.]
NARRATOR
Experience Latin American Wetland Aviary, an interactive habitat where you can walk side by side with stunning species. Chester Zoo - we're simply the best.
[CUT TO: A grey crowned crane with its princely coronet of golden feathers.]
MAX
[Impressed.] Great trim, Galabba. New hairdresser?
***
Saturday, February 13
The latest blog post from News of the Blues, the leading news and views platform for all things Chester FC.
Best Digs a Dug-Shaped Hole; Opens the Book of Joel
Lincoln City came to the Deva Stadium this afternoon in good form, emboldened (as all our opponents are) by our sale of data darling Charlie Dugdale. They had a plan. 4-1-4-1, aggressive, mid-block, put pressure on from the start. How did it go? Quite well.
Best and Sandra went for a 3-4-3 shape that is really starting to suit this team. Ian Swan returned to his post between the sticks. A back three of Fierce, Green, and Fitzroy Hall is formidable at this level. Why no Peter Bauer? I couldn't say, but since he played on Tuesday night, it was probably scripted.
The midfield is fascinating these days. Best picked himself to start on the left, presumably because Joel Reid isn't ready for a full ninety. It almost goes without saying that Best ran riot in the early stages, giving the Imps problems they couldn't solve. Which was the better assist? The through-ball that Wibbers chased and dinked past the keeper? Or the air-splitting left-footed cross that Gabby powered low past the goalie?
As good as Best is, it would help if the rest of the midfield contributed more going forward. Youngster, who (fucking bizarrely) made his Champions League debut only a few days ago, is brilliant, of course, and was at his scampering best today (a strong contender for Player of the Match) but he does not provide much when we are in possession. Andrew Harrison runs hard but is mostly ineffective. On the right, Bark has scored one goal in the entire season. It is all somewhat concerning.
There was a slight surprise up front, as Gabriel was preferred to Dazza, but one can hardly complain about the team's record signing being given starts, and Gabby's goals are coming with increasing frequency.
Lincoln did well to get to half time only two down, and with new signing Joel Reid replacing Best, the Imps sensed an opportunity to cause mischief. Reid looked somewhat rusty, but highly polished. Can one be rusty and polished at the same time? Apparently so. He suits the formation even better than Charlie Dugdale, though we have lost a lot of attacking threat. Will Best's decision to sell Duggers come back to haunt us? It wasn't Reid's fault that Lincoln scored from a penalty - a very soft decision - and the benefit of having so many runners, so many whose first instinct is to defend, is that this team is obdurate. It was no real surprise that we got to the final whistle without conceding a second.
Perhaps the rest of the season will be something of a dour grind interspersed with moments of pure class from Best, Wibbers, and Colin Beckton.
I'm not complaining. As Best is keen (and right) to remind us, this is shaping up to be the greatest season in the history of the club. After 32 matches, we have 73 points. We could, mathematically, finish on 115 points. That's basically impossible, but scoring a century is very much on the cards. The danger is that without Duggers some of our wins turn to draws and some of our draws turn to defeats.
Is that too gloomy? Of course it is. In Best We Trust. By my calculations, five points from the remaining 14 games will be enough to guarantee us a playoff spot. Wins against the sides in the bottom half - and no-one smashes lesser teams better than we do - will surely take us to the 87 or so points we need to finish second.
I simply long for the days when Duggers danced along our wing, when I watched this team as though I had been dipped in magic waters, when I felt like a child again. The days when I smelled the grass and the pies and the beer and watched the floodlights through fog and asked my neighbour, is this heaven? To which they always replied, no, this is Chester.
I don't wish to end on a sour note. After the women's match tomorrow, Best will fly to Scandinavia for an intensive week of scouting. His trips always pay off, though not often in the way we expect. Wish him luck!
***
Tuesday, February 16
"This is what I want to do in the away end," I said, looking up and around, but mostly up.
"Not as big," said Emma, also looking up.
"No," I said. We were in a triple-height space that resembled the innards of a massive ship. The ceilings had large pipes going everywhere, including three which pointed down at us like vast showerheads. Vaguely sinister, but probably something to do with ventilation. The windows of the third storey were glowing with electrical light from the other side. "That's probably the press box or some executive suites," I said, trying to orient myself within the 22,000-capacity stadium. Either side of whatever that long room was, two more rooms jutted out, unsupported. Of course the design had been checked by architects and engineers, but it didn't look right. "Not a fan of the dangling rooms."
"Bad feng shui," agreed Emma.
"Feel like people are in there, watching us."
"They probably are. You're massive in Malmö. I wonder what the acoustics are like here?"
We looked up again. A couple of metres above our heads was one of those frames you got above the bands at concerts. Right now the frame was supporting 8 spotlights and four cameras. "This place is sort of industrial in tone but in the style of a modern museum. Do you know what I mean? I can't tell if you'd play hard rock or, like, Vivaldi."
Hanna, a member of Malmö FF's admin team and the woman who had organised this event, had heard the end of our chat. "The acoustics are good," she said. "Do you really think it has bad feng shui? I rather like it."
"Only those things," said Emma, pointing to the dangly rooms. "If you put down a row of sofas from here to that far corner, you'd find that people avoided the ones under those rooms, even if they didn't consciously know why."
Hanna looked interested and pushed her light brown hair back. She was in her 50s, dressed smart but comfortably. "I might try that one day when I'm bored. We should be ready soon. We're waiting for Ulf - he said he didn't want to miss this." Ulf Berggren was the head coach of Malmö FF. I had no clue how good he was but the evidence wasn't much in his favour - Malmö were historically the most successful club in Sweden but were only third in the league.
"Turnout seems good," I said, switching my attention from the space itself to the attendees. There were somewhere between four and five hundred members of Malmö FF on neat rows of chairs. Four to five hundred voters. Many were gripping pints of beer and there was a buzz of chatter. A few had approached me already and were really friendly and crazily knowledgeable about English football.
"Interest in this event is exceptionally high," said Hanna. "Many more are watching the stream from home."
Briggy was my tech guy for the event. She had connected her laptop to two large screens, one on either side of the stage. "All set, Max."
"Top."
While waiting for life to continue, I checked my stash.
