Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

7.

Wednesday, February 17

I woke with a start, panicking that someone was about to hit me with a club. The club morphed into a flamingo - bizarre - before the sensible part of my brain chuckled in a soothing tone, ’It’s only a bedside lamp, old chap.’

My heart rate stopped spiking and I groggily took in my surroundings. The lamp really was shaped like a flamingo. The windows were covered by heavy brown curtains, the wallpaper sported a 70s-style rose pattern, and in one corner of the room was a ceiling-high, long-leafed plant. It was the perfect room for a Scandinavian Miss Marple to do her knitting while telling a detective that he had arrested the wrong man. So why was I reacting to it so negatively?

To my left, Emma was propped up on a couple of pillows, reading Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, which was about dragons. I got the sense that the book was something of a guilty pleasure because she refused to answer questions about it. ”The chapters are really short,” was all she had told me, with great enthusiasm. When I asked why she liked dragons, she had continued reading while she mumbled, ”They’re flying horses.”

So she was happy enough.

”Hotel Charmante,” I said. ”Good Norwegian name.” We were in the Grande Chambre, the biggest room, basically the most expensive room available in Bergen. It was all good quality, nice and quiet. Should have been a good night’s sleep. ”We didn’t stay overnight in Sweden,” I mused. ”Almost feels like we never went there.”

”Hmm,” said Emma. She did the impossible - she tore her gaze away from the page. ”You were restless.”

”I don’t know why,” I said. ”Bed’s really comfy. Pillows are good.”

She gave me a look I knew well; she was going to tease me about what happened in Sweden. She decided not to, presumably so she could get back to her dragons. ”It’s the eaves.”

”The what?”

She jabbed her thumb upwards. ”Whatever that’s called.”

It took me a second to realise what she meant, but suddenly it all became obvious. Above our head was a support beam, covered in plaster and wallpapered like the rest of the room, but nothing could disguise the fact that it was looming over us, counting the days before it crashed down onto someone’s skull. It was late when we checked in so I hadn’t noticed. ”Bad feng shui!” I said, delighted to have cracked the case. ”But how did that stop me sleeping if I wasn’t even aware of it?”

”Magic,” she said.

I hopped out of bed, threw the curtains open, and headed towards the really beautiful bathroom. ”There’s no such thing as magic,” I said, as I grabbed my towel. Then I went into the shower to think about how to spend my experience points.

***

The first thing to do was get a vague idea of how much XP I would get on this trip. My starting point was clear.

XP balance: 5,730

Tonight there would be no matches to attend and instead of dragging Emma and Briggy to some five-a-side place, I had generously said they could choose what to do, though it was so cold and wet there wasn’t much choice. Restaurant, bar, or stay in and read.

Tomorrow evening, Norwegian side Molde were in the UEFA Conference knockout playoffs. I had played in that competition’s qualifying rounds and had nine goal involvements, though UEFA didn’t seem to count those towards their official stats for the tournament. That was a shame, because if they did, Henri, Wibbers, and I would still be riding high on the lists. The Molde match would be worth a minimum of 450 XP.

On Friday night, Norway’s women were playing the Republic of Ireland. That match would be played in Stavanger, south of Bergen, which seems convenient until you look at a map and find Molde is miles to the north. The schedule was a logistical headache for Briggy, but one she relished. That match would bag me a minimum of 630 XP.

Saturday was open, partly because there wasn’t a good game in the area, partly because I hoped I would be called to Malmö to get a suitcase full of cash handcuffed to my wrist. Wherever I was in the world, that would be an amazing day to smash Playdar, and even better, to smash it twice.

On Sunday, the best bet was to go and watch another match in Denmark. If I ventured out of Copenhagen, I would be able to add another two clubs to my database. I would have covered half the Superliga in one quick trip! Call that 450 XP.

On Monday we would fly to London and stay overnight in Plymouth, ready for the biggest remaining match of our season - the cup semi-final.

If I paused my Secret Sandra payments for a while, I would have around 7,350 XP (factoring in the fact that games never finished on exactly ninety minutes).

Was it possible to spend that to help me beat Plymouth in the cup? I could get a new formation, 4-2-2-2. New formations were always fun, but this new one needed really dynamic full backs, which I didn’t have. Unlocking a new Attribute was always helpful. Inverted Full Backs was far too expensive.

So I looked once more at the Playdar 2 perk. This was a scouting trip, after all. I had been going at it as hard as I could given it was the off-season in Sweden and Norway, but I hadn’t been able to use Playdar. Today would be the first time it would make sense, primarily because of my schedule but also because if I did find a gem, what would I do with them? I couldn’t bring anyone to the UK until they turned 18, and I barely knew anyone in Norway. I would partially rectify that in about an hour by going to SK Brann’s training session.

The Playdar perk had two ’token’ slots. One was currently filled with a number: 24. This represented the 24-hour cooldown until I was able to fire out another ping. The most attractive token in the shop was one that reduced the cooldown by half. That cost 5,000 XP, so I could buy that, get Briggy into the car, ping, find a player, do the rest of the day as normal, and try again at around 9 p.m. Likelihood there wouldn’t be anyone playing? Decent. Likelihood such a plan would piss off my future bride? Very high.

Another token offered to double the range of the radar sweep, while the glowing column that guided me towards the target would last twice as long. Really helpful, especially out here where the distances were so enormous. That was 5,000 XP though.

A really appealing token was 8,000. It would take me to the most talented player in the area who wasn’t currently playing. Incredible, but I spotted a trap. All the guys it took me to would be 60 years old!

That’s why I needed age filter tokens, and there were two in the shop, one to set a minimum age, one a maximum, but I didn’t know the prices. When Playdar had been released, the curse came with an achievement system, and the plan was for tokens to become available as I unlocked certain achievements. That system had been removed, but the token system wouldn’t update until I bought Playdar 2. For 1,500 XP I would get a third free token slot, but just as importantly, the whole mess would get fixed and I would be able to see more tokens, and their prices.

My preference was to buy Playdar 2 to see what goodies it unlocked, knowing that I would have five thousand XP in the bank by Friday night. An upgraded version of Playdar would be in effect this weekend.

How do you say yee-haw in Norwegian?

”Max! What are you doing in there?”

”Training my dragon.”

”Ew.”

I smiled and stopped the water. I would buy Playdar 2 later, after training, when I got bored. Right now there were other possibilities. I pushed the bathroom door open. Emma peered in. I said, ”Want to help me count my abs?”

”Try again.”

”Let’s get soapy.”

”Try again.”

Two jokes was fine. Three was not. ”Come and make my dreams come true.” Without so much as twitching, Emma made her bathrobe fall off. ”How did you do that?”

She twisted her lips. ”Magic.”

***

I was in a spectacularly good mood when we got to SK Brann’s training ground. There were a series of pitches in the middle of a residential estate, close to one of the mountains that enveloped the city. The lack of privacy, unappealing blocks of flats, and the graffiti on a strange, low warehouse gave a bad first impression. I assigned Brann a poor facilities score, but something drew me to the nearest grass pitch.

”Hybrid,” I said, feeling it.

”What’s that again?” said Emma, from under an umbrella.

”It’s a normal grass pitch but they stitch wisps of plastic at intervals so the real grass gets less worn and can recover faster and all that. This place is more serious than it looks. This surface alone is half a million quid.”

”You can feel that, can you?” said Briggy.

”He’s got magic fingers,” said Emma, straight-faced.

Briggy wasn’t sure how to respond, so she pointed. ”Is it normal to rush off and fondle some grass instead of going to greet the welcome party?”

I looked, frowning, and sure enough there was a little group of people who appeared to be waiting for us. One was tall and blonde. ”There he is. The Norwegian Haaland.”

”Wait, but isn’t - ” said Briggy. ”You know what? It’s too early to deal with your weirdnesses.”

The ladies rushed towards the buildings, keen to get to shelter. I went much more slowly. SK Brann were doing all right. Maybe that’s why they had turned down any bid for Helge of under four million pounds. They knew they had a star. The kid was 18 - he had recently had his birthday - and was only going to get better. Not unloading him like he was a distressed asset made sense, and his agent was being justifiably picky about his next move, but there was something off about everything. Why had the buzz only recently developed? If he was such a good striker why didn’t he have a track record? The top prospects scored a goal a game at youth level. Helge had never scored more than one in two. That was fine, but you had to assume that his stats would get worse as he played in harder countries and at higher levels.

When I caught up, I met SK Brann’s Icelandic head coach, his assistants, a physio, a scout, and a handful of players, including the beefy club captain and Helge Hagen, who up close had a real baby face, which I expected, and was really shy, which I didn’t. Everyone was very nice, very friendly, but when I suggested we go inside out of the abysmal weather, the head coach nodded to Helge.

”Max,” he said, not quite making eye contact. His English was good, though he lacked confidence. ”One of our players has called in sick and we are one short for the session. Since we are all big fans of English football - ” he looked at his fellow players for encouragement, which he got - ”we thought to invite you to train with us. We are not as good as Bayern Munich but we are better than Grimsby Town.” His lips twitched as he prepared to deliver the punchline. ”We hope!”

The line absolutely slayed.

”Hah!” I said, absurdly pleased that someone had been studying my career. ”It’s such a relief to see Scandinavians laughing. I gave a hilarious sales pitch in Sweden and it was almost all tumbleweed.”

