1.34 - Manchester City Under 16s

I didn't enjoy work that Friday. I spent the whole day feeling like I'd seen something twisted and grotesque, but I hadn't. Not really. I'd seen some numbers turn red. Simon's leg hadn't actually crumpled. Not visibly, anyway.

But I couldn't shake it off.

I went to the nearest supermarket and looked at their meal deals, but every option turned my stomach. I thought about going home early, but being alone with my thoughts wasn't going to help. After the lunch break, I tried to focus on the customers and their needs. Tried to help some people. Tried to keep them on the line, not to trash my own stats, but to have a constant flow of chat.

***

I got to the gym early and picked up 20 XP catching the end of the game before ours. It was two of the weaker teams, and both were highly motivated to score a rare win. Every time two players went into a 50:50 challenge, I winced. But nothing untoward happened.

The Met Heads came in from the changing rooms and dropped their bags by the side of the pitch. I didn't want to spend more time with them than necessary, so I stayed up in the highest row of seats and tried to look like I hadn't even noticed their arrival. Jackie and Ziggy turned up. Then came Mr and Mrs Yalley, and Kisi. But not James. I waved them to sit next to me and we made small talk for a few minutes.

Then the last person I'd expected to see - Emre. He was clearly looking for me, so I went down to the sidelines. The referee signaled the end of the match I’d been watching - our game would kick off in ten minutes. Something appeared in my vision - I willed it to become transparent for now.

"Max, mate," said Emre, shaking my hand. Since I'd met him, he'd started to say mate. Not sure why.

"Sup?"

"I wanted to tell you. That guy from last night. It was a bad break. Really bad. But he's gonna be okay. One of the lads came to find me, asked me to thank you. So."

I didn't know how to take the news. I suppose it should have been closure, but I knew it wasn't. "Okay. Thanks. We're about to beat Man City. Beth's team is. You gonna watch?"

He grinned. "Tell me you're gonna beat Besiktas, I'll come for that. But no." He rubbed his jaw. "Gotta keep grinding."

"Nasilsin," I said. He wanted to say something, but with a shake of the head, he strode off.

***

Here they came. Manchester City. Speartip of a massive global sporting empire. Billions of pounds of reputation laundering, twenty years of planning, and lo, the culmination. The project, personified. The dreams of a desert nation given tangible form and shape in the lush evening mists of England's green and pleasant land. They came walking out of the changing rooms in their laser blue sweatshirts. Walking. Like the Ireland rugby team walking towards the All-Black haka. Walking subverted into a war dance. Walking as its own challenge. Confident. Calm. Badass. Invincible.

In my head, I'd built them up as enormous creatures. Twice as tall as the Wilmslow Mega Titans. Bayern Munich on stilts. Orc chieftains ruled by a large, floating she-brain.

What I saw was Coach Sandra and the seven dwarves.

I laughed at my own stupidity. These City girls were tiny. Teeny tiny tweenies. They were so young they'd probably all quit TikTok and were onto the new thing, the thing I'd hear about in about 16 months.

But then they started passing a ball around, and I saw their profiles.

Sarah Greene

Born 4.10.2007 - (Age 14) - English

• Acceleration 6
• Bravery 3
• Dribbling 12
• Finishing 4
• Heading 1
• Jumping 3
• Pace 4
• Passing 9
• Stamina 4
• Strength 3
• Tackling 2
• Technique 13
• preferred foot R
• CA 14
• PA 167
• Midfielder (Centre, Right)

I'd been so pleased with myself for improving the Met Heads! Beth had gone from CA 1 to CA 3. Lula was on CA 2. As a squad, we'd added some passing, some technique. Gotten a little closer to City. Maybe enough to close the gap with my perks and my mad tactics. But City, the cheats, had been improving, too! Sarah alone had added 2 points in CA, and almost all her colleagues had done likewise. That was, like, totally not fair, man.

Jackie and the Met Heads wanted to talk to me, but I needed a minute. I went to the toilet and pretended to pee. Actually, I was frantically thinking. What could I do? Could I buy a perk? I didn't get a match overview or a tactics screen when coaching these 7-a-side games, so the only real option was God Save the King. That was 3,000 XP, but I could go into debt to get it. And then what? Give Beth another point in heading?

Ludicrous.

I washed my hands and went to watch my friends get a 50-minute lesson in why not to listen to Max Best.

***

While the Met Heads warmed up, Jackie offered his services as an assistant coach.

"Tommy Tactics and his Scouse Sidekick?" I said.

He wasn't keen on the name. "I was thinking Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, taking down the evil empire. Blasting the Death Star."

"Letting Princess Leia do all the hard work," said Beth, who'd come over to get some water.

"Do we need to get together before kick-off?" I said. In retrospect, I don't know which one I was asking.

Beth said, "No."

Jackie said, "Yes."

I grinned at them. "I'll go with what Luke Skywalker says."

Beth nodded and went to gather the team. "I'm Han Solo," complained Jackie.

I tsked. "Han Solo is sexy, funny, and charming," I said, extending my arms to show that I was all of those things. "My instinct is to keep it simple for now. What do you think?"

He nodded. "They know what you want. It's just a question of how fast you want them to come out of the blocks."