XP balance: 5,730
Not bad, I thought, considering I had been sending decent amounts of XP to Nasa and Meredith Ann. Nasa got four weekdays, Meredith the other plus Saturday, and one of the under eighteens got it on Sunday. Of course, I made sure the weekenders were getting extra sessions otherwise using my XP to boost their training would have been a waste.
There was a ripple of applause as a dude climbed up the stairs leading to the stage. Ulf Berggren was 58, had a pretty great tan considering the weather, sported short, light hair in a military cut, and wore the dark-rimmed glasses of a serious banker. Loads going on with this guy, but my overall impression was that he was exactly the type of manager you'd appoint after two failures. Someone who would paint by numbers, a safe pair of hands.
He went to Emma first and gave her a big smile and a handshake, then Briggy, then me. "Max Best!" he said, crunching the bones in my hand. Didn't he know I needed those bones to do my hair? To use chopsticks? To taunt dictators? "Welcome to Malmö!"
"Welcome to my stage," I said.
He froze for half a second before laughing and clapping me on the back. "It's your world and we're all living in it. I hear you're very charming. Let's see if you can charm some money out of this lot because God knows I couldn't." Managers complaining about their transfer budgets was pretty universal.
He grabbed a microphone and started yapping away in Swedish. The audience settled. Briggy went off to sit in the front row next to someone from the club she had befriended. Emma sat in one of three chairs on the stage. I took the middle one and it dawned on me that Ulf was going to be presenting the 'show' - I had expected it to be the director of football I had met at The Transfer Room in Paris. Hanna crossed the stage to hand Emma and I a microphone each, then went to sit next to Briggy.
After he finished his introductions - I heard words like Chester, Bayern Munich, Gibraltar, UEFA Conference League - Ulf switched to English. He sat in the third chair. "Max, before we start your presentation, tell us a little bit about yourself."
"Oh," I said, into the mic. "So, I'm a mostly successful football manager."
"Mostly?" said Ulf.
"I got sacked by Grimsby Town," I said, getting my first laughs of the night. "It's fine," I said. "Doesn't bother me." A moment before Ulf continued, I mumbled, "Grimsby fucking Town," to more laughs. "Oh, by the way, I'll be speaking a little slower and more clearly tonight so that I can be understood."
Ulf seemed surprised. "The levels of English are very high in Sweden, Max."
"I know. I'm talking about Emma; she's from Newcastle." Some more laughs.
Emma did a dopey face and leaned over me to ‘whisper’ - into the microphone - to our host. "What did he say?" That got huge laughs. Off to a great start!
I took her by the hand. "This is Emma Weaver, my very talented, very intelligent fiancée. She works for a fast-growing football agency that I'm a consultant for, so we're putting this trip on that company's credit card. Absolutely rinsing them. You know what? We could buy everyone a beer."
"Max," said Emma. "A decent beer is 100 Kronor."
"That's, like, what? Two pounds?"
"Try eight."
"Christ." I turned to the audience. "Buy your own drinks."
Ulf waited until we had finished bantering. "What are your first impressions of Malmö? How long have you been here?"
I pulled at my earlobe. "What day is it? Tuesday? It's all going so fast. Saturday I was in Chester. Home game against Lincoln."
"Smashed that," grunted Emma before wiping her nostrils.
"Is that an impression of me?" I said, pretending to be amazed.
"No, just a generic macho type. You'd be more..." She got a smug look on her face and slowly pushed her hand back through her hair. "Lincoln? Yeah, they're a good team. Tried hard. Good for them."
Ulf laughed really hard at that. "So funny."
I tutted. "Lincoln are a good team and they did try hard and they did fight for the badge and the fans and that is good. They gave us a fright, actually. It would have been really tough to come out here if we didn't win."
Emma sniffed and rubbed her nose again. "But we did, so..." More laughs.
"Wow," I said. "Can you stop stealing my limelight, please? Okay then Sunday morning the women's team were at home to Leeds. I'm the manager of the women's team, too, by the way. Smashed that," I said, sniffing and rubbing my nostrils, "and rushed to the airport. Arrived in Copenhagen in time to watch a Danish Superliga match. Monday morning we went to watch Brondby train and I got to see their women's and youth teams, too. Monday evening we watched a match in Lyngby. Lyngby - am I saying that right?"
"No," said Ulf.
"Well, I'll nail the next one. This morning we went to watch training at..." I cleared my throat. "Nordsjælland."
Ulf smiled. "That is close to Australia, I believe.” He waited for the laughs to die down. “So you have seen quite some teams in Denmark."
"Yes. Very interesting. Some good players, of course, but…” But none worth using my work permits slots on. “We had lunch and crossed the bridge."
"The bridge," intoned Emma, though not into the mic.
"Yeah, we were very excited. There's this American TV show called The Bridge, you see, where there's a body found on the border of the USA and Mexico and one detective from each country has to work together to solve the crime."
Ulf said, "I am not sure if you are joking but that is a remake of... You are joking."
"I am," I said. "We loved the original, didn't we, babes? We watch way too much Scandi Noir. We thought this trip would take us to another place where a TV show was filmed but it turns out that's Borgen and we're going to Bergen."
"Easy mistake," said Ulf. "Although one is a palace in Denmark and one is the second city of Norway."
"I know that now," I said, fake annoyed.
Ulf eyed me. "What interests you in Bergen?"
"Which one is that again?"
"The one in Norway. The one where SK Brann play. The one where you might find a player called Helge Hagen."
"Helge Hagen?" I said. "Is this a hot tip about a player I should scout? Briggy, write that down. Thanks, Ulf."
He glared at me and for the first time I got the sense of why he had made it this high in the football world. He had some steel there. His glare bounced off me, though; I wasn't one of his players. He inhaled. "So you have only been in Sweden for a few hours. Time enough to give us your first impression."
"So far it's nice," I said. "The bridge is proper amazing and I love that twisty building. Sorry that's not electric content. I mean, it's raining hard so we've been inside since we arrived. This stadium is great; I love it." I looked around. "I was saying to Emma I want to do something like this in our new away end. A nightclub under the terraces. We don't need more huge venues in England; we need little ones so that shit local bands can do gigs and get good, do you know what I mean? That part of the ecosystem is missing."
"Ah," said Ulf, nodding. "So you are here to ask for money for Chester."
"No," I said. Given how many clubs I had an interest in, some confusion was inevitable. Better to nip it in the bud, though. "Maybe I should bash out my presentation?"
