11.4 - Max Flops [T3] (Patreon)

4.

Sports vocabulary: to flop. To fail. To fall flat on your face. To try to achieve something and to NOT.

***

It was Emma's idea for me to stay in the UK for an extra day after the Exit Trials. To have one day where I could chill out, do nothing, and get into fighting shape for the arduous First Class flight to Rio. Her idea was logical but quite misguided - the extra day messed me up big time. Just as I was getting readjusted to Greenwich Mean Time - surely the world's premier time zone - I had to learn how to sleep all over again in South America.

Still, carrying heavy eyelids for a few days wasn't a big deal - it's not like I had anything important to do on this trip.

The only item on my agenda was - checks notes - saving English football.

***

Emma was next to me on the plane, of course, and it was her first time in First. As an experienced traveller in the posh seats, I was able to induct her into the world of, ah, high society. This included - scandal - a couple of mile-high smooches. She looked amazing in her pyjamas and raved about her plane socks and the food. Her happiness was my happiness.

Also looking hot as fuck in their British Airways sleep threads: Henri Lyons. My star striker gave off a haughty air as though this was his thousandth time in First and he was ranking his experience somewhere in the lowest percentile. I think it was all new to him, too, though.

His Portuguese girlfriend Luisa was next to him but I didn't pay her much attention.

Okay so that was a lie; she was looking sexy ay eff. Was she still into me? I had a premonition of danger when I caught her eyeing me across the cabin. 

I resolved to be as unattractive as poss so that she wouldn't try to, like, jump me. It was also clear I needed to avoid one-on-one time with her during the coming month, which was going to be difficult because I wanted to do dull as dishwater shit that Henri and Emma would have very little interest in. Luisa, as my translator for those events, would conceivably spend more time with me than my own girlfriend, who would spend rather a lot of time with a hot Frenchman.

It was the setup to a farcical romantic comedy in which the audience knows from the first minute the couples have been arranged wrong. Any romcom based on the coming trip would definitely flop, even on Netflix, although perhaps there would be enough material for something called Waiting for Chelli, in which one character is constantly checking his phone while three others try to be good tourists.

***

We landed safely and Luisa got to work kicking ass at the car rental place. My idea when inviting her was that she would do all the talking and most of the decision-making and let me focus on what was important - learning Relationism. She embraced her role; she tended towards bossiness anyway. She had booked what I normally would have considered an obnoxious SUV but it was possible we would be driving out of Rio to some distant places and anyway, it had to fit four huge suitcases and loads of random bags.

We slipped into our temporary roles almost instantly. Luisa the boss, organiser, and negotiator. Henri the philosopher artist, spitting out facts and interesting thoughts at the rate of two a day. Emma the wide-eyed Brit declaring that everything was 'absolutely stunning'. Me quietly and meekly suffering through the holiday part of the holiday. The Waiting for Chelli part. The prelude.

On the Sunday I was allowed to mope around the AirBnB, where I napped and napped and slept while the others explored the immediate neighbourhood.

On Monday I realised why our accommodation was so expensive - we had the entire top floor of an apartment block! The twenty-floor tower was a light pastel green similar to a bunch of others in the area, but the apartment was a dark terracotta red that made the eye want to skip past it. When you finally locked on it was like you had discovered a hidden Incan temple on your journey through the jungle, an image that was aided by the massive palm trees growing in pots all around the space. Sublime.

The living room was painted white and decorated in the style that magazines love, but there was also a red-walled reading room, a quirky kitchen with an island to eat at, blue bathrooms, green bathrooms, tasteful balconies, and calming bedrooms. Bit of a mishmash but very successful.

Did I mention it had 7 bedrooms and you could walk around the entire roof?

I did a few laps, shaking my head in wonder that I, Max Best, could stay in such a place for more than a night. I couldn't have afforded it on my own, but Henri was matching my contribution and Emma was chipping in. Luisa, as a minimum wage waitress, was not on the hook for any bills, and in fact I would pay her for when I dragged her away from the tourist zones to meet coaches who knew Relationism.

We would be able to pass some of the cost to my agency, too, because Chelli was going to come for a few nights, and we were talking about him bringing Toquinho. Well In had asked me why I didn't try to get the winger across to Saltney Town already. He thought I could lean into my contacts with the Welsh FA to grease the wheels somewhat.