Rúnar, the head coach, seemed confused. ”A sales pitch? Why were you trying to make it hilarious?”

Briggy knew the answer. ”Because he’s a dummkopf. He thinks the entire world is as juvenile as his countrymen.”

I shook my head. ”It’s possible I misjudged the audience, yeah. And when I told them I had prepared a brochure if they wanted more information, I got a really resentful vibe. Like, now the prick’s giving us homework?” That line bombed. ”Wow, nothing on that. I am completely lost out here.”

Emma nudged me in the ribs. ”But football... is a universal language.”

”Huh? Oh, right.” I looked over my shoulder at the pitch. Cold, wet, a whole new bunch of players to establish dominance over. And what better way to get Helge interested in signing for Chester than by giving him a sneak preview of what it was like working with the boss? The skin on the back of my neck tingled. A warning. This was Norse territory and only yesterday one of these Vikings had given me a good plundering. If they wanted me to play, maybe I shouldn’t. ”Um... You know what, guys? I’d love to run around a bit but I didn’t bring my boots or, well, anything.”

Rúnar said, ”What shoe size do you wear?” Everyone looked down at my feet. The head coach added, ”We are no Bayern, but I think we can find you a spare pair of boots, Max. The data shows you are exceptional at crossing the ball; we would love to see it up close.” He spoke positively but his tone didn’t match. He was acting on the club’s orders.

”Okay,” I said, slowly, as my mind was racing. If I went along with this, I’d be sending in crosses, free kicks, and corners for Helge to score from. Deju-fucking-vu. I had done this very scam three years ago! SK Brann were going to do to me what I had done to a former Chester manager - put on a whole bunch of drills specially designed to showcase one player’s talents. With Helge as the guy in the spotlight there would be races and heading.

Okay, but so what? It was normal that the club would want to show off their prize asset. Rúnar didn’t have to like the idea to go along with it.

A tiny little Max Best climbed into my vision and wagged its finger at me. Don’t let them take the piss! That cute little guy was right. I didn’t like the thought of being tricked two days running. I would put my own spin on the sesh.

”You’ve probably got some great drills mapped out,” I said. ”Let’s start with a few of those, but I’m not a bad coach myself. Maybe I could chip in with a few ideas of my own?”

Rúnar exchanged a sour look with one of his coaches. ”I’m sure we would all enjoy that.”

”Maybe a quick match at the end? I’d love to really stretch my legs, if you get me. And, of course, a match is the only context that really matters.”

”That would also be enjoyable.”

I nodded a few times while I wondered if this scene had been designed to make me do what I had just done. Was that too paranoid? Almost certainly yes. I threw off my cloak of suspicion and embraced the crazy new world I lived in. I was going to train with the second-biggest club in Norway! How top was that? ”Language question. How do you say, ’Oh shit, Helge got nutmegged again’ in Norwegian?”

My threat to repeatedly put the ball between his legs got some laughs from everyone except the man in question. He made full eye contact with me and said, ”You don’t.”

Bit of heat! Bit of backbone! But why? I was only joking. Had I hit a nerve? I couldn’t help but poke the bear again. ”Oh, training’s in English, is it?”

Half the men present hid their mouths, snorted, stifled a laugh. Helge looked furious for a second, but then he went internal. He would shut me up on the pitch.

This was going to be fun.

***

I got changed into the gear that the kit man dug out for me and followed him into the boot room. Rúnar came in to check on me. ”Did you find a pair?”

”Yeah, these fit nice,” I said, testing out a gaudy pair in my size taken from the rack of a guy with squad number 18. ”I’m not sure your eighteen will be too happy when he finds out I used his kicks.”

”The boots will be happy,” said Rúnar. ”They have never been used properly before.”

”Oof,” I said. I tied the laces. ”It’s ages since I wore different ones. Sometimes I wonder if my boots are what makes me good. There used to be a comic strip in England. Billy’s Boots. He got some second-hand boots and suddenly he was an amazing player. Turns out the boots used to belong to, ah... Dead-Shot Keen or something like that. Inspired by Dixie Dean, I think.”

”Dixie Dean, yes,” said Rúnar. ”I know this name. Haaland nearly broke his goals record.”

”Define nearly,” I said, sardonically. Haaland had gotten closer than most, i.e. not very. Dixie Dean’s record of 63 goals in 37 top-flight league matches would probably stand until FIFA banned goalkeepers to ’broaden the sport’s appeal’.

Rúnar was looking into the distance, dreamily. ”Records are meant to be broken and soon, Helge will break Haaland’s records. Yes, he will do very well in England. You’re wise to come and sign him before the wider footballing world wakes up to his talent.” Rúnar coming in hot with the sales pitch! Perhaps he realised he had gone a little too far because next he said, ”It’s strange to me. Why annoy Helge? You want to buy him, no?”

I was giving Rúnar a long appraisal, the kind I should have given to Ulf. If some manager turned up trying to tempt Youngster or Wibbers away from Chester, I would have chased them off with a stick. If that manager was a prick to the player, great! The scene clicked, or I thought it did. I had got it wrong earlier; Rúnar wanted to sell Helge. That was worrying, actually. ”When I needed to get signed as a Chester player I set up a trial that only showed my best points. The manager at the time was sly and cunning. He blew up my plan, got in my face, and challenged me to step the fuck up or step the fuck out. We have fun at Chester and it’s a good place to work, but it is a place where you work. I don’t expect Helge to be the complete player already but I do expect him to respond to adversity and I definitely expect him not to want life handed to him on a plate. We’ll play a mini-match and I’ll mark him out of the game and we’ll see how he responds. Are you okay with that?”

He should have said no. Not out of any malice, but simply because what I was proposing had the potential to demoralise his starting striker. Instead, he looked intrigued. ”If you mark him out of the game, as you put it, is that the end for him?”

”No. I would be amazed if he got the better of me even once.” Rúnar couldn’t believe my cockiness, and neither could the kit man. I continued. ”I’m interested in his reaction, that’s all.”

”What do you want to see?”

”Same thing you do,” I said, smiling. I got to my feet and tested the boots. They would do. I made my expression go dark and mumbled, ”Time to avenge the Siege of Canterbury.”

”Pardon me?” said the kit man.

”Let’s train!” I said, brightly.

***

We warmed up, which given the cold and damp seemed impossible for a good ten minutes, but then I relaxed into it. It was just like Moss Side, but with nine mountains surrounding the city, and quite a few more fjords.

The pitch was honestly dreamy, and the standard of the other players was decent. Three had CAs around 120, while most were around 105 to 110. The mini-match would be great fun. The other lads would move rationally and would be able to control the ball and pick decent passes, but I would be the best player and I’d be able to show off. What more could you want?

Well, you could want some numbers. Some key numbers. Numbers that had been getting their own teaser trailers ever since the Paris Transfer Room. Numbers that were now hovering above a six foot four Viking’s head.

Helge Hagen, age 18.

Weekly wage: £1,400.

A few stand-out Attributes: Pace 14, Heading 16, Strength 16.

A few that were low: Dribbling 5 wasn’t a big issue. Technique 7 worried me a little. It spoke of a guy not interested in learning the basics, or not being pushed to focus on them. Jumping 5 was a surprise, but Helge wasn’t the first tall guy I’d seen who didn’t actually do much leaping to get the ball. A lifetime of looming over your opponents doesn’t provide much incentive to spend hours bouncing on your parent’s bed. But having an Off The Ball rating of 5 was just... absolute dogshit. How could you play as a striker and not learn how and when to make attacking bursts? How to escape a marker. How to drift into space?

We did some rondos - piggy-in-the-middle - that didn’t excite me much. They were a decent way to get the muscles going but they worked better if you were motivated to avoid looking like an idiot. That motivation didn’t work for me, partly because I so frequently looked like an idiot. While I avoided a ’piggy’ by back-spinning the ball over his leg to myself and doing a couple of kick-ups, I kept looking at the guy I had come to see.

Helge’s Current Ability was 86. Very decent for a young player, but again, something felt off. He had been called up to the under 18s so he would have gotten a boost from that exposure, and he trained here in good facilities with good coaches. Norway’s league seemed pretty competitive and he was getting a good amount of game time, while not being over-worked. So why was he the same level as Dan Badford, who had started later and who trained on shit facilities?

Was Helge’s CA... a little bit crap, in fact?

And as for his PA, I mean, wow.

I realised the rondo had stopped. ”What?” I said, as I tuned back in. I let the ball drop, and only then realised I had been kicking it at the base, adding absurd amounts of backspin, sending it slowly but surely higher. ”Soz,” I said. I grinned. ”Just thinking about what happened yesterday in Sweden. I was on a stage and this older guy pulled my pants down and gave me a good spanking.”

”How much did that cost?” asked one player, to some amusement.

”Er, exactly five million pounds, I think.”

The guy looked at his mate. ”Linus knows a place you can get the same thing much cheaper.”

***

The first real drills showed I was right about the plan to make Helge look good.

In the first round, there was a rectangle in which a few yellow bibs did some basic passing while a couple of blue bibs tried to slow them down. The yellows had to break and get the ball wide, where someone would cross the ball for - surprise! - Helge to head a goal. Rúnar at least had the decency to chuck in a defender who would, in theory, make it hard for Helge to score. I knew from the curse that the guy, though tall, was a winger with bad Jumping and Heading. Everyone in this sport was constantly trying to scam me!

