1.43 - Making History

43.

After a little stroll where I rehearsed the Kisi sales pitch - She's fast! She's dynamic! She's motivated! - I went back to my car and turned my phone on. Ziggy had sent a few texts that I didn't understand. They didn't seem to be taunts. I called him.

"Max! Where've you been?" He was hyper. It sounded like he was bouncing around some enclosed space. For a second I worried he'd been arrested and was hoping I'd bail him out.

"I was with my new client," I said.

Whatever movement he was doing, he stopped doing. "Oh. Who?"

"Kisi Yalley."

"Huh." He tried to process the news but couldn't. He resumed his restless movements. I could hear every swish of his clothes. "Listen, Max, listen. Did you see what happened in the game?"

"Yeah, yeah. 6-1. Good job."

"What? No. Anyway, it was 6-3. I'll mock you later. No, I mean FC United. I was there yesterday and Sandro got injured in the first half. It didn't look that bad. Then Max got sent off. Ugh, not you. Max McCartney."

"Okay."

"And today it seems Sandro's injury is worse than they thought. I got a text from Jackie asking me not to play with my mates this week!"

Why would Jackie ask Ziggy not to play his weekly 5-a-side?

Oh my god.

Oh my godohmygod.

Full. Body. Tingles.

"Max, you there?"

"Ziggy, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Yes!" He was doing little hops. He wasn't the only one.

"Who have they got fit who can play striker?"

"Not many! Will. Dontai. They've been playing Ribbit up front, since they saw you do it. But they're short. One more injury or suspension and they're toast."

"And they can't sign anyone until January," I said. "Unless they happen to find a talented striker who doesn't have a club."

"Maybe someone who's already been training with them!"

"Ziggy," I said.

"Max," he said.

And we both sort of made weird noises into the phone.

***

After ending the call, I did an impromptu sprint around the car park. I dribbled a pebble. Here comes Ziggy. He's through on goal. He shoots, he scores!

Ziggy, mate!

***

Later he called me again. A lot more subdued. The self-loathing after the sugar rush. "Max. I can't not play on Thursday. I thought I should tell you. I'll stick on the sides, try not to get involved. But I can't let my mates down."

"Getting injured ten minutes before you sign a pro contract, Ziggy, is the very fucking definition of letting your mates down."

"I'm sorry, Max. It's too short notice. I'll play. If I get injured, that's on me."

"I forbid it."

"Good luck with that," he said. Secret reserves of self-belief coming back to bite me in the arse!

I gnashed my teeth for a bit. Fantasised about encasing him in carbonite until the signing ceremony. "This is demented, Barrett."

"I know."

He was not for moving. Down in London, the Prime Minister kept announcing new policies, defending them for two days, then doing a u-turn. I knew Ziggy wouldn’t back down from this. How did this random guy have more backbone than the British government? I couldn't sit by while he put his career on the line out of some misplaced loyalty to his friends and their shitty 5-a-side league. I sighed. "Fine. I'll do it."

"What?" he said.

"I'll play."

"You?"

That annoyed me. "You don't think I can hack it in a Stockport Powerleague?"

"I didn't mean that. I meant... the other way. You're too good."

"Jesus, don't start talking like Jackie. Just text me the details."

***

Speak of the devil and he will appear. Kind of. I decided to call Jackie. He picked up right away.

"Jackie, if you want to scout me, I'll be playing instead of Ziggy in his 5-a-side league on Thursday."

"5-a-side?"

"Yep. My first game in 3 years. Can't touch the ball inside the goalie's D. Play off the sides. No head height." That last rule stopped you kicking the ball too high - tried to keep the ball on the ground. Encouraged passing and skill. Optimistic with a lot of overweight CA 1 blokes. "You can get the details from Ziggy."

"Why would I want to watch that, Maxy boy?"

"I don't know, Jackie. Because you're weird?"

"It's good you called. I'm calling in the favour you owe me. Don't plan anything for Saturday."

"Are you taking me to a theme park?"

"Better."

He clicked off.

***

After work on Monday I went home to do some online grinding. Since I'd been checking out videos about Oldham, YouTube was recommending me all kinds of content about non-league football and ‘day in the life of a pro’ type stuff. Slice of life stories. Some people enjoy that, I guess.

There was one that I watched right away about which training drills were good and which weren't. That made me get on the phone to Beth and ask if I could take training on my own this Wednesday. Without Jackie.