"Bash away. I'll leave you to it." He went to sit in the front row, where he instantly looked bored.
I stood and pottered around, looking into the faces of the audience. Probably three-quarters were men and there was a wide range of ages. "Can I just say thanks for coming? It's miserable weather out there and you must have been tempted to stay home. I appreciate it. I'm not sure how much you know about me but here's the quick version."
I clicked to show the logos of organisations that I had ties with.
"My awesome friend Briggy down there told me to include some social proof because people like to give money to people who could get it from loads of places. I'm trusted by the Welsh Football Association, I'm the Soccer Supremo, you'll see me in ads for Chester Zoo and BoshCard, and even my hair has its own sponsorship deal. Oh, and here are the printouts of twenty emails from famous English clubs inviting me to apply for the job as manager. I hate to print emails but, you know, it's a better visual."
Next I showed a photo of me on the touchline at the Deva stadium.
"Those clubs can't have me. I'm player-manager of Chester FC. I've taken them from the sixth tier of English football..."
I clicked and an animation showed the league table at regular intervals over the last three years - it was an elegant way to show how quickly we had progressed. The animation ended by showing the top of the current League One table. It said: Chester, played 32, won 22, drawn 7, lost 3, goals for 58, goals against 20, goal difference 38, points 73.
"A handful of wins short of smashing our way into the second tier. Back to back to back to back promotions, plus we are one semi-final away from our first ever appearance at Wembley stadium."
I clicked to the next picture, which showed me talking to some of the women's team.
"I'm director of football for the women's team, which has made the same journey from tier six to within touching distance of tier two. Bosh. I'm a consultant for a team in Wales."
I clicked to show an animation of Saltney Town's rise from tier three to the top of the Welsh Premier.
"That's going well. And I'm a consultant for three teams in Gibraltar."
A similar animation showed the 11-team Gibraltarian league with three names highlighted. College 1975 jumped from bottom to second to first, while two others moved from the bottom into third and sixth place.
"I've only had one transfer window to help those two clubs. Oh, I helped College into the league phase of the UEFA Conference, too."
A clip played: me passing to Wibbers, who scored a bicycle kick, followed by me sprinting to the touchline to ask Emma to marry me. That got a burst of applause and some wolf whistles.
"I was the Bayern Munich manager for a month."
The eight fixtures I'd been in charge of appeared, one under the other, followed by a burst of green Ws at the end. That was replaced by a photo of me prancing around with my abs hanging out, dressed as a rainbow.
"Oops," I said, as I got the biggest cheer yet. "How did that get in there?" Laughs. "What I'm saying is that I've got a pretty good track record. Not long ago I asked my local bank manager if she would consider maybe giving me a mortgage. I was nervous about that because I have imposter syndrome and I'm not sure I deserve nice things. I'm not nervous about this; this is football. I'm the safest bet there is."
I walked to the right of the stage and looked up. The triple-height ceilings were impressive and imposing. I felt like a preacher.
"I'm from South Manchester," I said, clicking to show a map with a red pin pointing to a location. "When I was a kid we lived here. All that grass is playing fields. I used to go and watch the Sunday League games there. What I didn't know was that there was a football club not far from me." I clicked and a second pin appeared, close to the first. "This is the home of West Didsbury and Chorlton AFC, known to its friends as West. When I discovered West they were in the North West Counties Premier. That's tier nine. I got involved," I said, cheekily, as one of the 'moving up the divisions' animations played. "Won tier nine, won tier eight, moved to tier seven. This is us now," I said, showing the top six clubs in the Northern Premier League. West were second. "We're a few points behind FC United of Manchester, the club created by Manchester United fans who hated the direction that club was going. FC United have the division's best goalscorer, a chap by the name of Ziggy."
I clicked to show a picture of Ziggy signing his first ever contract.
"This is him agreeing to make me his agent. Yeah, now the bastard is keeping us in second place. How ungrateful is that?" I smiled to show I was joking. "I still think we'll overhaul them but if we do get to the playoffs, we'll be strong favourites."
I walked to the left of the stage.
"Here's the problem."
I showed a very simplistic graph, which showed a very tall light blue bar on the left and a tiny white bar on the right.
"You have too much money, while West doesn't have any. This is my proposal."
I clicked and the blue bar shrank while the white bar grew.
I waited but there wasn't much reaction. Emma said, "I told you no-one would laugh."
I looked back at the screen. "I thought that was dead funny."
"Cringe."
Grinning, I paced around and spoke faster. "Here's the real problem. This is where West play." Photo of the Brookburn Road stadium. "You can see it's super basic. This little box here is known as The Shed. Holds about fifty fans. Here and here you can see we've added some temporary shelters and whatnot to sort of just about comply with the regulations for the current level. For the next division, we need a capacity of 3,000 with stands on at least three sides. To go higher, you need four sides, 4,000 capacity, with the potential to get to 5. My ambition for the club is to get to League Two, the fourth tier, as fast as possible. I know it's possible because I just did it with Chester. Okay, Chester's a bigger club but West will have the benefit of loan players from Chester and my expanded contacts book. I'm not worried about the football side of this."
I clicked on a picture of The Shed, which was packed and had fans spilling out stretching from corner flag to corner flag and down the sides.
"West are the closest thing we've got in England to the Swedish fan model. Democratic, left-leaning, opinionated." I grinned and many fans grinned back. "Chorlton is a bit of a hipster area so they sing self-deprecating songs about eating hummus and celery. It's very cool, very self-aware, but it's a serious club that does serious stuff in the community. The more resources the club has, the more initiatives they can run. It's very important to me that as the club grows, it retains this sense of identity."
I clicked to a new slide. It showed an eighteen-year-old boy.
"This is Myles Mitchell. He's a Manchester lad who got released from an academy. He was with that club from the age of 6 but on his 17th birthday they told him to hand in his badge and kicked him out. I was able to persuade him to sign up for West and after six months of training with the first team and getting minutes as a sub, he has earned a spot as one of the two starting strikers." Myles was CA 29 - up 9 points for the season - and had PA 80. "He's basically the reason West are second instead of first. I could have signed a ready-made striker but I believe in his talent. We're gonna train him up and get his career going."
I clicked to show a pic of Myles scoring in a recent match.