I didn’t need a bib because I was wearing different kit from everyone else, and there was another difference when I took my turns crossing. When I got to the ball there was instant electricity.

First, I sent a plain old outswinger right onto the penalty spot. I had noted that Helge liked to make central runs. We combined perfectly, with him jumping a few inches and giving the ball a mighty crunch with his slabby forehead.

I got shivers.

The next time, I faked the first cross, pushed the ball forward another yard, and hit a slower cross to the far post. When I didn’t hit it first time, Helge made a far post run.

Anticipating my intention was impressive, but so was the header. He hit it down and across the goalie, adding power while making sure the ball was on target, posing a question many keepers would have no answer to.

The third time, as I dribbled forward, I made eye contact with Helge and tried to communicate where I would send the ball. He started in the direction of the far post - his marker followed - and I hit a fast, flat cross right at the marker’s head. Helge had already adjusted his run and got to the ball before the surprised ’defender’. Helge used the ball’s pace to simply redirect the ball from a spot in front of the near post to the bottom corner of the far post. Keeper no chance.

Now that was a very, very hard thing to do.

”Interesting,” I said, tapping out of the drill while Helge wheeled back into his starting position, visibly pleased with himself.

***

A few more drills showcased Helge’s speed, but they were always over distance. His Pace was 14 but his Acceleration was only 7. Give him a second to get his legs pumping and he was a match for most players, and with his arms and legs pumping like pistons he looked faster than he was.

It was clear to me - and, I supposed, to all the scouts that were excited by him - that his strengths would only strengthen as he finished growing into his body. He’d be even faster, even stronger, even more able to direct those headers at goal, even more able to use those massive neck muscles to add power to weak crosses.

Rúnar whistled and we came together and drank water while we listened to the next set of instructions. ”Mr. 100% wants to try a drill on you,” he said. ”Max, what do you want to do?”

The part of me that enjoyed showing off in front of strangers, which today was not quite as big as normal, was pushing me to suggest doing my top-tier drills to really get the players buzzing. But nah. That wasn’t the point of the day. ”Lads, some other time I’d love to do a full sesh with you, but you all know why I’m here. Let’s do an old classic, first v reserves. I’ll be a centre back for the reserves and I’ll mark...” I held a finger out and turned in a slow circle. Why? Because even if I was the only one enjoying it, I was enjoying it. Obviously, I landed on Helge. He kept his face pretty blank.

”All right, you heard the man,” said Rúnar, and he whistled a few times. He called out in Norwegian, probably something like ’same sides as last Friday’ or whatever, and the lads went to get the right bibs on.

Helge himself picked up a yellow bib and threw it to me, wordlessly. ”Thanks, bro!” I said, cheerily, because what could be more annoying? We lined up and the game was just about to start when I called out, ”Whoa! One second, Rúnar. Lads, come in. Come in!”

I had a Match Overview screen and could see the tactics, but couldn’t change them telepathically. I should have asked Rúnar to officially make me the manager, but maybe it was best that I stuck to my one task. There was no harm in doing a little optimising, though, was there?

The rest of my team huddled around me. ”All right, listen up. My favourite movie is One Fjord Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because - you know what? Fuck it, no-one who lives north of Hadrian’s Wall laughs at my jokes. Your boy Rúnar loves some 3-5-2, which means two strikers, so if you go by the Bible of Pep, you’d want three defenders. But since I’m going to put Helge in my pocket, we don’t need three defenders. Let’s play 2-5-3. Lucas, you push into the midfield. Noah, get right up top. Emil, you’re on the left being conservative. Theo, on the right dropping bombs. Axle, go right of the centre mids and if Theo gets caught out, you’re the first man sprinting back, yeah? All right? Max’s Marauders on three! One, two, three!”

The guy called Noah was one of ten who didn’t put his hand on top of mine. ”I’m forward?”

”Fucking hell, mate. Yes. Get yourself right in that guy’s face. Mads. Number 4. Don’t give him time on the ball.”

”But - ”

”Let’s go before I freeze to death! Or are you doing an ingenious Scandi Noir murder on me? The Bergen Body. The Hypothermic Needle. The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down in a Coffin. The Nine Mountains Murder.”

The lads trotted away, all except for the goalie. Like all goalies, he was a nutjob. ”Sir, there are seven mountains.”

I eyed him. ”Are you taking the piss? I counted nine. There are literally nine.”

”Sorry but it’s seven. We all agree it’s seven, even if everyone has a different list.”

I pointed to the goal until he fucked off. ”This country,” I said.

***

The match went better than the team talk. The firsts started stronger, of course, and had more of the ball and created more opportunities, but when the ball was passed to Helge I rushed out of the (minimal) back line to intercept it. When it was crossed to him, I copied his move and made it impossible for him to get a header. When he dropped deep to get a touch of the ball, I let him, knowing that he couldn’t dribble me or score from range.

With one player shut down, I contributed to a wider zone, and the balance of power shifted in our favour. For a time, the pattern of the match was like playing 11 versus 10. It worried me that Helge seemed to take this as normal. If he was basing his playing style on Haaland, we were in trouble. Haaland sometimes had matches where he touched the ball maybe ten times, but if three of those touches were goals it was quite forgivable.

I waited for twenty minutes, hoping Helge would try something different. His plan seemed to be to keep doing what he was doing. I decided to give him a nudge in the right direction. ”Has anyone seen Helge?” I called out. He stopped jogging around and stared at me. I yelled, ”Got to file a missing persons report, fellas. Anyone got a recent photo we can put on milk cartons?”

Helge looked around, made eye contact with me again, and squeezed his knuckles white.

In the next phase of play, he got much more physical. When I tried to dart past him to make an interception, he grabbed my arm and tried to ragdoll me while the ball rolled to his feet. At many points in my life, that would have worked like a charm, but post-curse, and having hit the gym pretty hard in Germany, I was a match for the guy. I had also picked up a few tricks while playing in non-league for almost three years. I knew where to lean on him to make it even harder for him to control the ball. The ball hit his shin and bounced away.

That was better. ’Let the opposition know they’ve been in a game.’ Chester had a young striker called Tom Westwood who exemplified that saying. Tom was currently starring in the Welsh Premier and he was absolutely relentless. He ran hard, chased lost causes, and wrestled his markers. And you didn’t have to wind him up; he was fired up from the first minute of every drill, every training match, every league game.

The next time a pass was fizzed towards Helge, he was alert, moved into position earlier. Good! But I knew where he would end up - shielding the ball from me, angled just so - and I ran hard and shoulder-barged him just as he was starting to get set. He went flying; I collected the ball, thought about doing some jaunty kick-ups, but looked up and saw Theo, the guy I had told to get forward, pointing down the right wing. I leant back and lazily half-volleyed the ball with loads of side-spin between two midfielders, and watched as the spin sorted itself out just in time for Theo to ping a low cross, first-time, where one of our strikers slotted it home.

Now that I was back to dominating the match-within-the-match, the reserves gained the upper hand in the wider battle. And since we had three strikers against three defenders, we were causing all kinds of problems. We went two-nil up.

Helge jogged to the side of the pitch to talk to Rúnar to ask for advice.

I liked that. First you had to try to solve your own problems but if you were stuck there was no harm in getting some tips. Helge came back and talked to his strike partner, covering his mouth as he did so. I nearly laughed when I saw the outcome on the tactics page.

”Martin,” I said, and my central defensive partner looked over. I gestured that I wanted to swap sides. He frowned, but obeyed.

I was now the right-sided central defender and my direct opponent was... Helge Hagen.

The surprise on his face when he saw that I had already adapted to his new plan was so amazing I very nearly started cackling.

While I carried the poor guy around in my actual, literal pocket, I wondered about the distribution of his Attributes. I wanted all my players to have good Technique, but even more important for a striker was his Off The Ball number.

Henri Lyons was quite limited, really, but he was a reliable scorer because he had great movement allied to a good Finishing Attribute.

Angel was also limited, in her own way, but she had great movement and almost supernatural Finishing.

If Helge was in the penalty area being watched only by a winger, his movement was perfectly fine, but as you added better defenders, and more of them, you’d find that he became more and more useless. If a wide player could get time and space to hit a perfect cross, you were in with a good chance. Those moments in games were pretty rare, though, and the wide players I had at Chester, guys like Bark and Andrew Harrison, weren’t natural crossers. Roddy Jones was, but he was a few years from being a regular starter. If Adam Summerhays was attacking on the left and curled in one of his quick first-time crosses, would Helge even get anywhere near the ball?

Tom Westwood was a striker everyone loved playing with because you could put the ball into space and he would already be running towards it. He took some of the pressure off the rest of the team. Helge wasn’t doing that.

Helge wasn’t a quitter, though, that was clear. Every time I shut him down he tried a little harder, and now the ball came to him. He cleverly backed into me to buy himself a little space and burst to his left, my right, ready to unleash a venomous shot past our seven-fingered goalie.

By the time Helge was ready to cock his leg back, though, he realised the ball was gone.

I had simply flicked it to the side and he had raced past it.

No shame in that - I wanted my forwards to be really aggressive in going for goal. It’s a low-scoring sport so as a striker you can fall flat on your face eight times but if you get it right on the ninth (or as the goalie would say, the seventh) attempt, you would be the hero.

I lazily brought the ball out of the penalty area and felt Helge thundering in my direction.

