1.44 - Landing on Green

44.

Raffi Brown. A few weeks before, he had been my dream client, and to some extent my dream footballer. I loved how he played. Now, he was... let's say he was PG Tips. My favourite brand of tea... until someone gave me a cup of Yorkshire Gold. Seeing James with his high PA and perfect position/skillset match had led to a big recalibration of Raffi's value.

But still - he would become a good Championship (tier 2) player and maybe his team would get promoted and he would play some minutes in the Premier League. That'd be fun. And lucrative. Financially, Raffi would probably be worth 4 Ziggys in the short term, with the potential for much, much more in future. So I wanted him as a client. Very much so. But at the same time, I was relaxed about meeting him; it had been a good idea to wait.

Seeing him play again, though, rekindled some of the old affection. Stirred up the old loins. The guy - footballistically - was sexy. So powerful; so smooth. Put him on Netflix with the tag Swoonworthy. Oh, matron! Pass the smelling salts.

***

"Excuse me. Raffi? My name's Max. Have you got a minute?"

"Sure."

"You've probably seen me around."

Raffi squinted at me. "Yeah. Watching the games and that. Do you work here?" His voice was rough and aggressive, but his manner was polite.

"No. I'm an agent. I've been scouting you. I'm on the lookout for a powerful, quick-witted midfielder who can take care of himself on the pitch. That's you. Would you like to be a professional footballer?" I'd decided to ask that question early on with all potential clients. I thought 99% of people would say yes, but James had taught me not to make assumptions.

"What's the upfront?"

I laughed. He thought I was a con artist. I took my phone out and showed him the folder I'd created with the contract signing photos. "I've got two clients so far. This guy, Ziggy, he does construction. Helps on sites, does odd jobs, electrics. This girl, she's 14. Her dad is a baggage handler at the airport. She doesn't get pocket money. If I was going to become a scammer, I wouldn't start with you three."

"That's your whole client list, is it?"

"Jesus, Raffi! I'm a scammer or I'm incompetent. Make up your mind!" I laughed. "I've only been doing this gig for ten minutes. The first guy is close to getting a pro deal. We just need one more injury in the first team. Not that we're hoping and praying for that, you understand. And the girl. I'm going to meet someone from Man City about her on Friday. And you. If you're interested, I could introduce you to a top coach this Thursday. Get him intrigued. Get you a trial. And we'll see what happens. Look, I get you're suspicious. I would be, too. But there's a difference between a player like me and a player like you. You boss every fucking game you play in. You're top. You're mint! You must know you're good enough to play at a good level. It can't be that incredible that someone would think you’ve got a shot."

Raffi looked down. "I've been scouted. I've had trials."

"Oh."

"Yeah. They liked me. It was going well. But I was in with a bad crowd. Things happened." He straightened up. "So that was that. I had my chance."

"Fuck that. Do you want to be a footballer, yes or no?"

He shrugged. "It won't happen."

I frowned. "Did you murder someone?"

"No."

"So what's the problem?" I put my fingers to my temples. I was rushing again; I needed to slow things all the way down. I'd been boning up on Shakespeare quotes in case I had to deal with more people like Bill Brown. "What's past is prologue. It's over. Yeah? Raffi. Go grab your shower. I'll wait in the bar. Come and talk to me. Let's be honest with each other and we'll see where we get. How does that sound?"

He thought about it. "Show me the photo again."

"Ziggy?"

"No, the girl." I showed him. Kisi pretending to sign her contract. He broke out into a lopsided grin. "You're so proud and she's so happy. Look at that smile. I've got a daughter, you know."

"Mate. You're twenty... you're in your early twenties." Way too young to be a dad. Why wasn't he a constant, gibbering wreck? I know I would have been.

"Yeah. Life comes at you." He looked at the photo again. Finally, he took out his own phone and showed me a really cute baby doing one of those totally liberated baby gurgle-laughs. I’m not big on babies but my mirror neurons went nuts. Raffi liked that.

"What's her name?"