"Think how big Manchester is, how much talent is being wasted, being missed, being mistreated. The more West move up the leagues, the easier it will be to persuade lads like Myles that we're the place to go. It's not the goal but we could easily field a team of Manchester-born lads binned off from academies and we could thrive in League Two. Easily. And by the way, unlocking that talent is going to be profitable. There's a business case for treating people with dignity." That statement got loads of people nodding.
I clicked to show images of Brookburn Road being turned into a small, cute, four-sided football ground.
"This is what I want to build to make sure we can keep doing what we're doing, but more and better. It's a five-thousand capacity stadium with safe standing, accessibility, energy efficiency, low maintenance costs. Modular design, erected in weeks not months, future-proofed. While we're digging up the foundations we might as well install modern drainage, undersoil heating, and lay an ultra-modern hybrid pitch so that the women's and youth teams can play there, too. We have planning permission. The fans are on board. Now I just need five million pounds. 64 million Kronor, or in other words, ten percent of what you've got in your bank account doing nothing."
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
I clicked to show a map of Manchester with two pins - one in Chorlton, South Manchester and one in Moston, North Manchester.
"Here's my worst-case scenario. If I don't get a loan to build the stadium, we'll play next season at the home of FC United. It's not catastrophic. The distance between these two points is pretty far but there are tram stops near both stadiums. If this is what we have to do, it's okay. It would be a shame, though. West's attendances have been creeping up. We've actually had to cap ticket sales at fifteen hundred per match for safety reasons but there's growing demand because it's such a party every match. If we move to Moston for a season, we'll lose half our fans but most importantly we'll lose that connection with the local area and the community. Will we get those fans back the following season? Maybe. Maybe not. I said it's important that we don't lose the club's character and that's why I'm here today. You can help me make sure a club very much like yours with the same values and ethos as yours continues to grow and thrive."
Briggy got up and went to a large bag. She unzipped it and held up a brochure.
"I'm asking for a loan of five million pounds. That's a decent wedge, isn't it? So I've designed a proper brochure with loads of detail and translated it into Swedish and got it printed by a local Malmonese company. It shows the stadium in more detail and outlines how I plan to make the club sustainable in League Two. Just loads of detail about where the money will go and how that will impact the club and the community. There are also interviews with fans from West."
I walked around for a few seconds before clicking to the penultimate slide. It was simply a quote from John Maynard Keynes, the economist, in both English and Swedish.
I read it out. "The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future. This is what my whole life seems to be about right now. We make money and what do we do with it? When we spend our money we shape the future. Do we give it to Netflix? If we do, we're validating their process, which is to greenlight two seasons of a great show and then slap us in the fucking face by refusing to make season three. Do we buy fast fashion and cheap plastic tat? Hello, climate change and choking fish! As Malmö FF, do you buy a talented striker and break your wage structure? You know what happens next. His agent tells him a club in Spain wants to buy him so he goes on strike and after months of stress, you sell him. You've got more money in the bank but you're somehow poorer."
I shook my head.
"I see a future where there's a third Manchester club in the top four leagues. One that isn't the biggest cheat in the history of sport, one that isn't owned by bloodsuckers and Boomer knobheads. I think if we show the people of Manchester that there's a third option, they'll be drawn to it. If you build it, they will come. It won't be Malmö FF. It'll be West Didsbury and Chorlton AFC, your little brother. Not quite as handsome, not quite as talented, but you're fucking proud of him all the same."
Finally, I brought up the last slide. It had three elements. The number five and a sideways arrow pointing to the number six.
"You might be thinking, yes, Max, this is all extremely tremendous and compelling, but what's in it for Malmö FF? This. If you loan me five million pounds so that I can build this stadium, I will return six million. I think I can do that within five years but my proposal would be that if it takes longer we would add a hundred grand for every year that I'm late. For example, if it took ten years to repay, I'd owe 6.5 million."
I wandered to the other side of the stage. While the numbers were scary, it was possible I could earn up to ten million quid next season in UEFA prize money alone. Youngster had come back from Munich absolutely buzzing. Now that he'd had a taste of the big time, I felt more confident that I would one day be able to sell him and take my ten percent agent's fee. Youngster would get me out of all but the deepest financial holes.
"From what I understand, your leaders are going to organise a vote that will happen soon. Please vote to loan me the money. I'll take any questions you have. Thank you."
There was some light applause. Not exactly rapturous. I glanced at Emma; she smiled reassuringly. I glanced at Briggy; she subtly shook her head. I didn't get disheartened. Any doubts people had could be blasted away by a charming Q+A sesh.
"That was very interesting," said Ulf, who had returned to the stage. "I look forward to reading the brochure. Let's experience Sweden's Membership Democracy in full. Who has a question? You, sir."
A guy asked one that Ulf repeated into the microphone for the benefit of those watching the stream. "Who's the best head coach or manager you have ever faced?"
I smiled. The question wasn't really about my presentation but it felt very positive. "Pedro Porto was exceptional. Evaristo, now at Juventus, technically at least was first-class."
"Technically?" said Ulf.
I got cheeky. "The questioner didn't ask who the nicest people were." That got some laughs. Things were on the up! "Actually, Sandra Lane was a tough cookie and completely fearless. But my hardest opponent was probably Bob Horseman of Kidderminster Harriers. He and his team cooked up a plan to beat me and carried it out to perfection. I don't get outsmarted like that very often because most of the time if a manager unveils some amazing tactic I can change what I'm doing pretty quickly. Bob Horseman's Apocalypse, as I call it, was genius because it started out really conventional and it was only late in the game that I realised he had tied my shoelaces together and let the air out of my tyres. They used my own psychology against me, which was, ah, frustrating. But a very good lesson to learn."
I got the sense people liked my answer even if they had no context for that particular match. I looked at Briggy, who nodded slightly. Just as I was starting to feel optimistic again, the next question landed.
"Why do you rotate goalkeepers?"
My heart sank. First because the question itself was puerile. Second because it showed people had no interest in my presentation. I pointed to the screen behind me. "West Didsbury and Chorlton AFC don't rotate the goalkeeper," I said, hoping to remind people what the topic was.
It didn't work. The audience member repeated his question, but in a longer form.
