1.30 - Shithousery

30.

Football glossary: Shithousery. (Previously known as gamesmanship.) Underhanded conduct aimed at gaining an advantage.

***

Can you blame me for dancing?

James Yalley     

• Born 19.10.2005 (Age 16) 
• Ghanaian/English   
• Acceleration 7
• Bravery 16
• Dribbling 6
• Finishing 5
• Heading 4
• Jumping 4
• Pace 8
• Passing 4
• Stamina 8
• Strength 3       
• Tackling 8             
• Technique 3              
• preferred foot R                        
• CA 2 PA 181
• Defensive Midfielder, Midfielder (Centre)

With this kid as a client I was going to skip years of grinding up the football pyramid and go straight to the Premier League! Straight to the VIP boxes and the meetings with sheiks and oh, Mr Best, would you and your client like 50-yard-line seats at the Superbowl next to Jack Nicholson and Halle Berry?

PA 181! That was Premier League level, no doubt. And in five seconds of training, he'd increased his CA. This kid was bursting with potential and it only took the slightest encouragement for it to start leaking out. Don't train him too hard, Jackie! He might pop!

His other attributes were interesting in different ways, but the kid was 16 so presumably there would be a lot of development in them. Stamina/tackling/bravery seemed like a good skillset for a defensive midfielder. And DMs were all the rage! Man United had been trying to buy one for years. They'd finally bought Casemiro for silly money, and other teams were looking at West Ham's Declan Rice with talk of a 100 million pound transfer fee. What's ten percent of 100 million?

My feet started itching again. They wanted to do a little hop, skip, and jump. All the way to the bank!

I had a mental vision of me depositing ten million pounds in my employee bank account. Then transferring it out the next day while giving my boss's boss the finger.

I exhaled the happiest little breath of my life. The air had gone into a poor person's lungs and come out of a rich man's mouth. A filthy rich man. Premier League rich.

Ahhh.

I was just starting to come back down to earth when another thought struck me. With 10 million pounds I could buy a little semi-pro team and install myself as its manager!

That would be... that would be...

"Max?"

"Huh?"

Jackie was keen to move on to the next drill. "What's next?"

"Next?" Oh! The masterclass.

"More passing?"

I blinked and noted that Bella's passing had gone green again. She was back up to 6. Lesson learned.

"How about some quick rondos?"

"Aight. You getting changed? Kit's here."

"Yep. Just give me a second." I went back into my daydream. It was so warm and cozy in there.

If I owned my own club, I wouldn't need to - wait a second.

My eyes snapped wide open and I looked at the girl wearing the oddball clothes.

Kisi Yalley     

• Born 3.2.2008 (Age 14)
• Ghanaian/English
• Acceleration 9       
• Bravery 9
• Dribbling 8
• Finishing 6
• Heading 2
• Jumping 3
• Pace 9
• Passing 4
• Stamina 5     
• Strength 3       
• Tackling 3        
• Technique 6             
• preferred foot R     
• CA 1 PA 143
• Attacking Midfielder (RLC)

Another one! Speedy little attacking midfielder. Half-decent finishing. She was only 14 - if she kept improving she would be a very dangerous attacker, comfortable on any side of the pitch. Teams like Liverpool and Man City loved having these mobile attackers who could slot into any gap, left, right, or centre. Sometimes their players would start on the left, play there for 20 minutes, then switch to the right, then back again. Flexibility was valuable. Maybe that flexibility would make her seem like she had a higher ceiling than she did. Her PA was under 150, but I imagined a lot of managers and coaches would misread her ability, and I was perfectly comfortable ripping Premier League teams off.

"Beth," I said.

"What." She was not sure if she was still mad at me.

"Can we use Kisi on Friday?"

"Jesus, Max."

"What?"

"We're a university team. Everyone in this squad goes to Manchester Met. You're really fucking stupid sometimes." She paused. "And you're a dick."

All right, scratch that then. But still. Another little gem of a player!

I stood there and basked in the fluorescent lighting as the Met Heads and my entire roster of soon-to-be-clients stood in a circle, doing one touch passes to each other while someone in the middle tried to intercept the ball. It was a fairly basic drill, but my body was reacting like I was watching Mad Max Fury Road.

***

The adrenaline died down a little bit, but I simply stood there, grinning like I was on a class B substance.

"Max. Max? Max. What next, Max?"

I snapped out of it. Jackie was asking me what he wanted, while all the players were looking over, waiting for me to change the drill. "Oh. Right." Well, what we did next depended on how much I cared about beating Man City. A strange thing to wonder, you might think, after I'd mentally built the match up into something of monumental importance.

If you're building a pyramid out of playing cards, it's the only thing in your life. But when the doorbell rings because the pizza has arrived, you forget all about the cards. And when you go back to the pyramid a thousand calories later, do you even remember why you started doing it? Man City under 16s? Who cared? It was all about Youngster now. It was all about the Premier League. "Let's just play a little game. 5-a-side. Have some fun."