"Leavsa," he said, waiting for my reaction. It was unusual, sure, but I'd heard weirder names. I'd been reading up on players with Ghanaian roots and found one called Nortei Nortey. (Don't believe in nominative determinism? He had 8 yellow cards in his last 28 games.) "Leavsa Brown," he said, nodding significantly. I still didn't react, so he started singing. "All the leaves are brown..."

I groaned, which made him laugh. "Leaves are brown? That doesn't even make sense. It's not funny. Why is it funny?"

He finished his little joke and said, "Her name's Serina. Serina Julia Brown. All right, Max. I'll be there. Ten minutes."

"One thing," I said. "Do you have any moral objections to becoming a pro footballer?"

"Like what?"

"Religious. Don't want to play in a kit with a gambling sponsor, stuff like that."

"No, mate," he said, walking off. "I work in a casino."

***

He worked in the casino in Didsbury, cajoling customers to fill the gaming tables, solving problems, keeping the pit floor running smoothly. He liked the work, liked the people. The customers got a bit rowdy sometimes, but he could handle it. I told him that didn't surprise me, considering how he never reacted to the many times he got fouled.

He told me about his own, ah, rowdy past. He’d been one of the feral kids, the kind that infested my local park. Basically got up to a lot of weapons-grade mischief. Think joyriding (stealing a car, driving it around fast, then dumping it); shoplifting; thievery; vandalism.

Ironically, the crime that ended his football career was one he hadn't committed. One of the other trialists had passed a certain door code to a local gang and they'd burgled the changing rooms while a session was going on. Fled with a lot of watches and phones, emptied a few wallets.

"It wasn't me, but I could hardly plead my innocence, could I? I'd done worse than that."

I wanted to keep talking about him, keep digging, but he was just as interested in me. Especially about being an agent. So I told him my war stories (without mentioning the curse) - how I got my break because the Queen died; how I gatecrashed the FC United training session; how I'd unscrupulously beaten Man City's Under 16s and now had to go cap in hand asking them to give my client a trial.

"And that doesn't bother you? Humbling yourself?"

The way he asked it irritated me, even though he didn't mean anything by it. I thought about the question. "If it was for me, yeah, I'd die of cringe. But it's for Kisi. She put her trust in me and my role is to make things happen. They might shoot me down but nothing's going to stop me from trying."

He was thoughtful for a while. "And what about me? What do you see for me?"

"I think you can play in the Championship. The path to getting there will be smooth sailing. Seriously. As long as you don't nick Ronaldo's car or some mad shit, you'll fly up the leagues. This season, FC United. They'll teach you the ropes, get you fit. Next season, Oldham. Wrexham. Someone like that. League Two, League One, Championship. A couple of years there and we'll have a problem."

"What?"

"Like, do you want to play every week for... Preston, or Birmingham. Big, big clubs, those! Be their first-choice midfielder, be one of the best players in the division. Or do you want a big move to..."

"Chelsea. My dad's a Chelsea fan."

"In Manchester? Weird. But Chelsea's a perfect example. They're always buying players they never use. So do you want to double your money and never play, or take less money but play every week? That's going to be the hardest choice in your life from now on."

He raised an eyebrow at me, which, ironically, made his face more symmetrical. "You're an agent. You'd push me to take the money."

I scoffed. "I'll do no such thing. When it comes to playing versus paying, your decision is final. Plus by then, I'll be set for life. But generally, I want to see you play, not rot in the reserves, keeping the bench warm."

"For Premier League money," he said, "I'll be the best bench warmer in the world. I'll pre-warm my arse before I sit down."

***

We didn't click. It wasn't easy. Being honest, I thought he was one step up from a pure thug. And he probably thought I was a smug twat. A showoff like the ones who kept leaving his casino with empty pockets. But we were both willing to take a step out of our comfort zones. We were both willing to work at it.

We came to a verbal agreement. We'd go for it. He was due to work this Thursday but he'd try to swap shifts with someone. He thought it would be easy - Thursday was a busy night in the casino, which meant good tips. People liked taking those shifts. We exchanged contact details.

