tedsteel

1.27 - Champion Manager

27.

The rest of the evening was a laugh. Totally enjoyable, especially once we started mingling and I got to know Lula and Freyja a bit better. Seeing a couple of the women leave early to put their kids to bed was an eye-opener. Kids and university? And two evenings a week playing footy? How to Make Me Feel Like a Sloth, volume 1.

The only really significant thing happened when Ziggy went to the toilet. Actually, he said he was going there but he somehow ended up merging ...

1.26 - Bravery

26.

The next drill was back to the simple passing, which I think was a palette cleanser to help the group forget the 'stag rutting'. Then Jackie made it more complicated by changing it from two people passing in a line, to four people in a line. One person would pass and then sprint to the other side and be ready to receive the ball. It was tough to control and pass after the sprint. Good drill.

Looking around, I didn't notice any more increases in the passing attribute. So I went...

1.25 - Drills

25.

Wednesday was, quietly, invisibly, monumental.

It was the day when I was due to take a training session with Beth's team. But I had a surprise for them. They were in their kit, stretching a calf or a hamstring or slowly turning their neck left and right, keeping one eye on me, waiting for me to get on with my hare-brained scheme. I'd asked Beth to rustle up a couple more players if poss. She'd come through. As well as the usual mob, there was Eva, a very tall, gangly defender,...

1.24 - Making Plans

24.

“ Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.” – John Lennon.

The whole of Monday was dominated by the Queen's funeral. I didn't have to go to work, and this time it seemed appropriate that the event was being shown on every TV channel. I had to mute the sound because the audio was so inane. (Example: 'And here comes the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cornwall, and the Duke of Rothesay.' And it turns out... that's one person!) 2022-10-04 14:56:31 +0000 UTC View Post

1.23 - Wilmslow Mega Titans

23.

Moss Side Celtic 0 - Wilmslow Mega Titans 3 (Nugent 14, Collins 19, Musa 30)

Second Half

The Mega Titans had some flaws:

• They were set up in a standard 4-4-2 but had a defender and a midfielder playing as strikers. Obviously these were the loudest, bossiest guys who had decided they could best serve the team by scoring all the goals and claiming all the glory. Meanwhile, they had natural strikers playing at right-back and right-mid. In short, their...
  2022-10-03 09:26:05 +0000 UTC View Post

1.22 - Interestingly Uninteresting

22.

Beth wasn't in the mood for my shenanigans. She hadn't played for a while and had a ton of pent-up energy. But she offered a compromise - she told me the team got together to train on Wednesdays, and I could take over the next session and, as she put it, 'get all Max'.

So the Met Heads played, and won. They had a lovely old time, but I was worried. One of my only advantages against City was the Free Hit perk. But I could only use that if we got a free kick in a dangerous posit...

1.21 - This Is Max Speaking

21.

I woke up feeling great - no trace of the headache - but then realised I had to go to the call centre. Back to reality.

It was brutal. It was torture. I didn't want to be there. I had lost every single shred of appetite for answering phone calls. I didn't give a shit about my stats.

I wanted to move Gribbin to the right-wing. I wanted to switch to a 5-3-2 or overload the midfield. I wanted a five-digit bank balance. I wanted to take Emma to the opera. Well, maybe one of ...

1.20 - Expertise, Athleticism, Moments of Surprise

20.

I leaned a little closer to Emma, and Emma leaned a little closer to me. "Emma and Gemma. Are you serious?"

"Honest."

"What are you doing in Manchester?"

"We were on a training course. Booked the AirBnb a bit longer to have a little weekend."

"Do you like it?"

"Yeah. It's like Newcastle but bigger. Great shops. Are you going to eat that cheesecake?"

I pushed the plate in front of her and offered her the spoon. "Do you want a clean one?"

She ...

1.19 - Demba Ba

19.

After the match, I'd hung around the stands for a while, but with the stadium eerily deserted I'd decamped out to the car. For a while, I'd thought maybe Ziggy had found his own way home. It took so long that I started to get a bad feeling. A premonition of doom. But he eventually emerged and we set off home. He suggested we stop off somewhere to get some food - his treat - so I was heading towards Didsbury Village, where the women were 2% hotter than average.

It was a quiet j...

1.18 - Playing God

18.