A wall of noise met that suggestion. Lula was spluttering, struggling to articulate her displeasure. Eva and Anna, in particular, looked pissed. Beth tried to explain my mistake. "Max, you absolute prick." James and Kisi winced. "You've been going on about beating Man City, beating Man City, beating Man City. We," she said, indicating the Met Heads, "have been coming around to the idea and now we're all on board. We want to try. We want to go for it. We thought if you believed in us so hard, we'd fucking start believing in ourselves. You fucking mobilised us and now you're telling us there's no war."

I was astonished. "Beth, you've been calling me a nutjob over this since the first time I mentioned it. None of you have ever said you thought you could win. I thought I was pushing you to do something you don't really want to do."

"Max," said Lula. "We're women. We do what we want."

"And what we want," said Bella, "is to beat Man City."

I was pretty sure I heard Beth mumble 'prick' again, and that set me off. "Question time, everyone! Who's this an impression of and who is she talking about? He's fucking crazy! He's off his head!" Everyone turned to look at Beth. "Why are you only telling me you give a shit now? When I wanted to try some tactics out against Aquinas you said you'd rather have a laugh." That shut her up. "Just give me a second. Please." I needed to get my head round this new information. I felt a slight tingling of my spider senses. Ziggy was here. Youngster and his sister were here. Jackie, the only coach I knew and my main contact in the world of football, was here. Literally all my eggs were in this basket. I was in danger of smashing the eggs and burning the basket, too. I needed to worm my way out of this unpleasantness, and fast.

What was going to happen in the next few days with Youngster? Nothing. It'd take time to find him a club to train with and whatnot. It wasn't urgent. It'd be 5 years, probably, before he played his first Premier League game. That was a clarifying thought. Five years. A lot could go wrong in that time. He could get a big injury. He could get poached by a rival agent. He could open his Bible one day and hear the voice of God telling him to go and be a missionary in North Korea...

And capriciously changing my goals around Jackie was a bad look. Especially if I wanted FC United to sign Youngster and start his training. Which I probably did. So... focus on the City game. Go back to building that pyramid of cards. Beating them would be an achievement. Trying would be fun.

My best move now, I calculated, was showing a little humility. Insincere apologies - one of my superpowers that predated the curse.

I started at the top. "Beth, I'm sorry. For one less thing than you're mad at me for. Beth Heads, if you want to win, let's go for it. The war's back on. James, Kisi, sorry for swearing so much. Let's do a tiny reset, get some water, and meet back here in 30 seconds."

We all sort of deflated a bit, emotionally, and pottered to the various edges of the gym where our bags were. I noticed that Ziggy had latched onto Lula. Oooh, maybe they'd get married and have little striker babies!

Jackie shook his head at me. "Never a fucking dull moment, Max."

"Never a bleeding dull moment."

"Right," he said, eyeing James. "New client?"

"What? How would I know if he was any good after seeing him play, like, six passes?"

"It's just that you were, sort of, dancing. Smooching. You know what it looked like? V-Day." Victory in Europe day - loads of sailors kissing random women in the street. The end of the war. That was it, wasn't it? James Yalley signing for a Premier League team would mark the official end of my war against poverty.

"Jackie," I said, changing the subject. "What's your stance on shithousery?"

***

"Okay, Beth Heads, listen up."

"Let me just stop you right there, Max." Beth. Not angry, but forceful. "I know it's just banter but I don't like it. This isn't my team. It's the university's and it's ours. It belongs to everyone. I just help organise things. Keep things ticking over."

I nodded, was tempted to do a little salute. "Okay, soldier, I read you loud and clear. Ten-four. Good copy." She was talking shit, by the way - she was the heart and soul of the team. The only person who didn't see it that way was her. "Okay Met Heads. When I saw you the first game you didn't have a sub. Against City last time, you had one. That already made such a difference. So adding Eva and Anna is going to be huge. Thanks, ladies." I rubbed my lip. "The way I see it, City are coached brilliantly, but to a set style of play. In the last match against them, when we gave them the chance to pass sideways or back, they took it. That's how they're trained. It's second-nature to them. Keep the ball, keep the ball. They've got fantastic dribblers, but they're basically not allowed to do it. They're playing with one hand tied behind their back, but their coach told me that when the kids dribble, other teams start kicking them. Also, if you look at City's men's team, there's very little dribbling. I think that's just the culture of the whole club - Plan A is passing and keeping the ball. Plan B? See Plan A. Jackie?"

"Sounds about right."

"One more thing. Their coach is a risk-taker. I remember watching her and thinking 'she's got balls'." Everyone laughed, especially Kisi. "Keep that in mind. So. That's them. What about us? Well, we've got spirit, unity, chuff like that." A few more chuckles. "If we burn calories like there's no tomorrow, we can defend. But we need goals. We need a tactical plan. We need luck." This was something of a key moment. I was going to offer them a way to win and I wasn't sure I wanted them to go for it. "If we play like we did last time, we've got a 20% chance of winning. Throw in 5 or 10 percent because of the extra subs. Add or subtract twenty percent if you follow my tactical plan."

