1.53 - Talented Youngsters

53.

Jackie and another dude came into my little room. Jackie took the swivel chair to my left while the other guy flipped down a little seat built into the wall and sat there. Obviously not planning to stay for long.

"How you getting on, Max?"

"Great," I said. "I love being abandoned in other countries when I haven't brought my passport."

"This is Mike," said Jackie.

I shook hands with Mike. If I had to guess I would have said he was 42 years and 122 days old. But I didn't have to guess because he had a profile hovering over his head. Name, age, question marks. But question marks in a different pattern to the coaches or physios. Had I unlocked something that showed me profiles for every fan in the stadium? He was wearing a casual suit so he looked businesslike but approachable.

Jackie glanced at the pitch and at the scouting report. He turned his attention back to me. "Why would you need your passport?"

I pointed to my phone. Jackie had seen me using Google Maps so it wasn't as ludicrous as it seems in retrospect. "Isn't this Wales?"

Mike awarded me an amused look, even though he must have had this conversation hundreds of times. "The pitch and most of the stadium are in Wales, but you're in England right now."

"The border goes right across like this?" I made a chopping gesture with my hand.

"More like this," he said. You can imagine whatever direction you want. "It was a big problem during the pandemic. We couldn't have fans in matches because the lockdown restrictions barred people going from England to Wales."

"No way! That's mad. Wait, you had fans during lockdown?"

"Non-league was less restricted, yeah."

"So," said Jackie, nodding towards my ankle. "They took a look at you?"

"Yep," I said. "They were great. Nothing broken. It feels less painful already, just knowing that. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yeah," he said, leaning forward. "Listen, I was telling Mike that you've got a good eye for a player."

"Okay," I said. This might be a good time to say that during this whole conversation I was staring at the pitch, only tearing my eyes away very quickly to check for reactions. But my demeanour probably contributed to a vibe where I seemed somewhat disinterested.

Jackie was confused by my lack of... what did he expect? Excitement? "Right. What do you think of the match so far?"

"Well, it's only been 15 minutes," I said. "I've seen some guys I like the look of. But I need a bit more time to form any real conclusions."

"You've never seen any of them before, I take it?" said Mike.

"No. I've never even seen a game in this division. Listen, this is Chester FC. But I always want to say Chester City. Is that a different team?"

"No, that's us. We're a phoenix club. City went bust. The fans brought it back to life. Now we're Chester FC."

"Oh, cool," I said. "Another fan-owned club. Like FC United. Big fan of that."

"You are?" said Jackie. "I didn't think you were political."

"I'm not. I'm a single-issue voter."

"What issue is that?" asked Mike.

"Healthcare," guessed Jackie. Probably thinking about my mum.

"Wave machines in the English channel," I said.

Mike laughed.

Jackie shook his head. "He's not joking." He sighed. "Max, you're really fucking weird sometimes." He shook his head again. "Why don't you tell us which players you like?" said Jackie.

"No rush," said Mike. "We can have a chat at half-time if you like."

Hmm. My plan for half-time was to see if Livia had an Instagram account. One hint of a bikini pic and I'd be rejoining the world of social media faster than Usain Bolt RSVPed to that party invitation from the Swedish women's handball team.

Jackie was weirdly keen to get me to show off my skills, though. Before I could mumble something about half-time being great, he said, "Have you been filling in this scouting report? Why is it from Southport?"

"Yeah it was just lying here. Can you grab that pen? Thanks. What does Fit, re$, and Score mean?"

Mike glanced at the document. "Fitness. That's like, based on our current playing style, how well would this player fit?"

"Ah. Not the other fitness, then. So if I worked for a team that played fast counter attacks, Marcus Rashford would get a 10. But for slow, possession-based teams I'd give him a 4 or 5."

"That's it. And re$ is resale value. If we pay money for this player, are we going to get it back?"

I nodded. Made sense. "Like you can buy a player and if it doesn't work out for some reason you can sell him and not lose your whole shirt. So what do I put here? A tick or a number or what?"

"I don't know how Southport do it. Our scouting reports are different. A lot more detailed. But yeah, a tick. Why not? And then Score is just an overall number to show how keen the scout is on that player. It's like at school you get an overall A or an F and if you're bothered you can look into the sub-scores. If you give a player a 6 the manager probably isn't going to read the whole report but if you give him a 10 he is."

"Top. Thanks." I was warming up to Mike, now. He was easy to be around. "I do have a couple of thoughts if you really want to know. Couple of clarifying questions, first."

"Go for it."

"How do you pronounce the Irish winger's name?"

He did it by syllable. "Deer-mid dove-lin. But we all call him Aff."

"Aff?"

"Aff."

"He's good. I like him. Not playing well today. Next question. Carl Carlile. What's his story?"