"It helps me win football matches," I said, before dropping the microphone into my lap to show I didn't want to talk further. Charm zero. I felt my face hardening and pinched the skin under my chin while I reflected that the whole project had probably been doomed from the start. It was too strange, wasn't it? Why come to Sweden to get finance for a club in the North-West of England?
No. Anything was possible if you came at it from the right angle. Maybe I had taken the wrong approach. I could have gone hard at the 'Rainbow Warrior' angle, for example, or talked about how West could be a place for young Swedish players to take their first steps into English football. Neither approach had felt right, though.
"What do you think of VAR?"
"It ruins the sport for the people in the stadium - players and fans. You're right to keep it out of Swedish football." That got applause and my spirits lifted. Had I given up too early? I tried to soften my face.
"There is talk of a version of VAR being used in the Championship next year. Managers will have two chances to appeal a decision, like in American sports or in cricket. What do you think about that?"
I looked at the screen and realised I had generated precisely zero interest in my proposal. All these people simply wanted to come and meet a famous manager. Better than staying home and watching repeats of The Bridge, wasn't it? I stared at the microphone for a while before summoning up the energy to talk. "When I score a goal I want to run into the stand - in West's case, The Shed - and celebrate. With VAR you don't celebrate because someone will find a reason to disallow a goal. With the appeals system, I'd score and run to the opposition manager to see if he was going to refer the play. It's slightly better, but it still takes away the single most important thing about the sport which is that rush that comes with a goal. But if that is the system that's used, I'll be amazing at exploiting it. I could get ten points a season from using the system better than the other managers. I'd still prefer not to have it."
Ulf and the guy asking the question had a follow-up discussion about the concept, which I'm sure some people in the room found interesting. I took a big swig of water. Those beers were looking all kinds of amazing; my prospects of getting a loan, less so.
All right, well, West would have to play a season in North Manchester. That I would give me an extra year to raise the funds.
All I needed to do was make sure Saltney Town got through the summer's Champions League qualifiers and into the league stage. That would be worth an instant 18 million quid, half of which would be mine. It was pretty unlikely we would get into the Champions League itself but there were three tiers of European competition and we would surely make it into the lowest one, at least. I'd done it with the worst team in the competition; Saltney Town would be half decent by the summer. Worst case, I reckoned Saltney's European adventures would put another million pounds in my pocket, plus Saltney would perform better than College, who had so far drawn two matches but lost all the rest. Each draw or win in the league stage came with a cash bonus.
Call it one point five million from Saltney. If one of the Gibraltish teams also made it through the playoffs, that would be another mill. Why the fuck had I just spent a million on a block of flats? Nah, I couldn't beat myself up about that. With the rental income plus my higher salary plus sponsorships, I could count on accruing another half a mill. That would take me to three-fifths of the cash I would need to build the little stadium. Where could I get the remaining one point five million?
The agency would be the key. Right now I was getting about 160,000 a year but it was easy to imagine that number doubling. That surge would get me to within a million quid of what I needed. If needed, we could postpone the undersoil heating and super duper new pitch. That would frustrate the shit out of me, but there was a clear path to four million pounds and a much less clear path to five.
Yeah. I would make it work. Getting a stadium for West was the last missing piece in the Maxy Club Model. I could wait a year before I started buying yachts. I looked at Emma and thought about making a joke about postponing the wedding, but she was enjoying herself, apparently proud of my performance. I let some of the misery seep out of me and sat up a little straighter just in time to realise Ulf was talking to me.
"I have one question myself. You say you would repay the loan. Did you mean West would repay it?"
"No, me. I'll guarantee it personally."
"But why?"
"Because," I said, frowning, wondering if he had even been listening. "Because I want to build something. Not a football factory - that sounds too industrialised. A football farm. Organic, free-range young men, with space to run around and learn. They can grow at their own pace. Yes, it's a results business but not every result is on the head of every 20-year-old kid, do you know what I mean? And when you have a team that wins a good amount of its games and has cup runs and brings young people into the side and is exciting and the atmosphere's good, anything's possible."
"But you can do that without giving up six million pounds of your own money."
"I won't lose money on this. It's six million to get it started but when we're in League Two we'll have a million a year in TV money and you'll find that other clubs want our players. I'll take my money back - I'm not a charity - but then the rest can stay in the club. My long-term goal is to give it back to the fans."
"Then why did you take it out of fan ownership?"
I tilted my head. So he had done his research. "Because, with mega mega super total respect to the Swedish model, my decisions are always going to be better than those made by committee. If I had to explain every little thing - had an inquest every time I swapped a goalie - I'd never get anything done. No, I took them from tier nine and I'll leave them in tier four. Any higher and it starts to get unsustainable. Any lower and we lose the ability to attract talented players.
"What I want is a place to put guys who aren't quite good enough for Chester, do you get me? These guys are good, they can have a career, they have transfer value, but Chester couldn't give them the minutes. League Two's a great place to have a sort of trampoline club, South Manchester's a great place to have a League Two club, and West are perfect because when they're unhappy with a referee they don't sing the referee's a bastard, they sing the referee's a Tory."
Ulf laughed. "That is very much a point in the club's favour. But Max, you said it yourself, Malmö has too much money. Your proposal would only make us richer."
"There needs to be a payoff on a loan because your capital is at risk."
"I agree, but monetary inducements are not enticing. Do you have anything else to offer?"
"Like what?"
"Your expertise."
I looked up at the weird vents and imagined being sucked up one like the kids in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. "I tried to imagine what I would do if I were in charge of Malmö. You've got spare cash but the stadium is the right size, the training facilities are good, and if you break the wage structure you're in for a world of hurt. So what do you do? It's strangely hard. The only conclusion I could come to was you shouldn't have sacked the Relationism guy. I think he was two managers ago? No offence, Ulf, but you're traditional. I assume you're good but you're from the same mould as everyone else.
"What Malmö needs is for its really talented players to stay one year longer before they move on to bigger leagues. If you could get that, everything would change. So you need a point of difference, something to excite people, but you sacked the most exciting coach in Europe. At that time, he was the only guy doing anything remotely Relationist. If you're gonna do 4-2-3-1 like every other club in the world, why would your best players stay an extra year? They might as well go to Brighton and earn five times the salary and get used to the speed of elite football."