"Subtract?"

"My plan exists so extremely far past 'genius' that it could, conceivably, be mistaken for madness. Basically, even if we do everything perfectly, we're still the underdogs. There are a couple of things we can do to tip the scales."

Beth sagged. "Why do I get the feeling I'm going to be swearing at you again?"

"Because you have a potty mouth. Beth, listen. I need to know what you're willing to do and what you aren't. My tactical plan depends on it. Okay?" She took a breath in and kept it there, then blew it out. Ready. "Let's start with the worst one," I said. "A little bit of shithousery. A little bit of verbals."

Nobby put her hand up. "What's verbals?"

"It's where you say something to your opponent to wind them up or whatever."

"Oh."

"It's not that kind of league, Max."

"I know, Beth. I know. I'm just suggesting something. And you do it or you don't. Imagine City have taken a shot and Jane is going behind the goal to get the ball. Hands up if you'd turn to your man and say, 'I like your hair'. No, really. Hands up."

"Why would we?"

"To mess with their head! If they're wondering why you said it, they aren't focused on the game. Your hair looks nice, today. Hands up." Beth shrugged and raised her hand. Most of the rest followed. Nobby and Anna were the main holdouts. "Ziggy?"

"What?"

"Would you say it, yes or no?"

"I mean, sure, but what would it achieve?"

"Maybe he'd get mad and punch you and that'd be a red card."

He thought about it and put his hand up. Kisi copied him, startling her brother.

"Great. Hands down. Same question. Jane's got the ball and she's fidgeting with her gloves. You turn to your man and say, 'Why does no-one pass to you? Do they not like you?' Hands up."

"Kin hell, Max."

What I was suggesting was a very mild form of what the psychotic Australian cricket team call 'mental disintegration'. It was more likely to work in games like cricket where there was an extended series of matches between the same two teams. "Come on! Just show me."

This was too much for Kisi, Bella, and Sophia - they joined Nobby and Anna in leaving their hands by their sides. Or in Nobby's case, aggressively folding them.

"Last one. We're winning two-nil. Your man starts dribbling - does a little Maradona run and scores a goal. You wander up to her and say, 'Do that again you'll be going home in a fucking ambulance'. Hands up." Threatening your opponent with actual bodily harm probably sounds demented, but is incredibly common in football. A skilful player in a Sunday League game will be punished for every trick or piece of skill. In a way, it's heart-warming that the thugs on the other team give him a warning, first.

At first, no hands went up. I actually felt relieved. Then Youngster put his hand up. "James!" I said, surprised.

"My hand is raised to ask a question. Why would the ambulance take you home? Surely it would take you to the hospital."

"Good point. Everybody write that down. So what I'm getting is that as a team your limit is somewhere between ooh nice hair and I'm gonna break your legs you little slag..."

Nobby said, "What are you trying to get at?"

"I'm saying if they start dribbling, they'll win. Hundred percent. There's no way to stop them, you know, without shithousery. So we need to decide how we feel about that. If you're okay with not having a plan, so am I."

Jane was crushing a ball between her palms. She bounced it twice. Goalkeepers love doing that. "They're told not to dribble. They're supposed to pass all the time, right? If we're winning and they panic and start dribbling, then we've won. You know, morally."

A moral victory. That was interesting. I hadn't thought of that. Some bigger kid says he can beat you up with one hand behind his back... doesn't expect you to be so tough, so scrappy. Soon as you see him using both fists, you've won. Everyone on the playground says you won. The bully knows you beat him.

"Show of hands," I said. "We go toe-to-toe with them, give it all we've got, and if they start dribbling that's our victory right there, and the rest of the game we stick six in defence and make the game miserable for everyone."

Every hand went up.

I grinned. It hadn't been smooth sailing, but we'd arrived at a destination we were all pleased with. Even Nobby. Any sensible person would have left it there. Quit while they were ahead.

Beth could read my face better than anyone. "Max. What is it?"

Stick or twist? Let sleeping dogs lie? Stir up the hornet's nest?

"City only beat us by two goals last time. This time should be even closer. So... one extra goal could be all the difference. Give me two minutes and I'll show you something. You'll probably hate it, but let's just throw it up and see where it lands. Yeah?"

"Go on, then," said Beth.

"Jackie. Think you can stop me dribbling past you?"

His eyes lit up. "You're going to take me on?" He unzipped his jacket. "Bring it, Manchester!"

"Ooh, catfight!" said one of the ladies. The atmosphere was much better now that the talk of shithousery was behind us. Little did they know...

I grabbed the plastic bag that contained the full Liverpool kit. I turned and pointed to the little room that adjoined the hall. "While I'm putting this eyesore on, everyone pop into the storage room and bring out six crash mats."

"Crash mats?" said Beth. "What's crash mats got to do with scoring goals?"