1.15 - Some Special Stuff

15.

We pulled into the car park. The club's own car park, not the one for the fans! The first time I'd felt like a VIP since me and a friend were both in an accident but I got the cute nurse.

Ziggy opened the door to get out but I grabbed his arm to make him stay put.

"Ziggy. Barrett. Mate." I thought about how best to say this. I'd wanted to get a contract sorted out before any trials happened, but events had moved too fast. "We haven't signed anything. You can just walk in and take it from here if you want, and cut me out. There's nothing I'd be able to do about it."

"Nah, Max. I'm in. I'm on the Max train."

"I'd feel better if you shook on it."

He gave me a disbelieving look. "We could spit on our palms too."

"Gross. Just shake three times and on the third go, we'll both say 'ten percent'."

"That's not a thing. You're weird sometimes."

***

Someone collected Ziggy and brought him to the bowels of the stadium. There was nothing for me to do but potter around the empty stands and hope for the best.

Whatever happened from here was out of my hands.

***

While I waited, someone in a black tracksuit started putting cones out on one half of the pitch. So it was going to be a fitness session, then. Ugh. Why did they need Ziggy?

The players emerged from the tunnel. Ten were wearing FC United's home kit of red, black, and white. Another 10 were in all-white. Two goalies were off to the side doing their own thing. That seemed positive - it hinted there would be a game later and everyone would play. Including Ziggy - there were no subs. He was there, in white, wearing the number 3. That didn't necessarily mean anything, but in the old days the number 3 was worn by the left-back. I'd have felt a lot better if Ziggy was wearing 9 or 10.

The manager, Neil, had a whistle and was prowling around. He and his fellow coaches were wearing the black tracksuits. Every time he whistled, the players would sprint, or jump, or sprint backwards, or do push ups. I was exhausted just from watching. And it went on for ages. More than long enough for me to scout all the players. Their profiles appeared even though they weren't working with the ball. I wasn't, however, getting XP. Fair enough - it was just training. Hopefully I'd get some when they started the game.

I pottered over until I was within spitting distance of Neil and was about to say his name when a coach appeared in front of me. Blocking me.

"Need something?" he said in a Scouse accent. Liverpool! Somehow they'd infiltrated this Manchester stronghold. Sound the alarms!

His name was floating above his head, along with a lot of question marks in a grid. I hadn't seen these at the Premier League games, but I'd been pretty far from the coaching areas and those guys hadn't actually been coaching at the time. Jackie, for such was his name, had a shaved head that tapered far too much. He had sly eyes and his resting face was a knowing smirk. If he came to fix something in your house he wouldn't steal all the coins from your little change bowl but would take just enough so that you'd always wonder: did he...?

"Quick chat with Mister Neil, if that's okay with you, Jackie."

Me knowing his name put him off his stride a bit. Deflated him. But that serial killer glint came back into his eyes and he opened his mouth to snap something back at me.

Neil intervened. "You're Max, yeah?" He strode with purpose and shook my hand. "Nice to meet you. Thanks for lending us your player."

I made sure to turn slightly away from Jackie, even though the composition of the scene didn't really lend itself to that. "Ziggy and I are both delighted. Can I just say something, though?"

"To a fellow Monarchist, absolutely."

Right. So the whole 'they think I'm distraught the Queen died' thing turned out to be important. Mental note added. "Ziggy isn't at the physical level of everyone else. You know he's just playing part time and that?"

Neil nodded. "We asked if he wanted us to go easy on him. He said no."

"Well, he's a fucking idiot," I said. Jackie smirked at that. Neil gave me a blank look. I continued. "He wants to impress. He doesn't look it but he's a fighter. If you tell him to keep running he'll keep running. Until he can't. He's an idiot."

"You wouldn't do that, eh?" said Jackie.

"No," I said. "I wouldn't." I fucking hated this guy!

Neil did a little face scrunch that showed he'd understood me and turned away. He blew his whistle and everyone switched what they were doing. Neil talked to a coach - another bald guy but a much friendlier one - who ambled over to Ziggy and pulled him out of the session. He made Ziggy do some stretching, which I thought was a very sensitive way to handle it. It wasn't saying 'mate you can't hack this'. It was more like 'mate we've got some special stuff for you to do'. I approved.

***

We finally got to the match. A coach was clearing up the cones while Neil had the first team in a huddle, giving them some instructions. The white team were just milling around, kicking a ball to each other. Ziggy was standing in the left-back position. I groaned. He looked absolutely drained from all the running, and now he'd humiliate himself in his big game. He had zero attributes that would help him play in the defence. I mean, his all-round play was weak at the best of times. He had one skill - scoring goals.