I suspected Well In was testing me in some way, but it was an option, wasn't it? It would cost a hundred pounds to try - a pittance - and while Toquinho would not normally qualify for a work permit based on the fact he had never played a competitive match, I would be able to pay 1,000 pounds to send the case to a so-called Exceptions Panel. If it came to that, I would turn up and berate them into agreeing that I knew a thing or two more about the sport than them and why would they stop me bringing a fucking top quality Brazilian winger to the Welsh second division? Their stated mission was to ask if this work permit would contribute to the development of the game in Wales. Er, yeah? Just a little bit.

That was all future stuff, though. First we had to tick some tourist boxes.

***

I'm not sure if this has come across very well but I'm not a good tourist.

We went up to see The Big Jesus. That's a little-known statue high on a hill that looks like Jesus is about to go bungee-jumping. The others were very excited to see it up close.

I annoyed Henri by saying I didn't want to hike up the hill and get murdered halfway up when there was a train to the top right there. He said it was perfectly safe and I said there were so many muggings at one particular spot it was marked on my app. Henri asked me to show him. I said it was on my other phone. He stormed off to the ticket counter.

I annoyed Emma by wandering off to talk to anyone wearing a cool football shirt when she wanted to take photos of us with the spectacular bay as a backdrop.

I annoyed Luisa by saying The Big Jesus had such a big chin it made him look like the football innovator Jimmy Hill. "And on the sixth day Jesus said let there be three points for a win." Turns out Luisa was extremely devout and religious - when she remembered, which as far as I can tell was when she was under a 50-metre tall statue of Jesus.

Good statue. Worth a visit.

Next - I think it was next - we went to Ipanema beach.

I annoyed everyone by complaining we had to pay five pounds to rent an umbrella. Henri suggested it wasn't hot enough to really need an umbrella and I asked him if he had ever heard of skin cancer. He seemed overly put out by the fact I wanted to stay in the shade. I think he had been looking forward to showing off his physical prowess in front of Luisa by partnering with me to destroy some gobby locals at beach volley-football, but I informed him regally that 'Max Best does not want sand in his shoes'. Henri paid for an umbrella, waited for me to get comfy, and then he and the ladies parked fifteen yards away in the blazing 'winter' sun and drank caipirinhas while Henri sometimes ran off to join random games.

They had a fantastic time, it seemed, because when they decided to merge the groups back into one they announced their intention to do the same thing but with Copacabana beach.

"Where's that?" I said, trying to remember the mental map I had of Rio. I sometimes wished I had a minimap that filled in as you walked around, such as those you find in video games. I suppose I could have looked at my phone but that's no fun, is it?

"It's there," said Henri, pointing in a way that suggested the famous beach was approximately two thousand miles away.

I scratched my head. "Like, is it in Rio, though?"

"Max!" said Emma, in something like disbelief. "It's there. Look!"

She pointed to what was essentially an extension of Ipanema beach. Imagine you took the stands of the Deva stadium and laid them one after the other with little gaps but for some reason you decided it was now four different stadiums instead of one long one. "That's a different beach? Are you joking with me now?"

Emma was about to snap at me but instead she raised her index finger and said, "I need a caprinha."

Over the next few days, locations came and went in a blur. Cafe Plage was a visual feast - we ate by a swimming pool in the courtyard of a Pride and Prejudice-type mansion. I loved it but the others decided the food wasn't what they expected so after a long walk we turned into Confeitaria Colombo, a stupendously attractive cafe with mirrors, more mirrors, ornate fancy bits, a balcony and a huge stained-glass ceiling. Super awesome. A cathedral of cake. We burned some calories by going to an actual cathedral that looked more like an Incan pyramid crossed with brutalist 60s architecture. It was enormous and had four stupendously tall stained-glass strips but sadly, no statues of Jesus with a big chin.

I think the next day's choices were Henri's and they had me spellbound. First was the Royal Portuguese Reading Room. Think of your dream Harry Potter library, or if you think you're above that, imagine the best possible version of the Library of Alexandria. Does it have a marble floor, ornate wooden railings, and is every level double height and packed with books? After three of these double-floored wonders, does it take on the opulence of an ancient palace? Does it have a beautiful chandelier and a high, airy ceiling so beautiful it can even compete with the books?

While I was still reeling from being pulled away from what was pretty much my favourite space in the entire universe, I found myself approaching the Museum of Tomorrow. This was a wild building that looked like it had been copy pasted from the video game Mass Effect. The inside was interesting and thought-provoking with a focus on habitat destruction and man-made climate change. The exhibits included a VR pod like in those dumb books Henri enjoyed. Yes, came the message. Humanity is ingenious. Smart. But not quite smart enough.

Ten out of ten experience, no notes.