That’s when I no-look backheel nutmegged him.

He and I turned at the same time and saw our goalie with the ball at his feet, looking for someone to pass to. I waved at Rúnar and he whistled a few times.

***

When we were back on the touchline, after we’d taken on a bit of water, Rúnar got everyone’s attention. ”Well, that was absolutely insane.” Lots of guys laughed at that. ”That has given me much to think about. Max, I think you said you had two strategies you wanted to do? Or are you finished?”

I shook my head. ”I’d like to do the second one if everyone’s all right with that.”

Rúnar pulled at the hood of his club-branded coat. Even with that on he was getting soaked. ”I should ask what it is.”

”Okay, so...” I rested my foot on a box while I formulated the words. ”My team, Chester, are top of the league and we’re going up. I’m pretty cocky and I can get away with a lot. As you’ve seen,” I added with a winning smile. ”But the English Championship is absolutely bonkers. You’ve watched some of those battles, I reckon. Southampton are in there. Crystal Palace. Burnley, Norwich, West Brom, Coventry. I mean, holy shit! And, like even the worst teams are super rich, super ambitious. Fucking Birmingham. Wrexham. Stoke!” I laughed. ”It’s honestly mental. Every match is a hundred miles an hour and really good quality.

”We’ll need to be super fit, insanely composed, somehow keep our heads as actual fucking storms rage around us every match.” For some reason, that was the line that made a depressed Helge look right at me. ”We need to be able to withstand those storms. We need to be defiant, to stand there like fucking Norsemen going ’you want a piece of me?’” I paused. ”How do you say that in Viking?”

Some of the Norwegian lads shouted something, which made their mates smile and nod. Rúnar did it in Icelandic, which got derisive feedback from his players. I smiled. Good vibe here.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author’s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

”What I want,” I said, slowly, thinking it through, because I had only recently become aware my mind was moving in this direction, ”is to be able to match any team for any level of intensity. Match them, shut them up, then play our own game. I’m not sure I’ll be able to count on a Technique advantage in our first Championship year, so then we need to have work rate and togetherness and just... spirit. A willingness to fucking suffer, do you know what I mean?” I tapped my heel, enjoying the feel of it on the surface. ”How many of your predecessors had to suffer and sweat and bleed to pay for this gorgeous pitch?”

I swept my eyes around the group. I reckoned I could get them all kinds of hyped up, and pretty fucking fast, too. That wasn’t what I was there for, though.

”Here’s what I want. I want to know if Helge Hagen, your striker, can put in a defensive shift, because going into the Championship with players who can’t or won’t defend is an absolute no-no. That would be the end of the Chester story and the end of me as a credible manager. So if Rúnar agrees, I want to shuffle the teams around. We’ll both play 4-4-2. I’ll be on the firsts playing right midfield. Helge will go to the reserves and play left back.” This shocked Helge but he didn’t say anything. ”We’ll play a normal match but I will get half a goal every time I put the ball between his legs.”

SK Brann’s captain looked from Helge to me. ”You want to make fun of the boy?”

”Yep. Gonna make him suffer. See if he can handle it.”

”And you?” he said, stepping closer to me. ”Do you know how?”

”Mate,” I said, stepping closer to him. ”I’m a thousand miles from the nearest box of Yorkshire Tea.” I gave him a pitying look. ”That’s the definition of suffering.”

In that moment of tension, of two stags butting heads, an all-too familiar voice rang out. The backup goalie. ”I know where to buy Yorkshire Tea in Bergen. I can show you later.”

I cracked into slightly manic laughter, clasped the captain on his shoulder, and said, ”I’m just gonna nutmeg him again and again until he says he wants to go back to striker. When he does, I’ll fly back to England and never darken your doorstep again. It’s really no big deal, yeah? Come on, lads. Fjord steam ahead!”

***

We lined up and the game got underway. I walked around my slot, moving up and down, ignoring the position of the ball, watching to see how Helge responded.

At first, he was far too reactive, as though he needed to match my every step, but that meant he was dropping deeper than the rest of the back line. The other defenders shouted at him in Norwegian and Helge started to move like a more natural defender. His Positioning score was 7; I was pretty sure he had spent some time as a defender as a kid.

I suddenly sprinted ten yards infield and demanded the ball. Helge wasn’t sure if he should come with me or not. He decided he had to, so I dropped ten yards closer to my goal and yelled at our right back to hit the space Helge had just vacated.

When the ball came to me I twisted and pumped a first-time ball over the halfway line. It was incredibly inelegant and I predicted that Helge would clatter me and send me flying - true - but I predicted it would be worth it - also true. The guy playing right back was in all sorts of space. He drove forward and hit a low, diagonal shot that the backup keeper got a good hand to. The goalie scrambled to his feet and gathered the rebound.

The defence yelled at Helge, telling him not to leave his post.

I walked out to the right of midfield again. Time for some close-range duels.

***

I joined a move, playing one-touch passes to the nearest guys before rushing into space. A meaningful rondo that left me with ten yards of space and a free run at Helge. He fell into a slight crouch as I approached, bringing his height down to six foot three.

I had the ball on my right foot, darted to the left, back to the right, faked to the left with a stepover, and surged to the right, trying to burst along the touchline. Helge was discombobulated but had enough wherewithal to stab the ball out of play for a throw-in. Not bad.

I picked the ball up and rushed forward. ”Go!” I cried, aiming a long throw down the line. Helge turned and sprinted to cover the free man, but there wasn’t one.

I threw the ball against Helge’s back and took it under my control again. Helge didn’t like that and he turned, face distorted, and very nearly lashed out with his right leg. I dragged the ball back six inches, and another, and another. Helge’s focus was back - he waited for me to make a move.

”Good job,” I said, making a decision to play a pass instead of doing another duel. I looked up, saw a runner, and pointed to where I wanted him to go.

Helge stuck his leg out to block the pass, which of course led to him getting nutmegged. I sprinted hard down the touchline to get the other side of him, but he had just about enough balance to turn and fling himself towards the ball, and once more dobbed it out of play.

”Go!” I cried, as I threatened to hurl the ball down the line again. Helge didn’t buy it. I grinned and held the ball up, waiting for the right back to come and take the throw. But then I actually did fling the ball down the touchline, towards the corner flag, which didn’t make a lot of sense because there was no-one there and I couldn’t touch the ball again until after someone else had.

I sprinted after the ball and Helge copied me. I eked out a slight advantage and started the motion of being about to cross the ball. Helge, mind solely focused on the duel and not the rules of the sport, slid in front of where the cross would go, and brushed the ball with his hip.

Ha! Now I could touch it.

I dragged it back in the direction of the corner flag, rolled the ball to the left, and wound up for an inswinging cross. Helge had got to his feet and tried to block the cross while staying wary of any trickery.

Good choice, because I had no intention of crossing until I’d put him through his paces. I chopped the ball onto my right, faked a cross, chopped it to the left, faked, then faked an entire sub-plot about going back to the right while I in fact was planning to nudge the ball a little further to the left.

Helge, eyes wide, watched the ball, watched my moves, tried to follow.

With the ball nicely where I wanted it - to the left of my left foot - I yelled, ”Rabona!” That’s the name for a super show-off piece of skill where a player wraps one leg around the other. In this case, using my right.

I did it now but instead of crossing, as the angle would have suggested, I dabbed the ball straight down the line, yet again, this time really really intending to cross the ball, but when Helge dived in to block it, I’m sorry to say that I nutmegged him, ran around, and slipped a pass to the far post where a striker side-footed into the open goal.

Helge was flat on his back, covering his face, getting drenched from above and below. I walked over and held my hand out. He took it; I pulled him up. He was fucking heavy. ”You wanna give up?” I said.

”No,” he said.

”Kay,” I said, walking back towards my half. I stopped because Martin had gone to Helge. I couldn’t understand, of course, but I was almost completely certain that he was explaining to Helge that if he hadn’t chased me after the throw-in, nothing could have happened. Helge looked towards the spot where he had slid to block my very first cross, then he bent over and groaned.

When he came back up, he put his hands on his head.

Okay you’re embarrassed, I thought, but now what?

Right on cue, Helge’s Decisions Attribute popped.

”There it is,” I said. That’s what I expected from a hungry young player who was being taught lessons by a high-level opponent. I expected it even more if that young player was a hundred points away from his ceiling. Helge Hagen, 18 years old, PA 185.

I turned away from my half and walked in the direction of Rúnar. I had a transfer bid to make.

***

I grabbed a water bottle and took a drink. SK Brann’s head coach blew to restart the match, sending a sub on in my place. Rúnar waited for me to talk.

”Four million quid’s a rip,” I said. Rúnar didn’t reply but I very strongly suspected he agreed with me. ”I think I can coach him, though.”

Rúnar seemed surprised. ”You are still interested?”

”I told you, I don’t expect him to be the complete player. I like his attitude. Four million’s a rip but let’s say I agree to that price. Do I have your permission to talk to him and his agent?”

”About what?”

”I have questions,” I said, vaguely.

Rúnar didn’t push it. I wondered what he had already mentally spent the four million quid on. ”Talk to his parents.”

”Top. Should I go now or after lunch?”

Rúnar’s eyebrows shot up, but he whistled and called Helge to the side. Rúnar nodded towards me. ”Max Best likes you and is willing to meet our asking price.” Helge’s battered Morale blew through the roof. ”Max would like to talk to your parents after lunch. Is that possible?”