I rubbed my hands through my hair. Gave it a good rummage. Should I go and intervene? My instinct was no. I'd already interrupted the training session once. Agents weren't really invited to training and if I annoyed people too much I wouldn't be invited back - period.

I decided to suck it up. Maybe Ziggy would get lucky and a ball would drop to him that he could smack in from long range. Could he score long-range goals?

I stopped fussing with my hair - I'd realised something.

I'd never seen Ziggy score a goal.

This was absolutely crazy to me. I mean, I'd taken the finishing attribute as gospel and worked pretty hard (and shamelessly) to get him into this trial based on it. Based on this number in my imagination.

Based on nothing.

I took a seat in the stands and tried to make myself small. To blend in. Because I suddenly knew this whole thing was about to blow up in my face.

***

Sure enough, Ziggy was abysmal. By far the worst player on the pitch. When the centre-back or goalkeeper passed it to him, he took a touch and looked around to see who to pass to. But this took him so long that an opponent would be bearing down on him and Ziggy'd play a panicked pass almost at random, kick the ball out of play, or - twice - lose the ball to the red team's winger.

I slid down into my seat even further. I didn't turn to the dugout but I could feel Jackie smirking at me. Somehow he was smirking at me in a Liverpool accent, which made it three times as painful.

There was more bad news - I wasn't even getting XP. This was the first 11-a-side match where I wasn't being credited with experience. I started to think about why that was, but I quickly stopped. I didn't care. I just wanted the match to be over so I could escape. This was hell.

But then five minutes passed without Ziggy's incompetence further staining the very concept of football. And I dared to scan the players a bit more seriously.

The first thing I noticed was that my client - my soon-to-be-former client (once I told him that handshake agreements don't count) - had changed. His CA had moved from 1 to 2. I didn't need to go hunting for that information because the new number was written in green. CA 2. Wow. C for Confidence? He didn't look more confident. He looked like a bomb squad guy on his first day.

Could 'A' stand for acclaim? Surely not: Ziggy wasn't covering himself in glory, here, and the curse had already used the word 'reputation' - I doubted it would have scores for both reputation and acclaim. They meant the same thing, didn't they?

Huh.

Next, I focused on the red team, which was basically FC United's first eleven. Their attributes varied wildly, as usual, but overall they weren't impressive. Ziggy was worse than all of them, but it was probably unfair of me to say he was 'by far' the worst player. Maybe he was just unfit and nervous. Still, I would have swapped pretty much anyone else's profile for Ziggy's, providing I could keep his finishing.

The red team's average PA was around 35. Ziggy's was 58, so he should have been one of the better players on the pitch. The white team, made up of reserves and youth team players, it seemed, averaged around 30. That average was quite distorted by one guy: Callum Gribbin. His PA was 144. He had great technique, passing, and his pace was decent. What was he doing here in 7th tier football, and not even in the first team? I had a quick look on my phone and couldn't find the answer. He'd played for Manchester United's youth team, where he had been compared to Ryan Giggs. Fucking high praise! He'd also represented England under 16s and under 17s. I didn't get it. Were people just misreading his talent? Was it that simple?

No. Because PA didn't mean talent. Ziggy and Gribbin had high PA but were, in different ways, not playing to that level. I was back to square one.

By now, I had calmed all the way down. Even if the Ziggy experiment was imploding, I was here learning about how football clubs operated and testing my assumptions about PA. And I didn't have to buy a ticket. So all in all the day was going to be a win. It was also going to be a humiliating slog, but I decided I could take a few slings and arrows.

"That's it, Ziggy!" someone shouted.

I looked over and from the aftermath it looked like my boy had gone up for a defensive header and won it, knocking it safely out for a throw-in. Good stuff! I checked his profile and his CA hadn't moved, which gave me even less confidence in my 'confidence' hypothesis.

But it gave me the confidence to start shuffling myself along the seats, towards the dugouts. I wanted to see if I could overhear what they were saying, if anything, about Ziggy.

Just as I got into position, Neil blew for half-time. At least, I assumed there would be a second half because the white team didn't make their way back to the changing room. I looked at my phone - they'd been playing for 30 minutes. Why not 45? I shrugged. They probably knew what they were doing.

As the whistle blew, the whole staff stormed onto the left side of the pitch to debrief the red team.

Which, for some reason, I took as a cue to lose my tiny little mind.