I asked him to bring his best astroturf trainers and a white top. (I’d have to inform/sweet-talk Ziggy; I’d learned one lesson from bringing randos to the Beth Heads masterclass.)

Raffi wasn't on my hook, but he was sniffing the bait and was giving serious consideration to taking a bite.

***

Wednesday, 5th October

I took training with the Met Heads. Anna and Eva were there, as was Kisi. Her mother watched from the sidelines. She tried to be supportive, but soon boredom took over and she whipped out a book.

Beth or someone had thought to bring a pair of shorts and a shirt for Kisi. See? People are great. I'm always saying that.

The coaching women's football story had sort of ended with the City game, but I wanted to see out the season. There were only a few games left; it wasn't that much of a commitment. We actually had the same number of points as City, and they were only top because of their vastly superior goal difference. If they somehow dropped a point somewhere, we'd win the league! But it was so improbable that I barely gave it any thought. If anything, they'd win their last games by even more goals than usual.

I wanted to see if I could improve players on my own, without Jackie. Looking around at the ladies I could see there had been a couple of drops in passing and technique, which was perfect for me. I only needed to improve them a fraction of a fraction of a point to see those attributes turn green.

So I copied Jackie's methods as exactly as possible. The Met Heads didn't mind - which is a testament to how interesting and useful the drills were.

We did the basic passing drill, the sprint-and-pass drill, and the standing in a circle control drill (with imaginary circles, since I didn't have access to endless lengths of string).

Absolutely nothing happened.

Okay, I thought, no need to start crying just yet. Maybe it was because I was using Jackie's methods and I needed my own. Well, thanks to a very tanned, very shiny-toothed footballer who had his own YouTube channel, I had some drills of my own. I didn't have any little plastic cones, but I did have a crate of beer that I'd bought from a discount shop during one of the lockdowns. The beer was completely undrinkable, which is to be expected when each can costs about 45 pence, but the cans were luminous green.

Beth was unimpressed. "Max, you nutjob. Are you using shit beer as cones?"

"The beer is a metaphor," I said. "Also, whoever does the drill best gets to keep some cans. Terms and conditions apply." I finished laying out the cones. Yeah, let's call them cones. The players had to do little sidesteps for about a metre, then sprint forward, sprint left, gather a ball and dribble it forwards, cut back inside, and shoot. Then they'd walk to the back of the line and be ready to do it again. It was a lot more demanding than it sounds.

I realised Kisi hadn't joined in - she had vanished. Not for long - she came out of the storage room with hundreds of little plastic cones. Right. The storage room. See, a proper coach would have remembered about that.

I thanked her and suggested she might want to stop lollygagging and start drilling. Soon she was as wobbly-legged as everyone else. I let this go on for a couple of minutes longer than I'd planned. The ladies were enjoying it, by which I mean they were complaining about it and calling me a sadist.

Finally, I blew my whistle. 20 minutes into the session and no-one had improved in anything. No green anywhere, except where someone had hit a beer can and it had started to spill. Why was it green on the inside? Jesus. Even Kisi, who should have been the one heading to the moon, was stuck on the launch pad.

I let everyone catch their breath while I considered this. I wasn't a coach. I wasn't improving these players. From a curse point of view, this session was useless. What else could we do? When I'd asked Jackie to change the drills, he'd done so instantly. He had years of experience and a solution to every coaching problem. I had zip.

We could work on some tactics, but we didn't need tactics for the remaining fixtures. We didn't have enough players for a full match. I felt a bit lost.

In lieu of preparing the ladies for a boss battle, I got them doing attack vs defence drills, keeping it interesting by changing the amount of players. 4 attackers vs 2 defenders, 3 on 3, 4 vs 3 but the attackers could only score from the right-hand-side. Stuff like that.

It was enjoyable, but in the overall scheme of my progression: pointless.

I needed a project. Something to work towards. A target. A mission. A quest!