Ulf stared at me hard before mumbling something in Swedish that got a big laugh. "Max,” he said, less aggressively. "I have an idea that might solve multiple problems. A way for you to lend your expertise to us while reassuring our members that any funds we loan to you would be in good hands. You know our squad, I take it?"
"Not really, no. I know the basics but I'll get a proper look in the morning when I watch you train." I looked from the head coach to the fans. "If I'm still invited," I said. "Like a vampire, I need to be invited in."
"Oh, I know you have travelled far and you have come in the middle of an important part of your season. I wouldn't withdraw your invitation just because your suggestion on how to improve our club is to go back to a former head coach." He got good laughs from that. "Please give me one moment."
Ulf spoke in Swedish, rapidly, in a way that excited the audience. They began to nod and smile and nudge each other. Then he said something that provoked HUGE laughter.
It pissed me off.
"Max," he said. "I have a proposal. It seems to me that, much as your achievements are impressive, we would all benefit from a demonstration. After all, what do we know of the English fifth and sixth tiers? And how hard is it, really, to win matches with Bayern Munich? I know, I know, please do not become angry. I simply propose you to give our members the chance to witness the magic up close, yes?" I closed my flappy gob. Where was this going? Ulf continued. "I have heard that one of your, ah, how do you say, party pieces, is to beat a club's first team with its reserves. Tomorrow morning you will come to training. I will take the first team - " This produced loud laughter. "And you can take your pick of the rest of the squad. Beat me and I will vote for you to get your loan."
I sat taller. Fundraising was hard; I was a fish out of water. But here was a chance to do battle in the deep ocean where I had no natural predators. I grinned, showing ten rows of teeth. Just before I said 'challenge accepted' and dropped the mic, I took a breath. I hadn't come to Sweden to get a harmless guy fired. With amazing patience and maturity, I said, "Ulf, to be clear, I came here looking for allies in fighting the good fight. If we fight each other, the bad guys win."
"No, Max, if we fight each other, I win."
I fought to stop my jaw from clenching. To help keep me calm, I turned to my life partner, Emma, who was much more evolved than me. She said, "Get him, Max!"
I had to laugh. I ran the fingers of my left hand through my hair and looked up at the pipes. Maxy boy, the pipes are calling. I wanted to flounce out of the stupid city with its stupid bridge murders and its pointlessly twisty skyscraper, but where would I go? My schedule was tightly set, and if I saw the men's and women's team train I could add fifty or more players to my database. More if I stuck around to watch any youth teams that were in season. "Okay," I said. "It has been far too long since I created a diplomatic incident."
***
While Emma and Briggy laughed and joked with a couple of randos they had invited to dinner - maddening - I spent a distracted evening sketching out a possible theme for one of my mini-essays in The Cestrian, Chester's match day programme.
The piece would be my rankings of each nation's Scandi Noir output and would be published in the event that Ulf beat me and I didn't get any money from this trip. In first place would be Denmark, absolutely clear. Second, Norway. Completely defensible. There was a solid case that Iceland came third. But much as I tried, I couldn't work Finland into fourth place. Sweden was playing hard to get and one of their leading managers was on my case, but I had to live my life with some kind of integrity.
While I popped some food into my mouth (left-handed), the title of the essay popped into my head. With my right hand, I wrote 'Sweden Sour' and underlined it five times.
When I finally put my pen down, I looked around the table to see what the others were talking about. Emma noticed and said, "Max, Olof has a question."
This Olof dude nodded, earnestly, and said, "But why do you rotate goalkeepers?"
Despite my complete and utter mastery of chopsticks, a blob of sweet and sour pork fell to the plate. No doubt my jaw dropped open, too.
Suddenly, the rest of the table was laughing hard. Olof raised his hands. "I'm sorry! Emma made me do it!"
"Babes," I complained. My bodyguard was still convulsing. "Et tu, Briggy?"
"Soz," she said, unapologetically.
***
Wednesday, February 17
I woke up in a pretty good mood. Three things were going to happen. First, I was going to dismantle Ulf like he was a dusty, generic, and unloved piece of flat-pack furniture. Second, I was going to win a vote to get five million pounds. Third, I would add loads of players and coaches to my database. If Malmö had a future superstar on their books, I would act nonchalant and try to do a deal in the summer when, no doubt, Ulf would have been sacked.
Briggy drove us to the Kombihallen, an indoor arena with artificial grass that Malmö used when the weather was bad. When Chester was drenched in cash we would buy something like this, though ours would contain a full-sized pitch. This one was only about 60 by 40 metres, more suitable to 7-a-side than a real match.
When I got onto the playing surface, the first thing I noticed was that there were cameramen everywhere. Someone said they were going to stream the match live to the club's members, which I found hard to believe. There were also hundreds of randos, come to see the stupid foreigner get his arse whipped by Sweden's finest. The first team squad were warming up. I greedily absorbed their numbers.
A first eleven stood out, with CAs ranging from 120 to 130, and PAs five to ten points higher. It was like looking at Wrexham or Blackburn. Good mid-table Championship team. The backup players were a step below. Typically, they had CA 110, PA 120, meaning I wouldn't sign them for Chester.
There was one guy I would keep my eye on, though. He was the team's starting striker, 22-years-old, CA 130, PA 137. The curse valued him at 6 million pounds, so he wasn't someone you would buy to flip at a quick profit. 6 million was probably fair, when I thought about it. He'd get you a decent haul in the Championship. 15 goals a season, maybe. Not a good use of Chester's money because we always needed to look for a profit on a deal, but clubs like Blackburn and Wrexham could do worse. If he was ever nearing the end of his contract I would maybe want to get in touch.
A couple of the backup players were in their early twenties and were 15-20 points away from their ceiling. Buy for one million, train them up, sell for two million. Solid. Unspectacular. Rather like their manager.
One thing the numbers told me was that if Ulf knew his best eleven, which he did, there was no way I could lead the reserves to victory. There would be no glory, no fun, no loan. The morning was poised to turn sour.
The Commander-In-Grief himself came over, flanked by multiple cameras, to get a scene with me. His curse numbers were floating above his head. Decent. Good Tactics and Motivating. He was a disciplinarian. Liked 4-2-3-1. Given equal playing talent, I would beat him five times out of ten with three draws, two defeats. "Good morning, Max! Hope you slept well."
"Amazing, yeah," I said, without enthusiasm.