"I never knew you'd invite Jackie, Max. You did that on your own, remember? Of course you can take the session."

"Can I invite Kisi? She's my client now."

"She's an honorary Beth Head, so yes. You don't need to ask."

"An honorary what?"

"Met Head," she said, and hung up.

***

Another video was about an amateur player trying to take on a half-decent pro. That was fascinating. The amateur guy was pretty good - at the Powerleagues he'd catch the eye. He was well-balanced, quite nippy, good technique. But the pro just made mincemeat out of him. It wasn't even close. Fascinating.

But the most interesting video was about a club called AFC Fylde. The video sought to answer the question: Why is AFC Fylde the most hated non-league team in England? In brief, they had a gammony owner who every decent person hated. Fun, football-as-a-soap-opera stuff, but the important thing was one particular detail. The owner had advertised a job, and the text of that advert had gone viral. It was really bizarre, cringeworthy stuff. But the advert was posted on a site called jobsinfootball dot com. A whole website about jobs in the football industry! I have never typed anything so fast.

Latest Jobs

Lead Female Community Football Coach, Bromley UK

Sessional Community Football Coach, Cheadle UK

Matchday Safety Steward, Bournemouth UK

Channel Manager, Chelsea FC, London UK

Holy fucking shit!

I spent half an hour on the site, basically just verifying that it was a real thing, and allowing myself to imagine these jobs and whether I'd like them. I called it research. You might call it daydreaming. Eggplant, aubergine.

Most were badly paid - coaching kids for 15 pounds an hour, for example, but they encompassed everything in the world of football except being the manager of a men's team. And maybe those would be listed, too, when there were vacancies. The General Manager of the Blackburn Ladies team was on there. Could I work my way up from a groundsman in Southport to being the manager of Man United?

Astonishingly quickly, this website had become a kind of security blanket. A safety net. There was nothing I could mess up so badly that I wouldn't be able to apply for a position in the Bromley Community Sports Trust or writing copy for the Crystal Palace website. So I called Newcastle United trying to get two tickets in the scouting section.

It... didn't go well. Long story short, given a choice between reserving those seats for some of the richest men in the world, the England manager, various super-agents, or Max Best, a 22-year-old with two clients who had played zero minutes... yeah, yeah. You get the picture.

"I understand," I said. "And it's even worse. I need two tickets. I met a Newcastle girl and want to take her to St James's to let her experience the atmosphere. Last throw of the dice to get her into footy."

"Oh, so you want to use us for your dating?"

"Absolutely."

There was a stony silence, but then a cackle of laughter. "I like you, Max. Call us back when you're... you know."

"Not a nobody."

"Yeah. Where's your lass from?"

"Newcastle," I said.

"Which part!" the guy laughed.

"Oh. Does it have parts?"

"Man. These tickets are like gold dust. Don't waste them on a first date."

That was wise. I texted Emma telling her that I'd been shot down by her local team, so she was free to keep hating football. But I invited her to join my Culture Club.

Emma: What's that?
Me: We watch a movie, read a book, or listen to a song, and discuss it.
Emma: I knew it. That's why you seem so sophisticated. You just parrot the opinions of everyone else in your little gang. How many are in it?
Me: If you join, two.
Emma: Oh, exclusive. I like that. What's next on the to-do list?
Me: Can you choose? My life is getting frantic. If it has Ryan Reynolds in it, that's probably a bonus.
Emma: Sure. I nominate The Proposal. Sandra Bullock/RR romcom.
Me: Okay.
Emma: No complaints?
Me: No. Why? Were you joking?
Emma: I was. I didn't think you'd agree. But alright! Proposal it is! When do we discuss it?
Me: How about Saturday evening?
Emma: I'm probably going clubbing.

Clubbing. Weirdest thing. If I wanted to be pumped full of drugs and be hot, sweaty, and cramped I’d become a factory farm chicken.

Me: Okay. Sunday, then? Sunday evening.
Emma: It's a date.

So I had to watch a romantic comedy before Sunday. I added it to a post-it note where I'd been tracking all the things I wanted to watch. There were three seasons of the documentary All or Nothing (Tottenham/Man City/Arsenal). There was Sunderland Till I Die. And, maybe most urgently, Welcome to Wrexham, made by Ryan Reynolds and the other one. And the algorithm was throwing up all kinds of interesting things on YouTube. Plus there were tons of books I would have to find time to read: Inverting the Pyramid. Moneyball. The Damned United.

