Glory Of The Football Manager System

[Pittsburgh. Thursday 26 July 2018. 17:04.]

Hakimi.

The phone did nothing for about 90 seconds and I stood in that lobby and let it not do anything.

Then it went.

Bzz.

Mr Walsh. September works. Lisbon. Bring the boy from Morocco if he will come.

JM.

I read it 3 times, put the phone in my pocket, and went and found Bray in the bar with a coffee and a laptop, watching Bayern Munich beat Juventus in Philadelphia on a 6 inch screen with the sound off.

”Mendes said yes.”

”To what?”

”To 20 minutes in September.”

”Aye, well.” Bray did not look up. ”That is 6 weeks away and Manchester City are in 10 days, and I have got Lewandowski taking his shirt off on this screen, so sit down and look at that instead.”

Clk. He turned it round.

Robert Lewandowski had scored in the 34th minute and he was walking back to the halfway line like a man who had put a bin bag out.

”How many is that?”

”4 friendlies, 4 goals,” Bray said. ”And he is 29 and he has been at the same club 4 years and there is not 1 thing on this tape that tells me he is bored of it.”

We sat and watched 20 more minutes of it and neither of us said anything useful.

Then I went to bed at 10 and got up at 6, and Axel Tuanzebe signed for Crystal Palace at 20 past 11 the next morning in a room at Beckenham with 3 people in it, while I was 3,500 miles away eating a banana in a hotel.

Dougie sent me the photograph at 11:24 our time. Boy in a Palace polo, holding a shirt up, doing the face they all do.

Then he sent a second one nobody was supposed to see.

Tuanzebe on his own in the empty canteen with a plate in front of him and Sarah sat opposite, and Sarah is talking with both hands, and he has stopped eating to listen.

Bzz.

She has had him 4 hours and he has met the medical staff, the analysts, both academy coaches and a man who does the pitches.

Bzz.

Danny he asked her for the video files. On his first day. He wants the Benfica match and the last 6 league games.

I stood in an American hotel corridor and read that twice.

We are not flying him out. There is no point. He would land on Saturday, sit on a bench on Sunday against Bayern Munich, and fly home Tuesday having done nothing except lose 3 days of the only 10 he has got.

So he stays in London and he learns the building instead, and when we land on Tuesday he has already been in it a week.

Sarah had that idea in about 4 seconds on a phone at half 6 in the morning.

A training camp is not 10 matches. It is 10 days, and the matches are the 2 bits everybody else sees.

This is a day in Pittsburgh.

06:30. Rebecca and 2 physios in a function room with 30 sets of overnight numbers off the wrist units, and 4 names on a board that I am not allowed to argue with.

Squeak. A marker on a whiteboard at 6 in the morning is a horrible noise.

07:00. Breakfast.

Clatter. Scrape.

Marcus at the end of a long table with a laptop, telling anybody who asks and several who do not what they weighed this morning against what they weighed on Tuesday.

”Marcus, man.”

”I am reading it out, Christian, I did not put it there.”

07:40. 20 minutes in a hotel meeting room. Not a team meeting. 20 minutes, 1 topic, no laptops.

08:00 to 09:20. Grass, because it is 32 degrees by 11 and Rebecca told me on Wednesday night that if we went out at midday she would put it in writing.

09:20. Ice, food, and 3 hours where nobody is allowed to be a footballer.

”AAAAH.” That is Jarrod Bowen getting into a bath at 20 past 9 every morning of his life, and he has never once done it quietly.

14:30. Second session, indoors or short, and shorter than anybody expects.

17:00. Video in 3 groups of 10, 25 minutes each, and I take all 3 of them because I am not sending a defender a clip through an analyst and calling it coaching.

I have run a pre-season 3 times and I have cut something out of it every year.

The first year we did 2 hours in the morning and 90 minutes in the afternoon and by day 6 they were slower on the Thursday than they had been on the Monday, and Marcus put it on a graph and I looked at the graph and stopped arguing.

Now the sessions are 80 minutes and there are 2 of them and everything in them has a reason I can say out loud in 1 sentence.

If I cannot say why we are doing a drill in 1 sentence, we do not do the drill. It is the only coaching philosophy I have got, and it took me 2 years and a graph to find it.

I took the back 4 on my own for the first 40 minutes and gave the rest to Sarah, because there is 1 thing on that tape from Wednesday night and it is mine to fix.