"Do you know what I think? I think you are quite good at research and you perhaps know my players even better than I do. Let's make this encounter a little more interesting, shall we? We each get a piece of paper and can write down a starting eleven based on the available players you see in front of you. The first one to slap the paper down ends the game, so to speak. When the game ends, any player on your list who is not on mine, you get to use. Think of the implication," he added, as if I was too slow to follow what he had said. "If you finish writing before me, you get to use at least one player that I probably would like to."
"Unless we put the papers down at the same time," I said.
"Ah, yes, that's true. All the more incentive for you to write fast then, eh?"
My pulse was quickening. If I could get a senior defender and a couple of the best midfielders, I could mark the star striker out of the game and cook up a plan to boss midfield. The hope was as delicious as a succulent Chinese meal.
I tried to calm myself a fraction. I had watched enough of the TV show Taskmaster to always be looking for loopholes. Ulf hadn't said I needed to write an entire team. If I quickly wrote six players, working back from the striker to the midfielders, and slammed the paper down, that would end the game. Ulf would start from the goalie, wouldn't he? Plus he was old. He would probably start by writing the date and underlining it twice like he learned in school.
My moronic body produced a jolt of adrenaline - I had just come up with an even more elite plan. I would play it straight and go for the best starting eleven possible. I would most likely get seven or eight of my choices.
I tried not to show how confident I was feeling. "I'm ready," I said.
Ulf smiled. "Someone is bringing a table out. Ah, there it is! Nice and high so I don't have to bend down. At my age, Max..."
While the high round table was being brought onto the pitch, someone handed me a clipboard with a blank piece of paper attached, and a pen.
Ulf explained the game to one of the cameras, told me that there would be a three, two, one countdown and reminded me that when one player slapped the paper down, the other had to stop writing immediately. The way he said it got me frustrated; I gripped the pen harder.
Someone in a Malmö tracksuit called out, in English, three, two, one...
I started scribbling and about four seconds later, slapped the table with the clipboard.
Ulf looked up from what he was writing, legit gobsmacked. "Wha - "
"Done," I said.
"But - "
"I'm done. Stop writing."
He put his pen on the table and reached out to take my clipboard. I let him. "What's this?"
"Squad numbers," I said.
His eyes widened and a smile spread across his lips. It was such an obvious ploy but he hadn't considered it. "I see. This is 3-4-3?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Let's play the match and I'll show you."
Ulf laughed, delighted, but he didn't reply. He was sinking into the world of the numbers I had written. Suddenly, his expression hardened. "I must apologise, Max, but this was not the real test. No, it would be too easy for you to prepare for this overnight, so while this formation is most amusing..." He unclipped the page, showed it to the nearest camera, scrunched the paper up into a little ball and chucked it behind his head. "The real test is to beat me with a team that you have not had the opportunity to study."
Music played - the club's anthem, maybe - and onto the pitch ran twenty-odd players from the women's team. I tried to keep a blank face as I once more gobbled up the data. As well as all the Swedes - mostly blondes called Emma, which I didn't mind one bit - there was a lady from America, one from Algeria, and one on loan from West Ham, which was baffling. The average CA was on a par with Chester, which was not great considering this was the best women's team in Sweden, but there was tons of talent on display. I suspected it was the standard of the league in general holding this group back and nothing to do with their own coaching or determination.
Knowing what was coming, I quickly sorted them into a coherent team. 4-3-3, and if I got the right players I'd have way more flexibility than Ulf.
Alarm bells rang in my mind, though. As Ulf had said, I could have used an algorithm or publicly available data to analyse the men's team. It would have been almost psychotic if I'd done the same with the women. "I need some time to get to know the players," I said, and I could almost see Old Nick sarcastically applauding me for showing some common sense for once.
"That sounds fair," agreed Ulf. "What do you think? One hour?"
One hour watching the women train, not even picking up experience points? Common sense had its limits. "How about twenty minutes and you let me talk to the coaches in private?"
Ulf pulled a face that meant 'what have I gotten myself in for?' but he could hardly refuse such a reasonable request.
For the next twenty minutes, I had the women play 7 against 7 across the width of the pitch with small goals, constantly changing the line ups and positions, making notes on a fresh piece of paper, sometimes asking the women's team's coaches questions to which I already knew the answers.
An absolute farce, but the surrealness of the situation was greatly improving my mood. How could you watch this and not want to drench me in your life savings?
Another thing cheering me up was the near-certainty that I would win this match unless Ulf chose the absolute best eleven players. Even in that scenario, if the curse allowed me to use my boosts - and this was my first match of the season in Sweden, so why wouldn't it? - I would win. It would be tight, but I would back myself. Ulf was sailing towards the reefs; I was feeling a lot more like a shark.
"I'm ready," I said, taking my notes and folding them up so that Ulf couldn't scrunch them into a ball.
I was given a new piece of paper. Three, two, one... Four seconds later I slammed down the clipboard again.
Ulf swore in Swedish. He glared at me, remembered the cameras were on him, and after a lengthy delay, reached out to take the clipboard. Again, I had written only numbers. He made an exasperated noise. "I don't know the squad numbers of the women's team."
I shrugged. "And I don't know the names," I lied, "so we're even. I get all my choices, yes? Let's hurry up and start the match, please. Emma wants to go to the Disgusting Food Museum. She's partial to a bit of ketchup on toast, herself."
Ulf handed my competition entry to the women's team's head coach, who stared at it for ages. "Why do you have Ceder and Aalberg in the front three? Er, that's squad numbers 14 and 29."
"They're flexible," I said. "With those two I can easily switch to 4-5-1 for a while, get more control, then push them back up. With those two you get more out of your defensive shape, which can easily evolve into a 4-4-2 if the oppo is stressing you with balls from the back. Plus if you drop 14 into central midfield, which she's more than capable of, you can drop your 6 into, ah, the 6 role."
"4-1-4-1," she muttered. "Yes, this is interesting but Palmström - the 10 - is one of our best players. We can't leave her out."
"Are you sure?" I said. The 10's Form was pretty abysmal (5-6-6-5), a couple of points lower than most of the ladies who had played the recent matches. "She's talented but..." How could I say she wasn't performing well? I hadn't seen those matches! I didn't even know who they were against. I shrugged. "The other two impressed me more. I want them in my team. You keep Palmström." I clapped my hands. "Right. Are we doing this?"