The team were all in a semi-circle. Everyone had come. I'd worried we might lose one to a babysitter crisis. "Ladies," I said. "First things first. Beth is the captain. This is me officially making Beth the captain. Beth? You're the captain. Come here." I'd gotten her a little captain's armband. I wasn't sure how to make sure the perk triggered and was covering all my bases. She wriggled like she was a cat and I was trying to put a collar on her. "Fuck sake, Beth. This is important." She gave me a weird look and adjusted the armband. It suited her. She knew it. "Right. Let's get off to a solid start. Nothing fancy. Let them get into their passing routines."

Freyja said, "So are we starting with the false midfield?"

"No. Start 2-2-2 and I'll tell you when to switch."

"Got it."

"You remember it's important to disguise the tactic, right?" Lots of nodding. "At one point, I might ask Lula and Bella to sub off, and that's a cue to go all-out defence."

"Why?" said Beth.

"Their coach can only make radical changes at half-time, right? If we park the bus before half-time, she might think that's how we're going to play and she'll react to that instead of the false midfield."

"Right," said Freyja. "I like that. Sneaky boy."

They were all grinning at me. Why? I was sure we were going to get thrashed.

"One last thing," I said. I pointed at Jackie. "The most important thing. Which Star Wars character is he?"

***

While the ladies took up their positions, laughing and joking, I let my eyes unfocus and concentrated on the thing I had made transparent. It was two large buttons in the left-hand side of my vision. Since I'd bought the Fantasy Football perk, they always appeared in the ten minutes before kick-off of matches where I was the coach (i.e. a couple of Met Heads fixtures but not the full-sized games where I'd taken over at half-time). The first one said TRIPLE CAPTAIN and the other one was labeled BENCH BOOST.

I waited just a second, just to check that this match was definitely going ahead - I only got these perks once per season and didn't want to waste them. You might think I was wasting them on a game I knew we'd lose, but it was one of those 'promise to myself' situations. I had earmarked them for this game, so that was that. Also, I wanted to see them in action!

The referee was counting the players on each team. The clock and scores had been reset. This match was on like Donkey Kong!

I smashed both buttons and glanced over at Beth. Had I been expecting her armband to start crackling with eldritch power? Well, no, of course not. But yes, a little bit.

If anything was happening, it was invisible.

The referee blew her whistle, one midget passed the ball to another, and it was on.

The big game.

Big game? Big deal.

One thing was bothering me. "Jackie," I said, "What was that?"

"What? A load of girls who don't watch sci-fi trying to say I look like Jean-Luc Picard?"

"No, the whole vibe. They were, like, confident or something."

Jackie laughed. "You're so clueless sometimes. You piss me off more than anyone I've ever met. They're confident because you are."

"Me?"

"You're so calm. I've never seen you this calm. You're always a bit manic. You're talking slower; you've got all the time in the world. Why are you playing dress-up with Beth? Why are you using the team talk to make fun of me? Because you're so sure of winning."

Huh. "It's kind of the opposite."

His expression lost some of its usual wryness and went to his other favourite look - calculation. "Had me fooled. I don't get that from you at all." His attention went back to the pitch. "It doesn't matter. They think you're confident. You infected them." He visibly swallowed a joke. Bit his lip.

City were already into their groove. Zip zip zap. Lovely, balanced techniques. Control, pass. Control, pass. 2-3-1, but the ball never going near their striker. She was growing confused. Something was wrong - City were dominating but achieving nothing.

I was almost tempted to leave things like this.

We weren't totally passive, though. We stuck to our tasks. Didn't overreach. And when someone strayed from the plan, Freyja was very talkative. During breaks in play she'd discuss what had just happened with her teammates. She had a keen tactical mind and she was trying to implement my theories within the 2-2-2 structure.

"Do you think I should have made Freyja the captain?" I asked Jackie, worrying that I'd misused my perk.

"I don't think it makes much difference," he said, looking around the sports hall. It wasn't exactly the World Cup final.

"As coach, it's one of about four things I get to choose. Freyja's the brain on the pitch. Maybe I should have picked her."

Eva was listening. "Beth's the captain," she said. "End of."

Jackie nodded. "Some players have an aura. You can make Freyja captain if you want. The rest are still going to look to Beth when the going gets tough."

Anna glanced over at me. "What's the armband for? Really?"

I grinned at her. "Probably nothing."

I was grinning because it was, indeed, probably nothing. The Triple Captain perk had, so far, done bugger all. Maybe the curse hadn't accepted Beth as the captain because I didn't have a match tactics screen where I could select that. Or maybe Beth's Influence attribute was 1, and the perk had tripled it to 3. I didn't know. The grin was me being amused at myself for believing my own wild theories. But - and I was starting to see Jackie's point - Anna took the smile to mean I had a trick up my sleeve. She grinned back at me, excited to see my scheme pay off.

At that point, I was still perfectly calm.

One of us was experiencing the exact right amount of excitement. And - spoiler alert - it wasn't me. Because 6 minutes into the first-half, everything went nuts.

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I've added T3 to the posts that are currently exclusive to Club Legends, T2 for First Team Regulars, T1 for Talented Youngsters. It's to help me manage the posts so I can focus on the writing and not the admin!

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New Patrons! It never ceases to amaze and delight. But instead of trying to think of ways to say thanks, I'm going to spend the day writing this scene.