FC United 3 - AFC Phoenix 2

Second Half

Smalls 6; Wooley 11; Da Costa 20

Gribbin 38, 41

Ziggy challenges for a high ball.

Murray wins the header.

Smith can't control the ball.

Gribbin starts a dribble.

He moves past Smith.

He moves past Wooley. 2022-09-27 18:57:57 +0000 UTC View Post

1.17 - Gaffer

17.

"Whites, to me." The players started drifting in my direction. It seemed like a weird thing to call them - half the team weren't white. They gathered around, except the goalie, who was over on his own doing weird goalkeeper things. I waved at him to come in. To the others, I said, "I'm Max. My friends call me Secret Agent. You can call me gaffer."

"Gaffer?" said Ziggy.

"Yeah, I'm your new coach. First things first, we need a team name."

"How about, ‘FC United Res...

1.16 - Pep Talks

16.

I pottered over towards Ziggy; I guessed he could use a bit of a pep talk. (Pep talks are named after the Man City manager, Pep Guardiola, who latches onto his players like a squid and shakes them violently while chattering at a thousand miles a minute.)

But on the way, the friendly bald coach drifted away from the huddle to grab a little basket of energy drinks. I took my chance.

"Nigel," I said, because it seemed pretty normal that I'd know the names of these guys. Sur...

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 jus...

1.14 - The Half-Turn

14.

Refreshed, I took another look at the text.

Effects: Nominate a 'King' and channel one of his notable attributes (permanent +1) into a player of your choosing. One use per season.

Kings: John Charles (STR; HD). Carlos Valderrama (FL; CRE). Michel Platini (PAS; SET). Denis Law (OFF; FIN).

It seemed to suggest that I'd be able to boost one attribute on one player, once per season. Now, if I was Alex Ferguson in charge of the glorio...

1.13 - God Save the King

13.

I'm ashamed to say that my reaction to the Queen's death was selfish, petty, and unbecoming of a loyal subject of the crown.

Basically, my thoughts went like this:

The Queen is dead. All the football will be cancelled. I won't be able to get any XP. I won't be able to find a club for Ziggy. I'll be stuck in a call centre for the rest of my life.

Crazy, of course, irrational, but the grey-haired man was watching my face, watching me get more and more upset....

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 wo...

1.11 - Barrett Graves

11.

It was probably just that I was feeling grumpier than normal, but the Powerleague matches were highly irritating. Sloppy passes, failed 1-2s, shots blooted so high they went over the 20-metre netting that surrounded the tiny pitches.

I wanted to grind. I wanted to get on the football agent gravy train. Why did these guys make it so hard for me?

After half an hour of head-in-hands frustration, I'd earned about 8 XP. I decided to take a break.

In the bar I drank deep...

1.10 - Transfer Deadline Day

10.

"Fifa report shows football agents earn £430.8m in latest male player transfer window" - BBC Headline

Transfer deadline day is one of the highlights of the sporting calendar. For those unfamiliar with the matter, football players can't just quit their jobs and get a new one. It's not like they work in a call centre.

Imagine a world where HSBC wanted me to work in their customer retention department. In this world, they are desperate for me, so desperate they ar...

1.9 - A Promise to Myself

9.

Becoming an agent... it made so much sense. Agents were everywhere these days. They had more power than some managers. Casual fans knew some of them by their first name: Mino, Kia, Jorge. Imagine being a middle-man in modern football. 10% of a few transfers here and there and I'd be spending my evenings on an inflatable unicorn in my personal swimming pool.

The daydreams came thick and fast...

I'd been so distracted by the whole 'finally a potential use for this curse' th...

1.8 - Raffi Brown

8.

Solly didn't get a walk that week; I was racking up XP. I still didn't quite know what was happening to me but I finally had a sense that it would lead to something good.

City were playing Crystal Palace on Saturday, the 27th. I had four evenings before then, plus the Sunday League bonanza the day after, then 3 days after that. So hitting 2,000 XP by the month's end seemed easy. The only real issue was the cost - I'd spent more than 100 pounds on tickets to two games. That wa...

1.7 - Revelations

7.

Manchester United have won England's top league 20 times. Liverpool have won it 19 times. They are two of the biggest, most famous teams in the world. The rivalry between the clubs and fans is white hot.

