1.12 - Network

12.

Football news was coming thick and fast. There was almost too much to keep abreast of.

First, the women's transfer record was broken. Barcelona bought a player from Man City. Excited, I clicked on the 'breaking news' and found the fee was 350,000 pounds. In the men's game that would buy you... what? A League Two left-back?

Of course it was good that the amount of money in women's football was growing, but the fee was a disappointment. If I found a good female player I wouldn't be able to start shopping for a penthouse in Beetham Tower.

Next, the baton of Premier League 'crisis club' had been passed on. At the start of the season, Man United had been a laughing stock. Then it was Chelsea, then Aston Villa, Leicester, and now it was Liverpool. They lost 4-1 to Napoli, but the worst thing wasn't the result, it was their lethargic performance. People were saying their outstanding coach, Jurgen Klopp, was under pressure. Madness! They had been close to winning all 4 trophies a few months ago! Who could they get who was better? But then again, he'd been at Liverpool for 7 years. Maybe the players were sick of his methods. Maybe all that frantic running had exhausted them. I saw one forum comment suggesting that Klopp's teams always imploded after 7 years. The user described it as "Klopp's 7-year hex". Was that just a whimsical turn of phrase or... or had Klopp once met an elderly Polish man?

I didn't think Liverpool would continue playing badly, but if Liverpool wanted to weaken themselves by firing Klopp, let them. Changing managers meant changing players which meant more fees for agents. Agents like me.

Because I was an agent now. I allowed myself a smug smile.

***

I went to my laptop and typed 'how to be an agent'. Not long after, I changed the search to include the word football. I didn't want to work for the FBI.

There weren't any in-depth resources, but basically being an agent boiled down to three steps:

• Get a client
• Deal with contracts
• Network

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Glad I clicked through all your pop-ups to get to those pearls of wisdom.

The contract stuff would be simple at first, then get tricky when dealing with superstar players. Ziggy was never going to be a superstar. No worries there, and by the time I had to worry about image rights and cross-border taxation treaties and so on, I'd have enough cash to pay someone competent to do it for me.

So all I needed in the short-term was to network. Get Ziggy in front of some managers. Get him a trial.

This thought led to a crisis of confidence. Ziggy was 23. Most people in football would simply say 'he's too old'. Ziggy had very little experience. He wasn't even playing 11-a-side football.

I went for a walk, imagining the conversations I'd have. For some reason my brain decided to torture me with visions of Jose Mourinho, the dour, abrasive, formerly-successful Portuguese manager. His face didn't change as I tried to explain my inexplicable faith in Ziggy. His face didn't change as I admitted that yes, he's old, slow, can't last 90 minutes, and even his friends don’t think of him as a striker. Jose sighed and shook his head. "And ju say I must call heem Ziggy?" Cold sweat trickled down my spine.

***

I was in the car, straight after work, driving to Broadhurst Park.

I'd decided that a phone call wasn't going to get me anywhere. I needed to see people face to face to have any chance of anything happening. There are millions of football clubs in or near Greater Manchester, but somehow they were all a bit further than I had realised. Chester FC was 1 hour 20. Chorley was an hour. Stalybridge Celtic was 45 minutes. If I was going to go and hassle someone until they gave my player a chance, it would ideally be just a little bit closer.

So I kept looking down the pyramid until I found a team that fit the bill: FC United of Manchester.

Now, these guys used to be Manchester United fans but they'd 'quit' in disgust when United were sold to some vulture capitalists, and they'd created their own club so they could get back to enjoying football. They wanted to feel like fans, not customers.

After some early successes (two promotions, maybe more), they'd kind of fallen off the media's radar. I suppose the club found a level that their fan base could sustain, and stability wasn’t interesting to the world’s journalists. So what level had they settled into? I’ll tell you. Let me take a deep breath before I write this… okay. FC United were competing in the Northern Premier League Premier. That's right, two premiers in one name. The winners of this league would go into the National League North, and the winners of that league would go into the National League, and that led to England's 4th tier, the aptly named League Two.

It was all hilariously stupid.

Anyway, if Ziggy couldn't make it in the Northern Premier League Premier, England's 7th highest league, he wasn't going to make it anywhere. (Except, perhaps, the Northern Premier League West, which was the division below, the 8th tier. But I didn't think I would make a living as an agent working so far away from the big money.)