"You've perked up," said Ulf.
"Yep, because I'm going to annihilate you."
He took his glasses off and stared into the distance. He put them back on. "Your methods are fascinating but if you were such an expert you would know that we couldn't play a real match on a pitch of this size. However, the dimensions are perfect for..."
The same music as before played, and I was even more convinced that it was Malmö's theme tune.
This time, loads of fourteen-year-old boys ran onto the pitch, waving their arms around and yelling. "Jesus Christ," I said, annoyed. Didn't they have school? And were we going to go down to the under sixes?
But that was when I realised what was happening. Ulf Berggren had played me like a fiddle. He had stitched me up like a kipper.
The fucker had tricked me into revealing the optimal line-up for his squad and the women's team! All he had to do was get in my face and wind me up a bit. Make me dislike him. For him it was a small price to pay considering we would most likely never meet again! And now I was going to sort and classify one of the club's youth teams, too. What would the club do? Offer the 'Max Best eleven' instant extensions to whatever youth contract they were on?
Now that I knew Ulf's dastardly plan, the only way for me to get one over on him was to deliberately lose. But if I lost heavily, Ulf would simply ignore this part of the process. At most, it might make him doubt my previous choices, but it was surely plain that I believed in the teams I had picked in the first two rounds of this mini-game. If I did lose this youth team match, I would give up whatever chance I had of the club's members voting to lend me money. I was stuck.
"Max?" Ulf said, pretending to be worried about my sudden change in mood. "Are you quite well?"
He knew. He knew that I had worked it out. The slimy fucker was enjoying himself. "I was just thinking about my favourite movie." Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs NoveI-Fire.ɴet
"What's that?" he said. "The Usual Suspects?" A movie about a guy who thinks he's smart getting utterly and deliciously outwitted by someone who pretends to be a little dim. Ulf was rinsing me about as hard as I could ever remember being rinsed, and it was all going on camera so he could watch it again and again.
"What an amazing guess," I said. My eyes tracked to the area around the table, where the scrunched-up team sheet had vanished. Even at the time, it seemed an odd thing to do, but now it was clear why he'd done that. To annoy me! To provoke me into going hard at the second round, but only after he had shown my work to the camera. He had probably planned to pick up the ball when no-one was looking, but just in case someone cleaned it up before then, my line-up was on tape. The sneaky, sneaky fuck! I looked over to the pitch, where the young men were running around, passing footballs to each other, taking shots. Okay, so I had to try to win this match but I didn't have to give Ulf the satisfaction of beating me in three rounds out of three. I knew a way to get at least some of my dignity back. "I am a little pressed for time so let's do it like this. You pick one boy, and so will I."
"Ah, we pick the teams one by one? That takes me back to my school days."
"No," I said. "The boys will pick one by one. They know their mates, don't they? They'll pick more or less even teams, won't they?"
Ulf was miles ahead on the scores, so he smiled and said, "Absolutely fair." He tapped the clipboard and twinkled at me. "Why didn't I think of that?"
"Since we're skipping the part where I watch the players," I said, "maybe we can agree to have rolling subs. That way I can quickly get to know the lads and not make them suffer when I make more of my inevitable mistakes."
"Sure, sure," said Ulf, not realising that he had just supercharged my Bench Boost perk. He went off, smiling, while I scanned for the boy who had the highest Influence. I would want him as my captain. But would I want him picking the team? I did a new search for the kid with the highest Decisions score.
***
Much as we all wanted to get to Bergen by driving up the coast and passing through Gothenburg and Oslo, it would have taken yonks. The only real option was to drive back to Copenhagen and get a flight. Not ideal, but we could come back and take the scenic route some other time. On this trip there was one thing that mattered above all: in the morning I would finally get my eyes on Helge Hagen, the next great Norwegian striker, the heir apparent to Haaland.
We got on the bridge from The Bridge again. I had slunk into the front passenger seat, even though I always sat in the back with Emma when we had a driver. That showed how scrambled my brain was. I'd done everything I could to sway the vote, which would happen 'at the end of the week', according to Hanna.
After a few minutes on the bridge, Briggy said, "Well. That showed him."
"Huh," I said, lifting my head out of my hand. "What? Who?"
Briggy glanced away from the road. "Ulf Berggren. You made mincemeat out of him."
"Other way round," I said, gloomily.
From the seat behind, Emma tutted. She tolerated me having bad moods - within reason. She knew I didn't travel well and made allowances, and there were other times she accepted some tetchiness was only natural. After a tough defeat, yes. If I had a transfer bid turned down, yes. If my pizza wasn't tomatoey enough, yes. If I won a match, no fucking way. "It was about a hundred-nil!"
"I wasn't keeping score," I said, touching the window, following the tracks of the raindrops.
"A hundred-nil," repeated Emma.
"Eight-three," I muttered. The match had only lasted for twenty minutes and for the last five I'd forgotten what my mission was and wandered onto the pitch to give my players hands-on coaching about body positions during defensive and offensive actions, taking aggressive first touches, and some more 'social' coaching like when you let a guy overlap you and didn't pass the ball to him, always acknowledge that you saw his run.
Briggy said, "You're sweet with the young players, anyway. It's a good contrast to your usual..." She bit her lip and concentrated on the road.
I peered out across the Øresund strait, not sure about whether to admit I'd just had my arse handed to me.
I didn't mind Ems and Briggy laughing at me - it was going to be a long trip and we needed something to talk about - but was it a risk to tell them this particular story? I let my eyes unfocus. Ulf didn't think I had supernatural help, did he? He just thought I was a natural talent and that he had got me to use it for free. The topic felt safe enough.
"Right," I said, squirming into a more upright position. I turned my face towards Emma so she could see I was about to tell a funny story and that I wasn't going to be in a mood for the entire morning. "I just got my arse whupped." Now that the ordeal was over, I found I could laugh about it. "Absolutely blasted. He took me to the cleaners."
"Who did?" said Briggy.
"Ulf."
"How?"
"I'll tell you the whole story," I said, opening a flask so I could take a swig. Staying hydrated helped me be less grumpy. I did it for Emma.
"We could go back and I could beat him up for you," said Briggy.
"What!" I said, laughing. "No way!" I took another swig and smiled. "I'm just starting to like him."