Helge got tongue-tied and for a second I wondered if he had a stammer. ”I’ll call mamma.”

Rúnar rubbed his chin. ”I’ll make sure there’s a room at the stadium.”

”Why don’t I go to their house?” I said. ”You live with your parents, don’t you, Helge?”

”Yes, but...”

I smiled. ”You’re worried about inviting a vampire inside. I get it.”

”It’s not that,” said Rúnar. ”He lives far to the south in a remote spot at the end of a fjord.”

”Oh my God,” I said, beyond delighted. ”Could this day get any better? I’ve wanted to see a fjord every since I read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! It’s a dream come true, mate. And Emma will lose her shit when she finds out that’s where we’re going. Helge, come on! I promise never to meg you again. Fjord! Fjord! Fjord!”

Helge’s lips twitched at the edges. ”If you really want to... My dad’s away on business but you could talk to my mother.”

”Max, I’ll set it up. Are you done with training?”

”Er, yes.”

”You can get changed and take your ladies to lunch. Helge, get back to it.”

”Hold up,” I said. ”Are you gonna change the match?”

He checked his watch. ”No point, really.”

”Helge, where are you going to play?” I wanted to know if he would stay at left back or return to striker.

His face fell, though his Morale didn’t budge. He looked at me as though I was setting a trap. ”Where do you think I should play?”

I grinned. ”In Chester.”

With that killer line, I shook Rúnar’s hand and sauntered towards the dressing room.

***

”I got a hot tip about an amazing little place to eat,” I said a short time later as we piled into the car. ”What do you say we drive a little closer to the centre, and...”

Briggy started the engine and drove for five minutes. I made sure the maps app was open. ”Pull over for a second,” I said, and when we were stationary I hit Playdar.

A beam of light appeared in the distance. I tracked it on the map and pointed. Briggy studied it for five seconds, nodded, and pulled away. When we got closer, I hit Playdar again. There was a school. ”Shit,” I said. ”This can’t be it. Let me go and check.” I hopped out into the rain while Emma and Briggy stayed in the car. Some boys were playing six-a-side in the school’s sports hall. I wandered in, dripping wet, and saw the kid.

Lars Ludvig Larsen, 12 years old, attacking midfielder, PA 137.

The P.E. teacher came over, apprehensive. This was the type of situation where Emma’s presence automatically put people at ease, but she was outside. I must have looked demented. The guy spoke to me in Norwegian.

”Is that Lars Larsen?” I said, super friendly and calming. ”I’m from a football club in England and I heard he was really special. I can see already that he’s mint. Great balance. Head up.”

”Oh, yes,” said the teacher, relaxing. ”He is a very special talent.”

”He’s happy with SK Brann, is he?” Unusually for a Playdar find, the kid’s profile had one extra detail. Under his name was the club he was registered to. Lars was a known quantity. Ah, well.

”Yes, that is my belief.”

I nodded slowly. I couldn’t take the kid to England for six years, anyway. Not unless his parents were willing to relocate the way Pascal Bochum’s had. I sighed. ”Well, I’m sorry to come in so suddenly like that. Oh,” I said, thinking that maybe there was a way to help the kid. ”What position does he play?”

”In the midfield,” he said.

Close enough. ”Okay, thanks for your time.”

”Do you want to talk to him?”

”Ha,” I said. ”I’ll talk to him when he’s older. We’ll probably play against each other one day. Okay, my girlfriend’s in the car getting hungry. Seeya.”

***

We found a real place to eat, and while Briggy tucked into pickled herring, the normos had heart-shaped waffles with cheese.

Emma said, ”So you made a bid. That’s huge, Max.”

”Well, maybe,” I said. ”I’m not sure if we’re being used as a stalking horse or something to draw out the real bids, if you get me. There’s something really strange about everything. I want to talk to the family and get to the bottom of it.”

”But you made a bid. You want to buy him.”

”Yeaaaah,” I said, slowly. ”Subject to certain conditions.”

Emma wanted to ask a follow-up question, but Briggy had summoned a waiter. ”I’ll have some of that stockfish ice-cream, please.”

”Oh my God,” I said, and briefly forgot all about upgrading Playdar and upgrading my squad.

***

The drive to the Hagen residence was long. Scenic, but long. I pointed to one of the road signs and nodded. ”I hear there’s a new hospital opening around here.”

”Here?” said Emma. ”How do you know that?”

”Don’t know. I saw the headline or whatever. Yeah, it’s a branch of one in America. The Betty Fjord Clinic.”

”Fuck me,” said Briggy. ”Can you stop?” Half an hour later, she made a surprised little noise before turning right onto a much smaller road. It wound down and back and down and back.

”Living at the bottom of this would drive me insane,” I said, as we turned again, having descended about sixteen inches.

”The view’s amazing, though,” said Emma. ”Every angle’s like a Bob Ross painting.”

She was right. We were making our way towards the end of a fjord. At the edge were a few houses and fishing huts. From there you would look straight ahead to the North Sea, with misty, tree-lined cliffs on either side of your vision. Fairly spectacular. ”Imagine if you just needed to pop and get some milk, though.”

Making it to the bottom was a blessed relief, and then it was a question of which house was which. Briggy leaned forward, peering through the windscreen wipers, which were going even faster than Emma turning pages during a sexy part of her dragon book. ”That one. Cute cottage with modern attachment.”

Emma and I leaned forward, too. ”Great description,” I said.

The front of the cottage could have been Welsh, with its light grey stone and cute chimney, but the extension was very Scandi. Long brown planks of wood, thin vertical windows, and two nosy little windows poking over the cottage like eyes.

We parked and rushed to the doorway, where Helge was waiting.

”Whoo!” said Emma as she burst through the doorway, laughing about how foul the weather was. ”Is it always like this?”

”No,” said Helge. ”In the summer, the rain is warm.”

Emma laughed hard and gave him a quick hug. Briggy and I went for handshakes. He led us into the open-plan kitchen of the extension. It would have been an amazing spot for a murder on a TV show; there was something to look at in all directions. The centrepiece was a nice dining table. Behind it was a pistachio green kitchen with a double oven and loads of units. Opposite that, an incredibly appealing sofa zone with a coffee table. In the far corner, some narrow stairs - no bannister - leading to a mezzanine that was partly visible from ground level. Outside, a patio with spectacular views.

”I love your eaves,” I said, looking up, which for some reason got me a slap across the belly from Emma. I went to the window that had the best view of the fjord. ”Holy fuck,” I said. ”It’s amazing.”

A woman’s voice rang out across the space. ”I hear you like fjords.”

Helge said, ”Max, this is my mother, Mariann. Mamma, this is Emma and Briggy.”

Mariann was nowhere near as tall as her son, and she had the vibe of being a professor. She offered to make coffees and said her husband couldn’t get out of work at such short notice. I couldn’t tell if that was a rebuke or what, so I tried to let it bounce off me.

Emma did the first phase of the chat, being interested in them as people, asking what they did, complimenting them on the house and all that kind of thing. I tried to pay attention but I kept getting distracted by the view. We were perhaps ten metres above sea level and I could see a little path that went down, presumably all the way to the water. I expected I would find a little jetty there, where you could moor a boat. That would be a faster way to get a quick pint of milk than driving up that long and winding road, right? I wondered if there was a shop on the coast that served fishermen and lost kayakers. Why not a drive-thru?

”Max,” said Emma.

I turned. ”Huh?”

”Come and sit with us.”

”Um...” I said, looking out the window one last time. ”Okay.” I took a seat at the end of the table, which meant all the fun stuff was behind me. No fair!

Mariann sipped her coffee. ”My son told me about your encounter this morning. I have some questions about it, if you don’t mind.”

”I have questions for you, too, so I’m game if you are.”

She sipped again. Once again I had no clue if I was being charming or a dick or somewhere in between. ”You said it was your lifelong dream to see fjords because of something, but Helge couldn’t make out what that something was.”

”Oh, Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” I said. ”I read it when I was young. There’s a character - can’t remember his name - but I vividly remember that it was his job to design fjords.”

Briggy said, ”Max, you don’t design a fjord. It’s glaciers. They push themselves along and, you know, dig out the hole as they go.”

”Yeah, no, there’s a guy who designs them. I specifically remember he won an award for doing Norway. Anyway, I had no clue what a fjord actually was and I never dreamed I would be here and I mean - ” I shot to my feet again and went to the window. ”It’s so cool!”

Emma patted the table and I returned like a good little boy.

Mariann said, ”You said it was your dream to see a fjord but that’s not really your dream, is it? What is your true ambition?”

What were my hopes for this encounter? Honestly, I would have been satisfied with getting my questions answered, but there was an outside chance I could land a PA 185 player. I tried to calculate the optimal path that would lead me to that signing, but couldn’t. With no clear path, there was no reason not to be honest. ”Okay, my main ambition right now is to win the Premier League with Chester. I’m here because Helge could help me do that. What I need are players like him who can get better and better. The way I see it is next season we get to the Championship and consolidate. Sounds boring but the club really needs it. The season after, we win the Champ. Then it’s the Prem. First season, try to survive. Second season, top six or seven. Then we go for it. Really ffff... Really go for it.”

”Is that achievable?”