Mike looked out onto the pitch. "He's from a weird family. They all left England and went to America in the olden days. Then there were family feuds, so half of them came back to get away from the other half. The way Carl tells it, the family keeps splitting in half and one lot fucks off to America while one of the American factions fucks off back here."

"People. I get the sense," I said, carefully, "from the crowd reaction when he's on the ball and stuff, that he's not been playing very well."

"You do? Huh. I didn't notice that. Yeah, his form's not been good. He's had back trouble and got things going on in his private life. He's only playing today because of injuries."

"Okay. The reserve goalie seems better than the first team one. You know, from what I saw in the warm up. Small sample size."

I was worried I'd gotten too specific. There was only a 2 point difference in handling between the players. Surely you'd need to watch them at least 10 times to see that? But Mike was impressed. "Ah, yes. Well, a lot of people agree with you. But Ben is young. Too young for Ian."

"Who's Ian?"

"Ian Evans. Our manager."

"Oh, right. He doesn't trust young players?"

"He's old school." I pulled a face. In this context, old school was code for 'gammon'. Mike noted my reaction. "He's not what you think. He was progressive, in his day."

"But his day was years ago," added Jackie.

"Jack," complained Mike. "He's come out of retirement to help us out. He's what we need this season. We can't have another relegation battle."

"I know, I know. I'm with Max, though. I want to see young players in the team." I'd gone internal, comparing the formations used by the two managers. "What's on your mind, lad?"

"It makes sense, now. I was wondering about the formations. Chester are at home but they're set up so defensively."

Mike's head snapped towards the big window. He pointed. "We've got two wingers," he said.

Wingers are normally fast and/or skilful players who run up and down the sides of the pitch. They start in the same place as a right or left midfielder, but the winger has more license to get forward and attack and the midfielder has to be more defensively aware. "No," I said. "It's a straight 4-4-2. Those wingers are midfielders. They're getting forward a lot but that's coincidental. And you'll note that - here, now, look! - when Aff dribbles forward, the other winger stays back, and the two central midfielders aren't keen to bomb forward, either. There's never more than 3 Chester players in the penalty box. I don't see how you're going to score."

"Corners," said Jackie. "Set pieces."

I shook my head. "You're the home team. You've got to be more progressive. And the Darlington guy's no better. He's got the better team but he's so cautious, too."

"It's 4-4-2, isn't it?" said Jackie, peering out at the pitch.

"Yes," I said, "but heavily modified." I flipped the scouting report over and drew on the back. The tactics screen showed these little dotted arrows that showed where the players were supposed to run to, so I copied them along with the basic formation.

I explained what we were looking at. "It's 4-4-2 but with the full-backs pushing up. And the central midfielders are both coming back. They're almost like defensive midfielders. And the second striker is dropping deep."

"What's the aim?" said Mike.

I asked if anyone had a different colour pen, and Mike found a red one on a shelf at the back of the room. I drew the formation with the players moved to the ends of their arrows and highlighted three boxes.

"Pushing the full-back close to the midfielder creates a blockage on either wing. This square in the centre has three guys in it. They're absolutely flooding the midfield. It's just a swamp now. They're making it a stodgy game. They should win but Christ, it's boring."

"Huh," said Mike, looking at my drawing with a healthy dose of polite scepticism. "Flooding the midfield. I'll have to watch out for that." He stood and his seat flipped back into the wall. "I've got to see a man about a bog."

"Before you go, what can you tell me about Henri Lyons?"

"He's a nutjob," said Mike. "Talk to you later, Max Best."

***

I glanced over and saw that Jackie was slumped forwards, head in hands. Probably going over all the things he wanted to say to Livia but was too chickenshit.

At a certain point he slouched back in his chair and divided his attention between the pitch and his phone. I kept staring at the pitch, picking up XP.

After a while, he said, "How is it you don't know anything about Chester but you know Magnus Evergreen played three games last season?"

"I must have seen him on some reddit post. Some feature on one of those banter websites. Article called Freaks of Football or whatever."

"He's not a freak. He's a great guy."

"I didn't say otherwise. I'm just saying where I might have seen him." Jackie shook his head. He was mad at me again, and not only because I'd used the F word. I didn't really care about Jackie's moods. I wanted to understand how Magnus had defied what I'd come to think of as a law of football - that one couldn't have a CA higher than one's PA. "Jackie, mate. How do players improve?"

He slumped again, head back in his hands. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

"What?" I said.

He threw his hand towards the door that Mike had left via. "I just tried to... Ugh!" He rubbed his bald head again. Loads. Then he crossed his arms and stared at a ceiling strip light. "How do you think players improve?"

