1.35 - Free Hit

35.

One of the reasons I wanted to use the Bench Boost perk in this game was the fact that it was rolling subs. Normally, in professional games you could bring on 3 substitutes and you'd do so with 20 minutes to go. (It had been bumped up to 5 subs for the 2022/23 season, but I wasn't sure if that would be permanent or if it would revert to 3.) In short, the Bench Boost would have a nice impact at the end of one match. Great. Good to have.

But in this game, where the players kept coming off the pitch and returning a few minutes later, this was me using the perk in cheat mode. I made Beth come off for half a minute, then sent her back on. Soon, only Jane, the goalkeeper, didn't count - in my opinion - as a substitute.

I checked the wording of the perk:

Bench Boost. Your substitutes will play better in one game of your choice per season.

And... it seemed to be working. Maybe it was Jackie's mid-week coaching, maybe it was my languid charisma (born of secret despair), or maybe it really was the perk. But we seemed tighter and smoother. Defending was easier. We passed the ball nicely. Normally, City had about 90% possession in these games. Now, it was about 70%. We were competing!

I checked the other perk I'd used.

Triple Captain. Your captain's influence attribute will be tripled for one game of your choice per season.

I didn't know Beth's influence score, but it was probably high. Maybe it was 15, which when tripled, sent it higher than Gamestop shares. To the moon! 45 out of 20! Or maybe her influence was 20 and I'd tripled it to 60... and the curse capped it at 20.

I thought I'd never know for sure, but Beth's performance made a pretty strong case for the former.

It was sometime around the 4th minute when City's top players realised something had gone awry and, to their credit, they stepped things up. They passed faster and ran harder. They tried to play 1-2s to progress the ball. They tried zipping the ball to their striker.

And Beth fucking made mincemeat out of everything they did. Any time a City kid got anywhere near her, she was on them in a flash, taking the ball away. Not desperate blocks or had-to-be-pixel-perfect interceptions - she was purring around her side of the defence like a jaguar. Complete control. Complete domination.

It's no exaggeration to say that by the 6th minute, City had realised the folly of attacking down Beth's side. Their pattern of play, quite simply, buckled.

My pulse added 10 beats per minute.

I assumed City's coach would figure out a solution, but in the meantime, wow.

And Beth's solidity led directly to the key incident.

City's striker came back to midfield to get a touch of the ball, then sprinted forward to get the return pass. Too late, she remembered the futility of attacking Beth, and she tried to put her foot on the ball and turn backwards. Instead, the ball squirted away from her. She basically wrapped the ball in a cute little laser blue ribbon and handed it to us.

Beth played one of the long, low passes we'd been doing in training. We didn't have three in attack, but Lula took a nice first touch and cut back inside while waiting for Anna to join the forwards.

But the frazzled City defender, a little oik called Meghan, kicked out at where the ball had been and crunched Lula's ankle.

Lula collapsed into a heap. I went apeshit.

Now, a normal human man doesn't react like this. I know that. But visions of the leg-break from the night before had been tormenting me for almost 24 hours. Lula's numbers didn't go red, thank fuck, but I saw red anyway. A red mist. I raced onto the pitch to check on her, but Ziggy had beaten me to it.

The referee suggested I might want to leave the pitch. I glared at her. "Leave the pitch will I? Or what? Meghan will cripple me, too?" I turned around and raised my voice. "Hey, ladies, did you bring your spare ankles? Meghan's on the warpath." I looked up into the stand. "Kisi. Have you got your phone? Will you check wish dot com and see if they've got any bionic legs in stock?"

"Okay, Max," said Jackie, pulling me away. "Okay."

Ziggy carried Lula off, and Anna replaced her. I calmed some of the way down. "I'll check on her."

Jackie’s voice was soft. Soothing. "Let me. You focus. Do it for Lula."

Do it for Lula. Win for Lula. Is that what he meant? That's what I heard.

I saw the FREE HIT button in my vision. The ref had given a free kick, I guess, though I hadn't heard the whistle. Beth was holding the ball like she meant to take a shot.

"Jane!" I shouted. "Take this free kick!"

She gave me a weird look - what's new? - but jogged forward. Beth handed her the ball. I wanted to tell Beth to mark Meghan, but the Butcher of Platt Lane had already scuttled off the pitch, and was trying to hide behind a bag of footballs.

I sledgehammered the free hit button. With Jane taking the shot, every outfield player was around City’s goal; the space in front of the goal was packed. A forest of legs. The ball would probably be blocked, but with the 10% free hit bonus, maybe it would deflect towards the goal. That was fine by me - for this indirect free kick to count as a goal, we needed someone to touch the ball after Jane struck it.

I didn't have the match commentary, but there’s no mystery to what it would have said:

Jane steps up to take the free kick.

She strikes it low and hard.

It takes a big deflection.

And it's in!

GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL!

My fists squeezed into little balls. I've never been a punch-the-air kinda guy, but I got pretty close just then.

The Met Heads celebrated, delighted for Jane. Her first ever goal!

I didn't give a shit. I wanted them back in position so they could get back in City's faces.

Annoyed that they were happy, I turned to check on Lula. Jackie was fussing over her ankle. He said, "She's fine. She might get a bruise. She was pretty lucky." Ziggy pulled a weird face just then, but before he could say anything, Jackie asked him to pass the magic spray. Weird.

The game restarted at a new level of intensity. City were rattled. We were cruising.

Freyja subbed off. "Max? Is it time?"

Time for what? Oh. "Don't you want to continue like this?"

"No. I want to see how it goes."

I offered her a fistbump. "False midfield."

She bumped me. "False midfield."

She subbed back on and mumbled something to Eva, who would be our third striker. Then Nobby broke up a City move, kicking the ball out of play.

Freyja took a breath and yelled, "Come on, Beth Heads!"

Over to my left, Lula jumped to her feet. It was like the scene in Back to the Future where one moment Marty is dying and then the next he's absolutely fine. Upright, ready to play. Lula screamed, "Come on, Beth Heads!"

I swallowed, afraid to move. My eyes rolled, guiltily, of their own accord, towards Jackie. He returned my gaze with a little smile. He knew.

City knew, too. They shrunk. Now they were three foot tall. Tiny little specks on a map seen from a great height. We were Mega Titans.

To say that Beth had reacted well to the shout of Beth Heads would be an understatement. It was one thing coming from me. It was another thing coming from the team. She crunched into a tackle and left Sarah Greene flat on her arse. The referee brought her whistle to her lips, but for what? The tackle had been perfect. The whistle retreated. Beth passed the ball back to Jane, who hit our now-trademark low, hard pass towards the two strikers, while Eva sprinted forward to support them.

Anna ran to the right of the goal and our plan was obvious to City's keeper: Bex would touch Jane's pass to Anna, who would then have a choice of shooting or passing to Eva, whose lung-bursting run was taking her to the far post.

City's keeper dashed off towards Anna, hoping to close down the angles. It was pretty impressive anticipation, to be honest. It actually annoyed me because her good move was ruining our great move.

But Bex didn't pass to Anna. She pretended to. As the ball came to her, she moved her entire body towards Anna. The defender marking Bex followed her - whatever happened, Bex wouldn't get a free shot.

She didn't need to shoot.

Bex allowed the ball to run under her foot, and with the defender following her and the goalie moving towards Anna... the ball simply continued forwards, into the unguarded net.

I fucking punched the air like it owed me money. I gave a particular square foot of air the beating of a lifetime.

Jane had scored two goals!

The team celebrated like maniacs, and this time I was absolutely on board with it.

As we made our post-goal subs, I signalled to Freyja.

"Wrap this half up," I said. "Park the bus."