”Yes,” I said. ”I already have four players who would get into any team in the world. I have a couple more whose skillset is very specific but very elite. And I have some good squad players. If we time it right and I keep adding to that squad, why not? Helge would be 23 then. Wibbers 24, Youngster 25. If we get that one magical season when they’re starting to peak, we could do it. Can we keep the team together after that? I could imagine it would be like what happened after Leicester City won the league. Most of the best players would move to clubs where they got mega wages. But that’s fine, isn’t it? Careers are short and it’s my job to make sure there’s another set of talents ready to take their place.”

”One more question about what you said in that first encounter. You had a bad experience in Sweden?”

”Not really bad,” I said. ”It’s just...” I scratched my chin. How did I feel about it? ”I went to ask for a loan and I thought I did a good job but after my presentation, all the questions were about irrelevant things. The only guy who was listening was the manager, who was actually tricking me into making me tell him what I would do if I were in his shoes. It was really clever, actually.”

”Why would he care about your opinion?”

I shrugged. ”Maybe someone told him I was the best in the business. If he picks my formation and the team I suggested, he’ll probably win the next three games, you know?”

”You wanted money from that football club. Why wouldn’t you give them your opinions if asked?”

”I don’t work for free,” I said. ”Plus my proposal was strong enough to stand on its own merits. I shouldn’t have to bribe people. And I don’t know that I want Malmö to win their league. Why would I want that? Maybe they’re the baddies. I don’t know enough about Swedish football to know, really.” I eyed the mezzanine, imagining a dead body dangling down, with its arm pointing to a clue.

”Do you think you will get the loan you wanted?”

”Unlikely,” I said.

”That is a blow, isn’t it?”

”Yeah,” I said, ”but I’m over it. I had an idea about what to do instead. The problem is that my little club - not Chester - will have to play their matches elsewhere for a year and that might break the link with the community just enough for some fans to lose interest and it’ll be hard to lure them back. But I’ve got a solution.”

”You do?” said Emma. ”When did you come up with that?”

”When the dragons were kissing on page 400.”

She laughed. ”The dragons don’t kiss. Only the dragon riders.”

I shook my head. ”Wild. Mariann, my club’s called West. I’m Best. My plan is this: West versus Best. As often as possible, once every two weeks maybe, there will be a match at our ground between a West eleven and a Max Best invitational eleven. It will be some good players who need a match because they’re coming back from injury, or they’re suspended so they can’t play for their club and the manager agrees to let us use him, and some older guys, some up and coming youngsters, all that kind of thing. Something like the Harlem Globetrotters. Bit of fun, five pounds entry, the same party atmosphere the fans are used to, money goes towards funding the new stadium. It’ll keep that spirit alive, right? That connection between West and its fans. It’ll be absolutely mint and when the stadium’s built, we’ll have two thousand at every match. Two five even, because we will have brought in some new fans by doing the exhibition matches.”

Emma squeezed my arm. ”Max! That’s really good. I like that.”

I looked at my bodyguard. ”Briggy, I am ready for my monthly dollop of praise.”

She laughed. ”It’s good, Max. Would have been better if you had thought of that before Malmö stitched you up.”

”Whoa, what? No,” I said, frowning. ”It was only Ulf who was sneaky. No-one else knew what was going on.”

Briggy looked at our host and said, ”If I played you a clip in Swedish, would you understand it?”

”I might.”

”Briggy,” I complained. ”It doesn’t matter. Let it drop.”

”I’ve given you your praise for the month and now I’m off the clock. I want to know what he said. Hang on.” She fiddled with her phone. Had she been recording the presentation? Or had someone sent her the audio? ”Okay,” she said, ”so this is the part. Max has spent 20 minutes talking about how great he is and 2 minutes saying why he wants a loan. He takes some questions, which are, indeed, irrelevant. In one answer, Max says that the club should sack Ulf and go back to a previous manager.”

”I didn’t,” I said, smiling at Mariann.

”Almost,” said Briggy. ”Then Ulf says, we don’t need money so why don’t you lend us your expertise? That was Ulf trying to bring up the topic of the current squad, but Max said he didn’t know much about the current squad, but Ulf didn’t believe him. He spoke to the audience and said this.”

She played the audio file. Mariann’s eyes widened, and so did Helge’s.

The mother said, ”He begins by saying that his friends in Germany - ”

Helge said, ”At Bayern Munich.”

His mother said, ”He didn’t actually say that, Helge, you must avoid making assumptions. His friends in Germany say that you’re a savant and you don’t need datasets or algorithms to assess players, and if the fans played along, Ulf would provoke you into running your eye over their first team, the women, but especially a youth team because everyone agrees you have a special talent for dealing with the young players and being coached by you will be an amazing experience for them. He says you are overly competitive so he will proclaim that he will manage the first team and you will manage the reserves, but there is no such distinction in the youth team. He asks people to play along and not reveal to you his plan. He finishes by saying, by the way, give him the money.”

”Did he?” I said, delighted. ”Wow. And after that, he wound me up. He did a very good job of provoking me.”

”What happened?” said Helge, eagerly.

”Oh, a whole mess,” I said. ”He tricked me into saying what I thought was the best possible men’s and women’s teams, which, yeah, not sure I would have said otherwise. Then I took half the kids and organised them into a coherent shape and got my revenge on Ulf. It’s easy with the young players because the differences between them aren’t so stark. Put a few square pegs in square holes and then build a concept around that. A lot of football comes down to moving the ball from the back to the front. There’s this computer game where you make a factory - ”

”Factorio,” said Helge.

”I guess,” I said. ”I never played it. But I’ve seen screenshots. You sort of design a factory so that things move along conveyor belts and get where you need them to go? In the most efficient way? It seems to be massive so it must be pretty top. I often think about football like that. How do you get the ball from the goalie to the midfield to the strikers in a way that they might score? Next to a beefy centre back you put a little dreamweaver. Dreamweaver in defence? In a small-sided game, yeah, because that first pass is crucial. Then do you put all your best decision-makers in midfield? You probably do. And you don’t want your best finisher right at the top of the formation, you want your best Off The Ball guy. He’ll run around into dangerous areas and mess up the oppo’s shape. Your best finisher is just behind him, moving into the free space, but now he’s got a little more time and space to hit those good shots.”

”It was carnage,” said Briggy. ”When Max gets savage, it’s great fun, and I don’t even like football.”

I tutted. ”It wasn’t savage. I’m on the sidelines subbing my lads off, giving them tips, changing their roles completely from minute to minute, while Ulf is on the other side going, ’What was your name again?’ It’s no contest. Anyway, I’ve done reserves versus firsts loads of times. It’s not as thrilling any more.”

”He did it today,” said Helge to his mum. ”He did a huddle at the start and they came out with a mad formation and everyone knew their role. What did you say, Max?”

”I just said, you know, there’s no I in Viking, play as a team, that sort of thing. The usual.”

Mariann’s expression became unreadable. ”I understand you gave my son a hard time and then, after dumping him on his arse, offered to buy him.”

”I wouldn’t put it like that,” I said. ”But here’s a question. This January, the club rejected some bids but accepted others. Why didn’t you go for them? Is your agent playing hardball?”

Mariann’s eyebrows twitched and she was still for a good five seconds. ”My husband and I act as Helge’s agent.”

”Huh,” I said, because that seemed like an outright lie. I’d read the name of the agent a few times before coming and had seen it again in his player profile. I went into the database. ”I thought it was...” I took a breath before tackling the pronunciation.

”He is the family lawyer,” said Mariann, before I embarrassed myself. ”And the name on the paperwork. The first port of call. We learned from other families how to do this the right way.” She tilted her head. ”The goal was to avoid having easily-provoked Englishmen turn up on our doorstep.” She scowled at me before adding, ”That was a joke.”

Emma let out a nervous laugh. ”Oh my God, your jokes are so stressful.”

That brought a smile to Mariann’s face. ”I’m sorry, my dear. You are most welcome.”

”Right, so you’re the agents,” I said, looking up at the top row of kitchen cupboards. If the shows I watched were anything to go by, there could easily be ten human heads up there. ”So what was wrong with the offers?”

Mariann considered the question. ”It is hard to say. We did not feel they were right. The clubs were respectful and they made good financial offers and spoke of how Helge would fit into their plans. But there was something missing. We decided not to rush into anything.”

”Okay,” I said. ”That’s smart. Mega approve. Let’s talk history. If I said Helge seemed to not be as developed as I expected - no offence, mate - what would you say?”

”I would not know what to say.”

”The hype around him came very recently, I feel.”

”He was well-liked by his coaches but they felt he needed a lot of patience while he grew into his body.”

Briggy surprised me by dropping a mad truth bomb. ”And he’s a December child.”

Mariann’s smile was huge. ”Yes! I see you understand.”

”I don’t,” I confessed.

Briggy said, ”It’s the Relative Age Effect. In England, boys born in August find it hard to get into youth teams because the age cutoff is September. I looked it up for Norway and the cutoff is January. Players born in the last quarter of the year are the ones who get left behind. I have some statistics.” She got her phone out and tapped away. ”These numbers relate to the Norwegian under 17s to under 20s, but we can assume they extrapolate. Of the players making it to those teams, 40% were born in the first quarter of the year, 28% in the second quarter, 22.5% in the third quarter, which leaves, Max...”

”Six hundred percent,” I guessed.

”Only 9.5% of the players who made it to the national teams were born in October, November, or December.”