I'd certainly be stress-testing the adage that busy people are happy people.

***

On Tuesday, 4th October, I went to Ardwick Powerleague to see Raffi Brown. While I waited for his team to turn up, I collected 50 XP.

There was a lot going on in my life - new clients, new failures, a website jam packed with football careers. Something occurred to me - as soon as I'd stopped trying to land James Yalley in my big net, I'd been on the move again. It was like he'd been anchoring me, tying me to a particular vision of the future. Now that I'd cut that cord, there was a palpable feeling of forward momentum. It was intoxicating. Just like that, I decided to buy the Player Profile 2 upgrade.

Boom! Big moment. 100 XP. 100 minutes of watching awful sports - poof! Used up in a flash.

Was it worth it?

The first thing to say is that it unlocked a new option - Player Profile 3: Nerdlonger. This would cost 500 XP and offered 'more history'. Bit underwhelming.

I turned to the nearest pitch, and now when I looked at someone's player profile there were those little tabs you get on computer windows to indicate that there is something behind. I tapped on it and saw the History screen. I wondered if I had to concentrate on that little tab thing when I wanted to switch back and forth, or if I could swipe left and right to move between the screens. My in-vision interface sort of went squiggly for a minute - bit scary - but then came back and I could swipe left and right through the tabs.

Had I just reprogrammed the curse?

Anyway. History. This was... useless. Useless in the Powerleagues, anyway.

In the focal point of this new screen were the following columns:

Season/Team/Apps/Gls/Asts/MoM/Pass/Tck/Drb/Sh Tar/Av R

So the year, the team they played for, how many games they played, how many goals, assists, man of the match awards, then something about passing, tackling, dribbling, shots on target, and average rating.

Quite a lot! But there was more!

There was a little arrow and clicking on it changed some of the columns:

Season/Team/Con/Pens/Yel/Red/Won/Lost/Tgls/Tcon/Av R

Year and team again, then some of the labels were a bit of a mystery. Condition? Penalties. Yellow and red cards. Won, lost. Total goals? Total conceded? Ah, conceded. The first one in this row would be for goalkeepers. So maybe Pens was penalties saved.

Whatever all the columns meant - and I was sure I’d be able to work it out soon enough - the data would show me a player's clubs and basic performance stats from previous years.

The short-term problem was that no-one at the Powerleagues HAD a club, or had ever had one.

But wait! I could see the player profiles for any player I'd already scouted. I called up Ronaldo and swiped to his history tab.

I got my phone out to check these numbers. The appearances/goals/assists seemed correct. Had I just linked my brain directly to Wikipedia or what? One mystery was cleared up - Pens meant penalties scored. Ronaldo had smacked in 3 of the 4 he'd taken. The others?

Well, I thought there was an obvious way to understand some of the other columns.

Ronaldo had played one game for Juventus before joining United. I couldn’t find a simple match report for the game but there was a video. Ronaldo came on with his team losing 2-1. They equalised, and then Ronaldo scored a 96th minute winner. After a long celebration and a yellow card for waving his shirt around, the goal was disallowed. Not sure why. Offside, maybe? Anyway, that made sense of some of the columns: Tgls was team goals, and Tcon was ‘goals conceded by team’ while Ronaldo was playing. That also explained why won and lost both had 0 - the one game he’d played had been a draw.

So yeah, these numbers seemed reliable.

There was obviously a lot of missing data, but the one that stood out was the average rating. That was tantalising. That seemed like it would be a big step forward in player analysis. I checked the other perks for sale and couldn’t see one that would unlock the ratings.

Anyway, what I’d just got was great, but for some very specific scenarios. For example, when talking to Bill Brown about the young left-back I liked, I could have mentioned how many games he’d played the year before, or commented on how frequently he picked up yellow cards. Made it seem like I’d done my homework.

It was definitely worth 100 XP. Would I spend 500 XP to unlock more years in this tab? Sure. Eventually. When I was able to watch tier 1 and 2 games every night of the week. I'd want to investigate some of the other basics, first, though. See how this knowledge helped or hindered me.

I played with my new toy for a while.

Then Raffi and his team turned up, and I gave him my full attention. It was First Contact day.

I was completely calm about it. If Raffi started quoting Bible verses at me, no problem. I could always become a goalkeeper coach in Yorkshire or a nutritionist at Leeds United's academy. The footballing world was my oyster!

...

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