I'd been thinking about this a ton, but without access to daily CA/PA data, and without much on the 'time axis', I could only speculate. But it's not like I was thrown into some parallel dimension where everyone played a trampoline-based martial art called Kosho and I had to learn everything from scratch. "I think players have an innate ceiling. They move towards that ceiling based on the quality of their coaches. The intensity of their team's training. How much they play in games. The quality of the competition or opponents."

"Why can't you talk like that when other people are in the room, you twat?"

"My question, Jackie mate, is... what are the rules of how much someone needs to play? You know Garnacho at United?"

"Yes." His tone suggested he didn't want to talk about a young talent from a rival club.

"I saw him earlier this season and I thought he had something. They moved him into the United first team setup, and he got called up by the national team. Now he's with the Argentina squad. So he's training with Messi one day and Ronaldo the next. The two best players ever!"

Jackie grinned. This was a unique footballing happenstance that the romantic in him could appreciate. "It's mad, isn't it? Good for him."

"But... okay. I can't quite work out how much playing time you need to reach your potential. If you were the manager of United, how much would you play him?"

Jackie let out a breath like it was a tough question. "I haven't seen much of him to be honest, so I don't really know, you know? But my dad always compared what happened to Michael Owen and Ryan Giggs." I knew the names, of course. Which football fan didn't? Owen, the phenomenal young England (yay!) and Liverpool (hiss) talent. Giggs, the sensational Man United (yay!) and Wales (shrug) winger who is the most decorated player in British history but may nor may not be legally problematic so shhh - end of biography. "Sir Alex Ferguson took over at Man United. Had a team of hard-drinking hard men. Bought a team of slightly more talented hard men who didn't get blottoed after every game. Great. But they lacked the X-factor. Enter Giggs. Do you know his story?"

"Some of it. Which bit do you mean?"

"Ferguson started in Scotland. Turned the league there into a three-horse race. He was the manager of Aberdeen and they beat Real fucking Madrid. He was the real deal. Intimidating, but charming, when he wanted. When Fergie took over at United, Ryan Giggs was a Man City player."

"What?"

"Seriously. 13 year-old Ryan Giggs played for City. I don't know if it was midnight or 9am or whatever, but as soon as Giggs turns 14, when he could sign a senior contract, Ferguson was on his doorstep. Knock knock! Fergie charms the fuck out of Giggs's mum, little Ryan signs for United. Three years later Giggs scores the winning goal against Man City. Giggs and United win the league, again and again."

"I love hearing you say that."

"What people don't remember is in the early days, Giggs only played like one game in three. If anyone complained, Fergie would go mental at them. People learned to stop asking. Young Giggs was a sexy beast. A heart-throb winger who played for Man United. Who does that remind you of? The media wanted to turn him into the new George Best. The Fifth Beatle." Finally, Jackie was talking about The Beatles, but in praise of a Manchester legend! He continued, "If any journalists came asking to talk to Giggs, Fergie would hear about it and fucking explode out of his office window and appear in a pool of shattered glass next to the journo and give him the hairdryer."

"Hairdryer?"

"That's when Ferguson, this angry Scottish man, would put his mouth next to your face and shout at you so violently and so consistently that it was like having a hairdryer an inch from your nose. But do you get the point?"

"Not really."

"Fergie was obsessed with protecting Giggs. Aged 17, no media, played a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. Slowly adding more minutes a game. He was very, very careful. If it cost United a win here or there, Fergie was man enough to take it. He wasn't going to ruin Giggs whatever anyone threw at him. That's why he's in the top 5 British managers of all time, just below 4 Liverpool ones."

"Huh."

"Michael Owen. Broke every goalscoring record there was in Liverpool's youth system. As good as Giggs? Sure. Liverpool were trying to catch United, then. So Owen played every game. Every game, every game. And for a couple of years it was great. Owen was the star of the World Cup. Was named the best player in Europe. Then - pop! His hamstrings went. And he was never the same again. If you ask me, that's why Ferguson's the..." Jackie glanced at me, and away. He almost mumbled the next part. "The GOAT. He knew exactly how much his young players needed, and he gave it to them, and not a second more. Giggs. Rooney. Ronaldo. With any other manager they might not have had the careers they had."

I let this digest. I hadn't really learned about Magnus Evergreen but it was valuable stuff regardless. "So," I said, carefully. "Ziggy, Raffi, Kisi... me." Jackie looked over at me, eyes wide. Well, fuck it. If he could acknowledge that Ferguson was the greatest manager of all time, even over Bill Shankly or Bob Paisley, then I could admit that maybe I might have some small talent for playing. "We should play, like, three minutes. Then five. Then ten."

"No," he said. "Three minutes. Then zero. Then five. Then zero."

"Wow," I said. "That slow."

He gave me a long stare which ended with him frowning at my ankle. "There are exceptions," he said.

...

I set up the Discord yesterday. Come over there and chat about the World Cup if you want. I'll be watching most of the games.