I shook my head. ”That’s fucking crazy. We don’t have that at Chester. That’s a solved problem.” I tutted and quietly fumed. ”Pisses me off. Waste of talent.”

Mariann reached out to hold her son’s hand, which briefly sent my brain haywire. ”When Helge was old enough to join SK Brann, they had a different coaching team at the academy. When we went to an open day, the man in charge asked us only one question: when’s his birthday? We said December. He shook his head. He’ll never make it. That was before he had ever seen Helge kick a ball.” She inhaled. ”I was angry, but what could we do?”

”Don’t worry about it,” I said. ”It’s for the best. If he had developed fast, he’d have played loads of professional matches already and he would be at risk of burnout in his mid-twenties.”

”My husband was a talented player whose career was ended by a bad knee injury in his mid-twenties. One could argue it makes the most sense to assume the same will happen to Helge and therefore, to aim to maximise his earnings in the short term.”

That statement got my brain fizzing in all directions, but I kept a lid on the fireworks. ”Based on the way things have gone so far, I would say he’s actually in good shape, providing you make the next move a good one.”

”And what is your advice for that?”

”Before I answer, let me ask the most important question of all. When and why did you move him from defender to striker?”

The room went very quiet. Emma and Briggy realised what I was implying and their mouths hung open. It was like the scene in a detective story where the rich woman says, ’Well if the gardener didn’t kill my husband, who did?’ And the hero replies, ’Why you, of course.’ Yes, I had very much made an accusation.

Helge said, ”What makes you - ”

”Don’t,” said his mother.

The room went quiet again for so long that I got up and went to look out of the window as the rain battered the glass. I pushed myself away from the frame. ”I think someone who understands football watched you play, Helge, mate, and said, well obviously this guy’s a full back. You started there and you were learning the role, probably coming along slowly but surely. Some growing pains, some relative age effect holding you back, but it was all quite serene. Someone said, hang on, we can trick loads of stupid foreigners into thinking he’s the next Haaland. Let’s teach him to play striker and we’ll make some money.”

”There is no question of tricking foreigners,” said Mariann. ”My son is the starting striker for SK Brann. That is a fact. He has earned that place.”

I thought about that. Not many managers would stay in a job where they didn’t have complete freedom to pick their teams. ”Okay, I take back the tricking thing. It’s not that. Maybe you just said let’s try it for a while. Your son’s so talented he almost makes it work. Everyone’s looking at him projecting, hoping, what if he is the next Haaland? That’s a hundred-million-pound player. I’m sorry, Mariann, but he’s not that. He can be a fifty-million-pound player. The third or fourth best player in Norway and a vital member of my Premier League-winning team. But he ain’t no striker.”

”Yes, he is,” said Mariann.

”Nope. I shut him down really easily and I’m a part-time defender at best. But when he moved to left back, he was tough, he was tenacious, he was a handful.”

Helge suddenly realised I had tricked him in the morning’s session. ”You said you wanted to test if I could defend!”

”That was true, though, wasn’t it? And you’re already really good. Amazingly good, considering you haven’t played in defence for, what, years?”

PA 185. D LR. He could play left back or right back. I had decent long-term options there already, but I couldn’t ever imagine turning down a PA 185 I could get for four million pounds. The fact that someone had tried to make bank by moving him to the wrong position was the only chance I even had of making this deal. The scouts who liked him were responding to his potential, but everyone could sense that something was wrong. For many, the deal was too risky. Clubs who looked at data wouldn’t even come to look at him. Me, though. I had an outside chance of doing something amazing. Getting a proper 10x investment.

But only if he was willing to play his proper position, and something told me that wasn’t really on the cards.

Marianne fussed with the rings she was wearing. Evidently, she wanted to regain some measure of control over the conversation. ”What is your financial proposal?”

”It’s not possible to say exactly because everything depends on whether we actually do get promoted and whether we can seal our new sponsorships. I’ll get ten million pounds in TV money, but five will immediately go to building a new stand and four will go to SK Brann. The remaining mill I want to spend on two lads who will help us win the Youth Cup. Not quite the same level of talent as Helge, but they will be really fun players to work with. That leaves me with precisely zero pounds. But in terms of wages, I expect to be able to offer somewhere between five and eight thousand a week.”

”We can do much better.”

”I know you can.”

”Then why should we continue to speak?”

”Because I’m the only club who will use your son as a full back.”

”He wants to play striker.”

”Right. Which is why I’m the only manager who will develop him properly. I’ll insist on him improving his technique, passing, and positioning. He’ll play left or right back and I can imagine him being solid on the sides of a 3-4-3 and if not, he’ll be one of the three central defenders. He’s going to be too good for me to leave out of my best elevens, and moving him to his proper position will benefit the national team, too. You have a world-class attacking midfielder and an elite striker. You need a top-notch defender more than a second striker.”

I left a pause for someone else to speak. Surprisingly, it was Emma. ”Babes, if Helge was your son, what would you do?”

I scrunched up my face, attractively, while I raised my hands in despair. Why did no-one ever listen? ”I’d move him to the defence right now!” I got the sense that I hadn’t been diplomatic enough and I hadn’t really improved my chances of making a deal. ”You know what? Forget Chester. I mean it. You’d be mint for us but the position isn’t a priority. I should probably get a midfielder this summer anyway so forget that I work for a football club. Right now I’m just a football fan and I’m someone who gets frustrated by wasted talent. This isn’t about me or my dreams. What about you, Helge? What do you want?”

This question had a profound effect on the guy. He became the smallest six foot four man in history.

His mother said, ”Show him.”

Helge’s neck muscles popped like he was scoring a thrilling header. ”Really?”

”Yes. Show him and then he will understand.”

It was my turn for a jaw drop. This was the scene where, after the detective accused the rich woman of murder, she proved that the victim was very much still alive!

Helge stood and said, ”Will you come with me?”

”Of course,” I said. ”To the mezzanine, or...?”

”A few miles away.”

”Oh.” Out in that foul rain. Again! ”Absolutely. Why not? Babes?”

Emma looked at Mariann. ”Can I stay?”

”Of course you can, my dear! I’d love that!”

I put my hands on my hips. ”Are you serious?”

Emma was unruffled. ”Have fun, babes.” She looked at Briggy and sniggered.

I pinched my nose and realised I had just agreed to go to an undisclosed location with a stranger. ”Briggy, if I get Scandi-Noired, it was him.” I pointed to Helge. ”Avenge me.”

”You got it, boss. Excuse me, Mariann. Do you need milk? Max can bring some back with him.”

Mariann chuckled. ”We are good for milk, thank you, Briggy.”

”Why are you thanking her?” I said. ”I was the one who would have gone.”

”In that case, yes please. We are always running out.”

”Oh my God,” I whined, as I trudged to the front door.

***

Helge beeped the doors of a car and we raced inside. In that five seconds, I got drenched beyond belief.

”Christ,” I said, annoyed. But then I remembered I was in a fjord and that cheered me all the way up. ”Where does the fjord start?”

”Pardon me?”

”Is it where the water starts? Or is it up there where the cliffs start?”

I wasn’t sure if I had blown Helge’s mind. Maybe no-one had asked him that question before. He answered by saying, ”Where does the butt start?”

I cackled. ”Do me a favour. When you come to England - for whichever club - let’s hang out with my friend Henri. Ask him that question. He loves a bit of philosophy.” We started winding our way up the bends. My mood dipped. ”Where’s the nearest shop?”

”Oslo,” he said.

”Fuck.”

”That was a joke.”

”Er, right. I knew that.”

”Mamma doesn’t want milk. She was joking.”

”Jokes are different in this country.”

***

We got up to the main road and continued driving away from Bergen. It was another ten or fifteen minutes on that road, during which time Helge asked me about Bayern Munich and I told him some funny stories that he gobbled up. Then he turned right onto another tiny road, which led to a tinier road.

”We have to walk from here,” he said.

”Just be straight with me now. Are you going to murder me?”

”No.”

I pulled my hood over my head. ”Lead the way.”

***

We were walking along the coast on a sort of path, slightly overgrown, very soggy. Helge strode past a little fishing hut, then another, and after a longer gap we came to a third one.

I shivered from the cold and for the first time questioned my actions. I had a big cup semi-final on Tuesday! ”Mate,” I called out, ”if I get pneumonia on a fjord, I’m going to be upset.” He was back to being really shy and didn’t reply. I looked around. Water everywhere. Across one expanse, street lights were on. ”Where are we?” I cried out, because the wind was picking up.

”We’re...” He struggled to put it into context, so he got his phone out and showed me a map. ”My house is here at the end of this fjord. We drove along this road and now we’re here on this bump of land.”

The map was in Norwegian, but despite what you might think, I’m not a complete idiot. ”Nordsjøen,” I said, pointing. My finger wasn’t very steady. ”Does that mean North Sea?”

”Yes,” he said. ”This hut belonged to my grandfather. He was a fisherman and he used to take me out with him. I loved those days, Max. Whether the sea was calm or choppy I always felt safe with him. This for me is a place of peace. But my favourite are the days like today. The rain falls, the wind bites, but inside...” He jerked his head and led me towards the hut. He found the right key from his little collection and opened the door. We went inside and immediately, the noise died and the wind couldn’t get us. ”See?” He flicked a switch and a light came on.

We were in a very basic shed. Large but sparse. A couple of armchairs, a radio, a whistling fireplace. Some shelves, a sink, a kettle. A few mugs.

