Glory Of The Football Manager System

Now Bayern wanted to take him home.

”How serious are they?”

”Serious. And here’s the part, son. The lad wants it.”

God.

”He’s not kicked up, mind,” Dougie added. ”No dummy out the pram, no agent leaking to the papers. Knocked on my door like a grown man and told me straight.”

”Bayern’s home. It’s the one club he’d leave us for. Asked us not to make it a war, wanted me hearing it from him before I heard it off anyone else.”

And that changed it. If Bayern were dragging him out against his will, I’d have had Dougie bolt every door in the building.

But the lad wanted it. And you don’t keep a man who wants to be somewhere else. You get his price and you shake his hand.

”So what are we asking?”

”Eighty million.”

I let that one sit alongside the sixty for Bojan.

Eighty million. For a lad I’d bought for five off a clause nobody else read. Sixteen times what we paid. This club had lost its mind and I loved it.

”And Bayern?”

”Bayern want to pay sixty and shake on it like they’re doing us a favour.” A dry note. ”So we’re miles apart and there’s a way to go yet. They’ll come again, we’ll say eighty again. That’s a negotiation, son, not a crisis, and I’ll not blink first.”

”If they get to the number, he goes with our blessing and a thank you. If they don’t, he stays and he’s a pro about it, because that’s the sort he is. Either road, we’re fine.”

”Seventy-five or he stays,” I said. ”Don’t come off it a penny, Dougie. And if he goes, he goes sent off right. He never once mucked us about. He knocked on your door like a man. We remember that.”

”Aye. We do. Go back to your tournament, son. I’ll hold the fort.”

I put the Palace business out of my head and went back into the football.

We trained that afternoon, Spain in three days and a back four to drill. I put the phone in a drawer, thunk, and was the Morocco manager again for two hours, the white Voronezh sky sat low over the lot of us.

The lads still had Wednesday in them. You could see it in the way they trained, hard and sharp and angry. The tackles flew in slightly too hard, thud, the passes zipped across the turf, sharp and flat.

We drilled the trap we’d drawn up in the video room, the one that hands Spain the ball and starves the two who actually open a door.

And I watched Hakimi.

Pheep!

Nineteen years old, flying up that right flank in a rondo like the grass owed him money, and every time he opened up and went, studs tk-tk-tk across the turf, I felt the same thing I’d felt the first time I pulled his numbers up on a screen eighteen months ago.

[Target: Achraf Hakimi] [Position: D/WB (R)] [Age: 19]

[Current Ability (CA): 138] [Potential Ability (PA): 178]

[Pace: 17] [Acceleration: 18] [Stamina: 16] [Tactical Awareness: 12 (Improving)]

I’ve had a folder on this lad three inches thick since spring. Best young full-back in Europe, and back then barely a soul had worked it out. One of the few who had was me.

And now here I was. Not squinting at him off a laptop. Stood ten yards away with a whistle round my neck, coaching him, watching him up close every day. The one man alive with a folder that thick and a front-row seat, both at once.

He whipped a cross in with the outside of his boot, thwack, and En-Nesyri buried it, and somewhere in Madrid or Munich a scout wrote a note.

The whole world was looking at Morocco now. The robbed team. And every camera pointed at this squad was pointed at him too, this kid tearing up the right at a World Cup, his price climbing by a number I could nearly watch going up.

Wednesday’s robbery had a cost nobody had clocked yet. It had made my transfer target famous. Three more games and he’d be gone somewhere I couldn’t reach, for money I couldn’t match, and the folder three inches thick would be worth the paper and nothing else.

I got them showered and fed. Then I went up to my room, shut the door, and rang Sarah, and had her pull Dougie onto the line, because this one needed the both of them.

”Daniel,” Sarah answered. ”If this is about the fitness block, I’ve already,”

”It’s not the block, Sarah. Sit down, the pair of you. I want to do something, and I want you to talk me out of it if it’s daft. I don’t think it’s daft.”

”I’m here,” Dougie said. ”Go on, son.”

”Achraf Hakimi. I want him. Now. This window. Before this tournament’s out.”

Quiet on the line. The two of them running the sum I’d already run.

”Daniel,” Sarah said, careful. ”He’s playing a World Cup. His price was climbing before Wednesday and it’s gone through the roof since. Six months ago we could’ve had a conversation. Now every big club in Europe’s watching the exact lad you are. Why now? Why not let the noise die down first?”

”Because it isn’t going to die down, Sarah. It’s going to get louder. Every game he plays he gets dearer. There’s no version of this where we wait and he comes cheaper. The cheapest that lad will ever be again is today.”

”He’s not wrong,” Dougie said, slow. ”It’s the coldest kind of logic, but he’s not wrong. And we’ve the Bojan money sat there doing nothing. Sixty million. You could do a lot of damage with sixty million.”

And here was the bit I couldn’t say. Not to Sarah. Not to Dougie. Not to a living soul on this earth.

Because I didn’t just think Hakimi would be worth it. I knew. I’d seen his ceiling written out in a number on a screen only I can read.

And there’s no version of me that can ever explain to my own sporting director that I’ve got a thing in my head that reads a nineteen-year-old’s whole career off a rondo.

So I couldn’t make the case I actually had. I had to make the one a normal manager makes.

”I’ve watched him every day for three weeks,” I said, which was God’s honest truth. ”Up close. In the flesh. Not off a video, not off a scout’s report. I’ve coached him.”

”And I’m telling the pair of you, on everything I’ve got, this is a top-of-the-world player, and we’ve a window of about ten days before the whole planet catches up to what I already know. I’ve never been this sure of a signing in my life.”

”There’s a problem,” Sarah said. ”A big one. You’re their manager.”

And there it was. If it got out that the Morocco gaffer was trying to buy his own right-back mid-tournament, they’d bury us. And they’d be right to.

”I know.”

”You can’t be seen within a mile of this.”

”Which is why it’s yours. Not mine. Both of you. I don’t ring him. I don’t hint. I don’t breathe a syllable to that lad or anyone in that federation.”

”As far as this camp’s concerned I’m his gaffer for a World Cup and nothing more, and I’ll hold that wall up like my life hangs off it.”

”You do it quiet. Dougie talks to his club, never to us. I never touch it. I’ve told you what I want. Now I go back to picking a team to beat Spain and I don’t think about it again till the tournament’s done.”

”The partnership might open a door,” Dougie said, thinking aloud. ”We’re building an academy with these people. There’s goodwill there wasn’t a year ago.”

”Careful with that, Dougie. Use the relationship, don’t abuse it. These people have been good to me. I’ll not have Palace going through a partner’s pockets. Straight deal, proper money, all above board. If we can’t do it clean, we don’t do it at all.”

Sarah was quiet a moment. ”You’re sure.”

”I’m sure.”

”Then I build the file, and Dougie makes the first move the day after Morocco are out. Not one hour before, whatever the score.” A breath.

”And if you’re right about this lad, Daniel, it might be the best thing you’ve done since you walked in the door. And if you’re wrong, it’s sixty million reasons the board never lets you near a chequebook again.”

”I’m not wrong.”

”No,” she said. ”You never are. Which is the only reason I’m not hanging up. Go and win your football match.”

The line went dead.

I set the phone on charge and stood at the window a minute. Voronezh out there in the white summer night, the base lit up, twenty-three lads down the corridor sleeping off a session, three days out from the biggest game of their lives.

The window, the winger, the kid I couldn’t ring. It could all keep till July.

First there was Spain. Three days. A place in the last sixteen, and a hundred million people still screaming for a justice we could only give them the one way.

I turned the light off. Click.

The transfer window could wait.

Spain couldn’t.