Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Beckenham. Thursday, 31 May 2018.]

What it was doing, it turned out, was something the English game had never seen before.

Managers leave clubs. That is old. Managers get poached, sacked, walk out, retire, go upstairs.

The game has a shape for every one of those and a back page ready to print. What the game did not have a shape for was a manager of a Premier League club, a man who had won a European trophy eight days ago, being lent to a national team for a World Cup, in the middle of a transfer window, eighteen days before a ball was kicked, and then handed back.

There was no precedent.

Nobody could reach for the last time this happened, because there was no last time.

A club had never done it in modern-day football.

A federation had never asked. And so the thing the picture did, when it went out at one o’clock, was not break like ordinary news. It went off like a flare over a field, and every paper, desk, phone and pundit in the country turned at once to look at the same light.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzzbuzzbuzz.

My phone had not stopped since Emma walked in holding hers like it had bitten her. I turned it face down on the worktop and let it rattle the wood, brrt, brrt, the kettle ticking as it cooled behind me, because there was nothing on it I needed and everything on it I had expected.

”Don’t read it,” Emma said. She had her own phone in both hands, thumbs flying, doing her job even now, because a story this size was three of her jobs at once. ”Whatever you’re about to do, don’t read it. I read mine for both of us, that’s the deal, you remember the deal.”

I remembered the deal.

The English media did the thing the English media does when it cannot decide whether to build a man or burn him, which is both, on the same page, above and below the fold.

By half one there were two stories running side by side and they contradicted each other and nobody minded. One was the romance.

Local lad, council pitch to a World Cup dugout, the fairy tale with a Manchester accent. The other was the knife, and the knife came out faster and went in harder than I think even Jessica had braced me for.

INSULT TO PALACE. WALSH WORLD Cup VANITY TRIP. WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS.

A former England man I will not name was on a lunchtime show inside the hour, the studio lights humming off the gloss of the desk, calling it the most arrogant thing he had seen a young manager do, a lad with one good season swanning off to a World Cup like he had earned a seat at that table, and what did it say about Crystal Palace that they would let their manager go and play with somebody else’s toys for a summer.

Another, a man who has managed nothing and said everything, asked live on air whether I had even been to Morocco, whether I could speak a word to my own players, whether I could name their back four without a sheet, and answered all three himself, no, no, and no, and sat back like he had won something.

He was right about two of those. He was wrong about the middle one, and he did not know it, and I was not about to tell him.

They were right about most of it. I had never set foot in Morocco. I did not have a word of Arabic and would not pretend to.

But the French they had me down as faking, I had, and properly, not the waiter’s stuff you order a coffee with, the real thing, enough to stand in a room and run a session and tell a man exactly what I wanted off him without a third voice in the middle turning my words into somebody else’s.

Half that squad played their club football in France or spoke French before they spoke anything, and the pundit who had just told the nation I could not say a word to my own players had handed me the one card I most wanted to keep face down.

Let them think I needed a translator to say good morning.

The first day in the mountains would put that right, and it would land all the harder for nobody seeing it coming.

That was the clever part of the attack and the hole in it at once. Every brick of it was nearly true, and stacked up they built a wall that said fraud without one of them having to say the word. But a wall with one brick missing is a wall you can walk through, and they had just told me which brick.

”They’re loving this,” Emma said, not looking up.

”They’ve not had a story this good since, well. Since you, last time. You’re very good for their numbers, Daniel, you should send an invoice.” She put the phone down at last and looked at me, and the work face came off and the other one came on. ”How are you? Actually. Not the version you’ll give Jessica.”

”I’m grand.”

”Daniel.”

”I am. I promise you I am.” And the strange thing was it was true, and I told her the true reason, because you tell Emma the true reason.

”They can write what they like about a man who took a job. They’ve not seen the team. I have. Everything they’re printing is about me, and I stopped being the story the second I read that squad. They just don’t know it yet.”

She looked at me a moment longer, checking, the way she checks, and then she believed me, because it was real, and she crossed the kitchen and kissed me once, hard, her hands coming up to my face, and stayed there a second with her forehead on mine.

”Then go and make them look stupid,” she said. ”Quietly. The way you do.”

”Compte sur moi,” I said. Low, rough, right against her mouth. Without thinking.

Emma went entirely still. The clever, professional armour she had put on for the podcast drained right out of her face, and for a second, the woman who has a sharp line for everything was left with absolutely nothing, in either language.

I felt the sudden, involuntary shudder ripple through her body. She shifted her weight, pressing her thighs tightly together as a sharp, heavy flush crept up her throat.

”What,” she breathed. Barely a word. Just air.

”You heard.”

”How long.” Her fist closed tight in the fabric of my shirt, anchoring her, because her knees had just lost their architecture.

The sound of the French rolling off my Manchester accent had done something immediate and devastating to her.

I could feel the sudden, pooling heat of it radiating off her, the heavy drop of tension low in her stomach making her press flush against my hips to chase the pressure. ”How long have you been able to do that and not told me?”

”A while.”

”A while.” She pressed her full, heavy weight into me, the dark denim of her jeans dragging hard against my front. Her breathing had gone completely shallow, her eyes going dark. ”Say something else. I don’t even care what. Just say it again.”

I slid a hand to the small of her back, gripping her firm to take her weight. ”Plus tard,” I murmured, my voice dropping an octave, pressing the words directly into the sensitive skin below her ear.

She let out a wrecked, quiet gasp, squeezing her thighs shut to catch the sudden, heavy wetness that the low vibration of the vowels had just pulled right out of her.

I left it there. I stepped back, deliberately breaking the contact, because I had a country waiting, and if I gave her one more word of it, she was going to drag me to the floor and neither of us was leaving the kitchen.

”Later,” I translated, watching her pupils dilate.

”You are not allowed to drop that on me and walk out.” But she was already letting go of the shirt, smoothing it flat, putting herself back together a piece at a time, her chest still rising and falling fast. The look she gave me promised the plus tard would be collected with interest.

”Nobody’s heard you do that, have they. I got it first.” She stepped back, her voice still a fraction huskier than usual. ”Go. Read your list. Sunday, we are revisiting this.”

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the support.