”Cosy,” I said.

Helge eyed me like it was one of my British jokes. ”It’s my favourite place in the whole world. My grandfather wanted to retire and build a house here. He always talked about having huge great panes of glass out there - ”

”Out there?” I said, alarmed, because he was pointing towards the actual sea.

”As far as it could be built. Huge panes of glass so he could be in the storm and enjoy it.”

”Enjoy it!” I said, laughing.

He tilted his head. ”You enjoyed it at our house. You wanted to stay by the window.”

”But,” I said, ”that’s different. That’s, you know, not right in the heart of the action. This place?” I shook my head. ”It’s the difference between living near a football stadium and opening your windows so you can enjoy the atmosphere, to, I don’t know, living on the halfway line at Anfield.”

”I don’t see it like that.”

I moved around the hut, looking at the objects. They each had a story to tell, I was sure, but when the freshness of the space wore off, I found myself looking through the little window panes, out onto the sea. The endless waves eroding the timeless rocks, the brave trees scattered around trying to make a living. What wildlife could thrive around here? ”So... I take it your granddad is no longer with us?” He shook his head. ”And you want to build his dream home.” I had started to think about building a house of my own, somewhere remote where my enemies would have a harder time murdering me, so I had some vague notion of the difficulties that entailed. ”What about water and sewage and internet and all that?”

He pointed. ”Did you see the other huts? We bought them. We own this stretch of land. We could build three homes here. Mine and two guest houses. That will make upgrading the groundworks more rational. When my football career is over, running the guest houses will be my job. I could teach the guests to fish, or to kayak, or to stand-up paddle. And...” He got shy again, shed ten years. ”I know it won’t be easy to find a girlfriend who would want to live here, but... If they rent the guest house it means they like to be here, doesn’t it? I think I will find it easier to talk to someone who I know likes to be here.”

”You sly dog,” I said, giving him a friendly punch near the shoulder. I gasped. ”This is your field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Swiss girls! They’ll come and by day you’ll teach them to paddle and as the sun sets you’ll get drunk together and you’ll confess that you love to get naked in your room in the middle of a storm and defy the gods and she’ll say gosh, tell me more...”

Helge was grinning, still shy. ”You’re funny.” He got his phone out and showed me some pictures. ”This is, you know, the idea.”

”Holy fuck,” I said, swiping through the photos. ”It’s like a fucking James Bond lair! You weren’t joking when you said right on the edge. You’d feel like you were one of the waves. Mate, this is amazing. I love it. This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. Are your parents mega rich?”

”No.”

”Sorry, that was rude. I just don’t...” I remembered why I was in Norway. The buzz. A star striker. The next Haaland. ”Ohhhh!” I said, cracking myself on the forehead way too hard. ”I get it. Shit. You need to make a fuckton of money to build this.”

”Yeah,” he said, relieved that I had been the one to say it.

”Oh,” I said, again, and it struck me that there was no way he was ever coming to Chester. We weren’t the money option. We were the love of the game option, the place for weirdos and misfits. My eyes glazed over for a minute as I told myself the entire trip had been a waste, but somehow I couldn’t make myself believe that. Just to be sure I understood the situation, I outlined the two paths Helge had in front of him. ”One, you come to us as a defender. You’re less of a star, make less in wages, get fewer sponsorships, slow and steady progress, and maybe score a big payday after we win the Premier League. I mean, to me that’s 100% guaranteed but you’ve grown up worrying about getting the same injury as your dad. You take the long and winding road every day of your life, don’t you? For once you want to rush to the top. You want to make as much money as poss as soon as poss, just in case.”

”I only get one shot at this. I can’t get it wrong.”

”Fair,” I said. I sensed I still had half a chance to persuade him, but the phone’s screen dimmed and I had to touch it to stop the device from locking. Doing that made me forget what I planned to say, and something made me look at the two armchairs. I imagined little baby Helge - probably already five foot tall - sitting there with his grizzled old granddad, clinking mugs of hot cocoa together while saying ’skål’, listening to the the shipping forecast and A-ha and Mayhem. I swiped back through the photos to one near the start. Even in the architect’s rough sketches there was a cosy nook with two armchairs and a radio. Helge must have insisted that one room should look exactly like his favourite corner of his favourite space. ”This was your grandad’s dream. Now it’s your dream,” I said, my voice catching.

”Yes,” he said, turning away. He took a mug off a shelf, rinsed it under the tap, and put it face down next to the sink.

”All right,” I said. I took one last look around. ”I love helping people’s dreams come true. Let’s go back and I’ll think about how I’d do it if I were you.”

”But,” he said, half-hopeful, half-afraid, ”couldn’t you sign me as a striker? You cross, I score.”

I hadn’t even considered it. What would happen? I would pay four million and bust a gut trying to make him look good enough so that someone would pay six or seven? ”You would spend months adding a few points to your attacking numbers when in the same time you could have been making massive progress in your defensive ones. No, I can’t be involved in anything like that. It would be too frustrating. We need to head back because we’ve got an early dinner booked but I’ll think about it on the way. How do you keep making clubs think you’re just about to go stratospheric? It’s actually an interesting challenge, this. Fascinating.”

***

There was a lull in the rain when we arrived back at his house - with some shopping. Before we went inside I held a finger to my lips, meaning ’let’s go in quietly’.

Helge nodded.

I turned the handle gently and we snuck in.

Emma was speaking.

”But the riders are bonded to the dragons but the dragons mate with other dragons but when that happens, their riders get frisky for each other. But guess what? When the dragon dies, so does the rider. But because they’re all bonded, the other dragon dies, too!”

”That’s not how you want your military to run,” said Briggy.

”Sure,” said Emma, ”but it’s more exciting.”

I smiled at Helge and mouthed, ’what the fuck?’ He grinned.

”Hey!” I said, noisily barging into the room. The women were in the corner, all cosy on the sofas. ”Boys are back in town! Let’s talk about me again!” I placed a plastic bottle on the coffee table in front of Mariann. ”One litre - whatever that is - of finest local milk.” I delved into a plastic bag. ”I also bought you some Bamsemums because you’re a mum. Briggy, I bought you some liquorice salt. Helge insists this was correctly placed in the candy section. They contain ammonia which I’m pretty sure is actual poison, so that’s fun. Babes, I got you some Melkehjerter. Yet again, I give you my heart.”

”Aww,” she said, taking the packet. I knew she would eat one, just for the taste, but wouldn’t want to ruin her appetite for dinner, which was rapidly approaching. ”How did it go?”

”Er, yeah, amazing,” I said. I squeezed in next to her and enjoyed the softness and the warmth and the lack of urgency. ”Helge’s going to stay as a striker. A decent club will sign him in the summer window and he’ll score just enough goals in the next couple of years to, you know, always make people think, hey this kid could explode at any minute. It’s not unheard of, you know, for someone’s goals record to suddenly go mental and he’ll always have a baseline of like five goals a season just from corners and set pieces. He only needs one good flurry of jammy tap-ins to get a really big move to - ”

I nearly said ’to some absolute clowns’, but I checked myself.

”To a lower-mid-table Prem club like West Ham or Everton. He could get sixty grand a week, easy, four year contract. No problem.” I nodded for a while. The logic checked out. ”Obviously you get it as high basic salary, low add-ons in case you don’t hit your targets. Next deal will probably be lower wages but there will always be clubs willing to take a punt. There’s more demand for strikers than supply, right? I’m assuming you heard he wants to build his dream house? Yeah, well, he’s on the right path. It won’t be cheap to build but with a little bit of luck and perseverance, I think he’ll be able to a-fjord it.”

”Jesus Christ,” said Briggy. ”That was the worst one yet.”

”Babes,” said Emma, defying my expectations by popping the second heart-shaped treat into her gob. ”Awful. Cut that.” She stopped chewing to gawp at Mariann.

Helge’s mother was crying with silent laughter.

I clenched my hand into a fist and pulled it down. ”Yes! Talk about a last-minute winner.” I pushed myself to my feet. It had been a strange couple of days. Didn’t get the loan, didn’t get the player. Could I have fought harder? Sure, but why? You can lead a Norse to water but you can’t make him drink. Helge was a smart kid who knew what he wanted. As for the money, the vote hadn’t happened yet. I had Ulf’s backing, at least. There was still hope. And being too busy to think about how to upgrade Playdar? That meant I had been having fun. I held my hand out and pulled Emma to her feet, asking, ”What were you ladies talking about when we came in?”

”Geopolitics,” she said.

I grinned to show I knew she was full of shit. ”Well, Mariann, Helge, thanks for letting us pop in. It was honestly amazing and I wish you - Hey, what’s this?” The kitchen table had a few photos strewn around. They were all of Helge in youth team football kits. Half the pics showed him holding trophies and medals. Most of the rest showed him running or shooting. I took it all in, then picked up one picture. I showed it to the room. ”Helge playing right back.”

Emma stared at it. ”How can you tell? You can’t see any of the pitch or the other players.”

”You can,” I said. ”Look at this knee here. That’s definitely the knobbly knee of a left winger.”

Emma laughed. ”You can’t tell anything from a knee!”

”No,” I said, putting the photo down. ”Well, again, honestly a pleasure. Thanks so much.”

”Wait,” said Helge, moving to the table and picking up the photo. ”I was the right back in this match. How can you know that?”

I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. ”Because you look happy.”