4 defenders. 2 strikers. No goalkeeper, no goals, and a line of cones across the pitch 40 yards out.

”Alexandre. Christian. When I say, 1 of you drops.”

”Drops where?”

”Wherever you want. That is the point of it.”

Prrrrp.

Alexandre Pato dropped 8 yards off Ibrahima Konaté and turned to receive.

And Konaté went with him.

Prrrrp.

”Stop. Everybody stop.”

I walked out to him. He was 8 yards in front of where he had started, with 40 yards of open grass behind his left shoulder and James Tarkowski marking nobody at all.

”Ibrahima. Turn round.”

Shhk. Studs on dry grass.

He turned round.

”What is behind you?”

”Nothing, coach.”

”Correct. Go back.”

We did it again. He went with him again.

Prrrrp.

”Again.”

Third time he held for about a second and a half and then went.

Fourth time he held.

Fifth time Pato dropped 12 yards instead of 8 and Konaté went with him like a man on a string.

Tk.

Christian Benteke ran straight through the space where a centre-half should have been, and nobody touched him for 40 yards.

”IBRA! IBRA!” That is Tarkowski, 30 yards behind him, shouting at a man who cannot hear him.

Prrrrp.

”Ibrahima.”

”I know.”

”You do not know, because you have done it 3 times in 6 minutes and you did it 4 times on Wednesday night against Benfica and 1 of them is in the back of our net.”

He looked at the grass.

Prrrrp.

He is 19 years old and he is 6 foot 4 and he cost this football club about as much as a used car, and every single thing that is wrong with him is the same thing that is right with him. He wants the ball more than he wants his position.

”James.”

James Tarkowski came over.

”Tell him what you were doing.”

”Shouting at him,” Tarkowski said.

”And?”

”And he cannot hear me because he is already going.”

”So what do you do?”

Tarkowski thought about it for a second. He is 25 and he has played 90 matches at this level and he does not say much.

”I go earlier,” he said. ”I do not shout. I just go across and he can feel me there.”

We ran it 9 more times.

Prrrrp. Shhk. Tk.

Tarkowski moved before Konaté did, every time, without a word.

By the 7th one Konaté held, twice, on his own.

By the 9th one he held and pointed at Pato and let him have the ball.

Pato turned round with it, and there was a 6 foot 4 centre-half and a 6 foot 1 centre-half stood exactly where they should have been, and nothing on at all.

”Ah, no.” Alexandre Pato, to nobody, in Portuguese, and he put his hands on his hips and laughed.

Prrrrp.

”Right. Water.”

Bray came and stood next to me by the mannequins.

”9 out of 11 on Wednesday.”

”11 out of 11 by the 15th of August.”

”Aye,” he said. ”And Lewandowski on Sunday.”

And then we did the thing I have been putting off since the 20th of July.

Prrrrp.

”Penalties.”

There is a noise a squad makes when you say that word in July. It is not a cheer. It is 30 men going ohhhh like somebody has been sent to the headmaster.

”All of you.”

”Gaffer.”

”All of you, Christian. 5 each. Goalkeepers as well.”

”Goalkeepers?”

”Michael Steele is taking 5 penalties this morning and so are you.”

Hahahaha.

Marcus had 2 cameras on it before I finished the sentence, 1 behind the goal and 1 on the side, because Marcus films everything and because he had asked me on Tuesday if we were ever going to do this properly.

40 minutes. 30 players. 150 penalties.

I have done this at 3 football clubs and I have never once had it tell me what I expected.

Christian Benteke went first, because Christian Benteke was always going to go first.

He put his 5 down in a row before anybody else had got their boots on.

27 years old, number 9 at this football club, 15 in a Premier League season, 2 penalties taken here and 2 scored.

First 3 went in. Hard, left corner, keeper the wrong way, no fuss at all.

Then the 4th.

He changed his run. I watched him do it. 2 steps became 3, and he leaned back on the last one, and it went over the bar and into the seats and a lad in a Bayern tracksuit picked it up 40 yards behind the goal and threw it back.

Aaaah.

He put the 5th down and stood over it for about 8 seconds. 6 seconds too long, and everybody on that pitch could count.

Then he hit it hard, down the middle, at a height a goalkeeper does not have to move for.

Nick Pope caught it against his chest and did not go down.

Thump.

***

Thank you to Sir nameyelus and Kostas_Gounakis for the support.