I hadn’t been to a match, concert, or even a movie for years, since before the pandemic. Approaching Old Trafford (I parked in a secret spot I knew in Stretford and walked the rest of the way) was like heading towards the biggest petri dish in the north of England. 76,000 peo...

1.6 - Cataclysm

6.

Football glossary: hattrick. Three goals in one match. "He scored a first-half hattrick."

Shambolic. Humiliating. Debacle. Shocking. Hilarious. These were the words being tossed around after just 30 minutes of Manchester United's 4-0 defeat to Brentford.

United's goalkeeper, David de Gea, the highest-paid Spanish footballer in the world with wages of 20 million pounds a year, allowed a one-mile-per-hour shot to dribble through his hands. And t...

1.5 - Fantasy Football

5.

My mum sent me a link. That in itself was odd; it hadn't happened for 2 years. Most of the time she couldn't remember her passwords.

The link was to a Facebook quiz. Absolute trash, designed to harvest your data, not something I'd normally even click on. But for once I started going through it, and to my surprise, it was quite interesting. It was a series of choices - painting A and painting B side by side, and you had to guess which was made by a human and which was by an AI...

1.4 - The Weakest Link

4.

The second half started and things went great. The reshaped team looked solid as a rock. City passed, passed, passed. Sideways, sideways, back. Side, side, back. When they did try to burst forward, Beth would knock the ball out, or Nobby would delay the attacker long enough for one of the midfield terriers to get back and support. And City would reset, and let us get our breath back.

Every tackle, every block, every interception was treated like a goal, and the belief of the ...

1.3 - The Man

3.

"Sophia," I said, "Sub for Beth."

The substitute blinked. "Beth doesn't come off. She's the fittest."

"Do it now. I need to talk to her."

Sophia called Beth and did a complicated hand wave that Beth didn't understand. She came over to the side to ask what it meant. I took her by the wrist and coaxed her off the pitch. Sophia jogged on.

"What the fuck?" said Beth.

There was no time for social niceties. "Stop pressing the fucking keeper! You're killing u...

1.2 - Women Are From Venus

2.

The Premier League was nearly back. This coming weekend, in fact. Arsenal were playing Crystal Palace in the first game... oh. On Friday night. I had sort of promised Beth I'd be at the sports hall to watch her. A bit annoying to miss the big match, but then again, I needed to see footballers in the flesh.

So to speak.

I stayed home after work on Monday, and used Tuesday to visit mum. Wednesday I wandered around Platt Lane and Platt Fields scanning players to see if the...

1.1 - Hypothesis

Season 2022/23

1.

Something was different. Now, in addition to seeing heading, jumping, pace, passing and so on, I could also see a player's CA and PA.

How did I celebrate this life-changing event? Not even with a shrug. What did I do with this glorious new super power? I took a trainer off and poured out a litre of water and mud.

With a series of sighs and bone-cold shivers, I wandered from pitch to pitch. Three games had resumed after the storm and one was waitin...

Pre-Season 6 - Weirdly Exciting

6.

What lay inside was an echoey sports hall, nicely cool, with a bunch of women warming up in front of exactly one spectator. Me.

I didn't have long to wait for kick-off. The wall clock started counting down from 25:00, so 25 minutes each way, quick half time orange and biccy.

The game was enthusiastic but short on quality. I wouldn't say it in front of Beth but the goalkeepers were really bad. One thing in the game's favour was a general feeling of positivity. Just a lack ...

Pre-Season 5 - Hoofing at Random

5.

4/11. I got up early and drove to Hough End. It wasn't that far to walk but it was a little bit too far in case I was stupidly early. But even when I got there at 9 am there were people milling around getting the pitches set up. Tying nets to the goalposts. Setting up corner flags. Rummaging inside a huge bag of shirts and shorts. The rituals of Sunday League football.

I went to ask a manager-looking guy what time the games were kicking off. There were some at...

Pre-Season 4 - A Game Is a Game

4.

Thursday. Day 1 of 11. Finished work at 5. Home for an early dinner, down to Platt Fields to watch as much footy as possible. Bagged 70 XP, bringing my total to 110. There were more games going on but I was desperately thirsty and there was a live match on TV. I wanted to watch it to check if watching from my sofa gave me XP - that would allow me to grind, big time.

Turns out, watching on a screen didn't give me any XP and I didn't see any attributes for the players. Just to ch...