Glory Of The Football Manager System

At home, she cooked. Chicken. Roasted. With potatoes and green beans and a sauce that she made from the pan juices and a splash of white wine and that was so good I asked her to marry me, which was a joke, which we both knew was a joke, and which we both knew was not entirely a joke.

”Ask me properly,” she said, pouring the sauce.

”I will. When the time is right.”

”When will the time be right?”

”When I have a ring and a plan and a speech that’s better than anything I’ve said in a press conference.”

”That’s a low bar, Danny. Your press conferences are twelve minutes of saying nothing.”

”Exactly. The proposal will be thirteen minutes of saying everything.”

She laughed. I pulled her close, my arms around her waist, her back against my chest, the wooden spoon still in her hand, the sauce still simmering. I kissed her neck. She tilted her head to give me access, the gesture automatic, the intimacy of two bodies that knew each other’s geography. My hands on her hips. Her body leaning back into mine. The kitchen was warm, the chicken resting, the evening settling.

”The sauce,” she said.

”The sauce can wait.”

”The sauce cannot wait. The sauce is at a critical juncture.”

”The sauce is always at a critical juncture. Every time I touch you, the sauce is at a critical juncture.”

”That’s because you have terrible timing.”

”I have perfect timing. I scored at Anfield in the eighty-seventh minute with an eighteen-year-old I coached myself.”

”Blake scored at Anfield. You stood on the touchline and didn’t celebrate.”

”I celebrate internally.”

”You celebrate here,” she said, turning in my arms, the wooden spoon between us, her green eyes close, her mouth closer. ”You celebrate with me. In the kitchen. Where nobody can see.”

She kissed me. The wooden spoon pressed against my chest, the sauce dripping onto my shirt, her hands in my hair, my hands finding the curve of her waist, then lower, my palms against the denim of her jeans, pulling her closer.

She made a sound against my mouth that was not a word and was not a protest and was the sound that Emma made when she had stopped thinking about sauce and started thinking about something else.

”Dinner’s going to be late,” she said.

”Dinner can be late.”

Dinner was late.

Day two. Wednesday. The morning was slower. We stayed in bed until ten, which was the longest I had stayed in bed since the Croydon flat and which felt like an act of rebellion against every schedule and every calendar and every matchday protocol that had governed my life since August.

Emma was reading, propped against the headboard, her glasses on, a book in her hands, her legs stretched out, her feet on my shins, using me as a footrest the way she used me as a radiator, the way she used me as everything, because Emma’s relationship with my body was both romantic and functional and she saw no contradiction between the two.

I was lying beside her, my head on the pillow, watching her read. The way her eyes moved across the page. The way she turned the pages with her right hand while her left hand rested on my chest, the fingers occasionally tracing patterns on my skin that she was not aware she was making.

”Stop watching me read,” she said, not looking up.

”I like watching you read.”

”It’s unsettling.”

”You watch me sleep.”

”That’s different. You look peaceful when you sleep. I look like a librarian when I read.”

”I like librarians.”

”You like my legs.”

”I like your legs and your brain and the way you hold a book and the way your left hand moves on my chest when you’re not paying attention. I like everything about you, Emma. Including the librarian.”

She looked at me over her glasses. Then she closed the book, took off her glasses, put both items on the bedside table, and turned to face me, her body shifting, the sheet moving, her hand on my jaw.

”Tell me about Moss Side,” she said.

I told her. Not all of it. Not the version that Elena would hear when she interviewed me for the documentary, which would be composed and articulated and designed for public consumption.

The version that existed underneath. The version that I had never told anyone, because some stories are not for cameras and are not for press conferences and are not for podcasts. They are for the person who is lying beside you in bed on a Wednesday morning with her hand on your face and her eyes on yours and the patience to listen without judgement.

I told her about my dad. About losing him. About the flat afterwards, the silence that filled the rooms he used to fill, the way my mum stopped cooking for a month because she couldn’t stand making food that nobody was going to eat.

About the nights when she worked double shifts at the hospital and I was alone, twelve years old, heating beans on a stove because beans were what we could afford and because I had taught myself to cook them without burning the pan, which was the first thing I had ever taught myself and which was, in retrospect, the first act of management: taking a situation that was inadequate and making it function.

I told her about the estate. About the boys who went the other direction. About the friends I had at twelve who were gone by sixteen, swallowed by the things that swallowed boys in Moss Side when nobody was watching.

About the choice that wasn’t really a choice, because football was not an escape from Moss Side. Football was the thing that kept me in Moss Side without being consumed by it.

I told her things that I did not put into words for this Chapter, because some conversations belong to the two people having them and to nobody else.

She listened. She did not interrupt. She did not cry. She did not perform empathy. She lay beside me and listened the way she did everything: with total attention, without reservation, without any interest in performing the emotion when she could simply feel it.

When I finished, she said one thing: ”Thank you for trusting me with that.”

Then she kissed me, slowly, and we stayed in bed for another hour, and the morning became the afternoon, and the afternoon became the evening, and the four days continued.

Day three. Thursday. I went to Selhurst Park.

Not for football. For children.

Crystal Palace’s community programme ran a schools initiative that brought children from local primary schools to the ground for educational visits.

The programme had been running for three years, funded by the club and supported by the local council, and it served approximately two thousand children a year from schools in Croydon, Norwood, Thornton Heath, Penge, and Anerley.

They came in groups of thirty, toured the stadium, met a player or a coach, and left with a Palace shirt and the memory of standing on the pitch where their heroes played.

Parish had asked me to visit a group on Thursday morning. Forty children from a primary school in Thornton Heath, seven and eight years old, accompanied by four teachers and a teaching assistant named Lorraine.

Lorraine. Of course.

She was standing in the car park when I arrived, not beside a broken minibus this time, but beside a brand-new Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 519 in full Crystal Palace livery, the red and blue stripes running the length of the vehicle, the Palace crest on the side, the words ”Crystal Palace Community” printed beneath the windows, the number plate personalised by Parish’s office: CP FC 001.

Twenty-one seats. Heating on both sides. Suspension that worked. Brakes that stopped. An exhaust that did not rely on cable ties and optimism.

Lorraine was standing beside it with her hands on her hips, the same posture she had adopted beside the broken bus on the pavement in Anerley, except this time the expression on her face was not frustration.

It was something else. Something that Lorraine, who had spent fourteen years fixing a broken vehicle with her own hands and who treated sentiment the way she treated Brighton Football Club, with suspicion and resistance, was trying very hard not to show.

”Morning, Lorraine.”

”Morning, Danny.” She looked at the Sprinter. She looked at me. She looked at the Sprinter again. ”It’s got cup holders.”

”It’s got cup holders.”

”The old bus didn’t have cup holders. Malcolm’s been balancing his tea on his knee for nine years.”

”Malcolm’s knee can rest now.”

”His hip can rest, too. The seats have lumbar support. Lumbar support, Danny. On a supporters’ bus. From Peckham.” She shook her head. ”My lot are going to lose their minds.”

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.