So I rocked up just before 6pm, and found - to my relief - that there was some activity. A few people carrying black bin bags out of one of the turnstiles; lights on in the stadium; some tinny music.

I walked right through and into the stand. My footsteps echoed. In a horror movie the scenario would have been creepy, but to me it was almost magical. The stadium was tiny, but it was a stadium. There were concrete stairs and signs (Left: Lightbowne Road End. Right: S4-S2). There were long men's toilets and short women's ones. There was a place you could sell beer and pies. Red, white, and black backdrops, witty banners, hyper-local sponsorships. It stank of football.

And I just wandered right on through onto the side of the pitch. There were a handful of people walking up and down the terraces, noting seats that were broken, sweeping up crisp packets, chiseling off bits of chewing gum.

There was an older guy with grey hair. With that chin and that nose, he could have been an 18th century Prime Minister, but he was here scrubbing the dugouts. The juxtaposition between the nobility of his profile and the mundanity of his current task was striking. After watching for a while, I felt... how can I explain it? I felt motivated to help.

"Excuse me,” I called out. “Can I grab you some rubber gloves? You shouldn't do that in your bare hands."

He turned and gave me a quick appraisal. I had the vague sense that I'd passed muster. "Rubber gloves? What do you think we are, The Ritz?"

I laughed. "Come on, there's 20p in the budget for some handwear."

"There isn't."

He was being playful, enjoying a little bit of banter. Even if our exchange lacked the heat of James Bond flirting with Vesper Lynd, it beat a lonely silence. But if FC United couldn't afford basic equipment, they couldn't afford my player, either. I lost a bit of confidence. "Jesus. At least let me change the water."

"Works for me."

"Where's the nearest hot tap?"

"The bog. Tap's cold, mind you, but the water's warm. Until October, anyway."

"October?"

The guy stopped scrubbing and gave me a longer look. "Energy crisis. Cost of living crisis. Don't you read the paper?"

He was referring to the coming spike in electricity and gas prices. That's gas in the British sense, which refers to a gas. Not gas in the American sense, which refers to a liquid. "Well, yeah. I heard about it. I live alone. I plan to wear a jumper over Christmas."

He snorted. "Make that two jumpers, and make it from October to April and you may just survive. But, since you're offering..." He sat down in the manager's chair while I picked up his bucket of dirty water and took it to the toilet.

The cost of living crisis. Right... That wasn't good news, was it? But if my house got too cold, I could go and stay with Beth. Or one of the dog owners. It wasn't a big deal.

I arrived back at the dugout and the guy was nowhere to be seen. I shrugged and picked up his sponge and got to work. He came back five minutes later.

"You're a grafter."

"Not really. Just didn't want this hot water to go to waste."

I kept scrubbing the plastic protection behind the seats, but after ten seconds or so I started to get a weird vibe. I paused and looked around the stadium. The music was off. Half the people had gone. All that was left were a few people in the North Stand, a couple of groundsmen poking the pitch with big forks, and the grey-haired man. He was standing with his back to one end of the dugout. He looked absolutely destroyed. Finally, he glanced over at me and did that British thing where you sort of stand up straight, ignore your inner turmoil, and pretend everything's okay. "You're not one of the volunteers. Who are you?"

"I'm Max. I'm a scout. An agent. I've found a player and want to talk to someone about him."

"You need Neil. But he's not here."

"No, I know. I mean, I didn't know. I didn't think he'd be here on a Thursday. Thing is, I'm going to come four times a week until someone gives my guy a chance. I'm going to annoy the hell out of you until you grow to love me."

The grey guy's demeanour changed, just for a second. "I like that." He shrunk into himself again. "It'll have to wait, though."

I placed the sponge back into the bucket and looked at my hands. Even after a short exposure, the harsh chemicals had given me some angry blotches. "My guy isn't getting any younger. All I'm asking is a chance. A trial. Maybe a couple of sessions with the first team. The reserves, even! He just needs... I don't know. But he'll score you goals. I guarantee it."

"Max, Max." He put his hands up. "This isn't the time. Football's not happening right now." I looked around. The place was deserted. The fork guys were disappearing into some crevice on the far side of the pitch. Every single other person had left. What was happening? Zombie apocalypse? The Russian twat lost the rest of his goddamned mind?

"What?" I whispered. "What is it?"

"Her Majesty the Queen," he said, looking up at the floodlights, "is dead."