There was still time enough in the day to go back to the single beach with the double name and take a boat trip around Guanabara Bay. I annoyed everyone one more time by suggesting that Rio was 'almost as attractive as Horizon Zero Dawn on the Playstation' but as we zipped around the deep blue bay looking at Sugarloaf mountain and Chin Jesus and all the deep green tree-lined islands and as the sailors brought what Emma was now calling 'capris' and peanuts and cheesy nibbles and as we watched the sun set on Rio, I said, "Holy shit, it's like a dream" and all was forgiven.

***

Chelli came through.

I'd asked him to see if he could find me some Relationism to watch or a coach willing to give me private lessons. He had started at the start with stupendous results.

Friburguense, a club so tiny it had let its domain name lapse and no-one bothered to update its Wikipedia page, had an interim head coach who had worked with Fernando Diniz and thus dabbled in Relationism. Chelli had scored me an invite to some sort of charity match they were playing on Saturday.

It was utterly absurd to think that the night before, the Friday, I was going to watch Fluminense in the Maracana stadium and that was the second most exciting match on my schedule.

The Maracana itself was sensational, unbelievable, more of a religious experience than the Big Jesus and the cathedral, but the pitch was shit, the match was nil-nil, and after two weeks I still hadn't seen a professional goal scored in Brazil! Emma loved it, though. The noises, the smells, the intensity. For her it was like being home in Newcastle but with fewer topless men. Henri tried to play it cool but I could see he was having reveries of playing in the stadium, playing in such a din. Well, if he somehow felt Chester's matches were lacking in intensity and noise, he had a surprise coming, but that wild night was a couple of months away.

***

Saturday, May 24

It turned out to be a two-hour drive to Nova Friburgo, the home of Friburguense. I was pretty surprised that Emma and Henri wanted to join Luisa and I on the journey instead of further exploring Rio, but as we drove I found out why.

"King John," said Emma, reading from Wikipedia and bursting with morning energy from the coffee-on-steroids they served in Rio, "wanted to improve relations with Germany so he gave some land to Swiss settlers. Sorry, am I stupid or is that a different country? He gave a hundred Swiss families some land that resembled their own country. So, what? It's full of gold and chocolate? Anyway, it's got the second-most hotels after Rio and I've checked out the photos and it does look like Switzerland. I can't wait to see it. It's going to be hamazing I can tell, ho my God."

I was trying to conserve energy but in my own way I was as hyper as Emma. The beauty of the landscapes barely penetrated. The sparkling chat that Henri provided triggered no response.

I was going to see some Relationism in the flesh.

This wild, wacky new form of football. I had to go to the ends of the earth - almost literally - to see it, but if it was tucked away in some crevice, so much the better. I'd like to see Chip Star put this much work in. Every mile we drove was a mile towards my destiny. The trip was a progression fantasy all on its own and at the end of this rainbow? A pot of Swiss gold, guaranteed.

***

We arrived four hours before kick off and I caused consternation by announcing that I was going in the stadium already; I didn't want to miss a single second.

The others wanted to do some sightseeing instead, which I thought was a good idea because they were starting to annoy me. I didn't need to see another fucking colourful building or another hill or another tree. I needed to see what I come to this fucking country to see. I swallowed my complaints, made sure I had my AirPods and phone, and walked to the stadium on my own leaving them to their own devices.

I did a full lap of the stadium, a surprisingly big one, higher capacity than the Deva perhaps, though as with most in Brazil there was no roof and unlike at the Deva there was a cemetery where one of the stands should have been.

The graveyard was a lot busier than the stadium and I found I couldn't get in. There was early and there was very early and there was so early the groundsman hadn't even put up the corner flags.

There was a running track around the pitch and at one end was a high jump frame. I had attempted precisely one high jump in my life, during Athletics Day at my school. We had done a few different things and it was quite fun, though letting the Crawfords mess about with javelins had the potential to end more than a few careers. I tried to remember if my high jump had cleared the bar but I found I had no memory of it. What would I even have done? Run at the bar straight on and tried to launch myself like a cannonball?

Thinking of school made me pensive. I'd never been the most talented athlete, though I had my moments. Something like the high jump that needed technique and dedication? That was far from my skill set. What was I naturally good at?

My lap took me back to the start where there was a ramp leading up to a gate. From the highest point I could see the pitch and the opposite stand. It had an ugly sort of charm, though being truthful it tended more towards ugly than charming.

"Maaaxxx," complained Emma, coming up the ramp a few yards in front of Henri and Luisa. "Where have you been?"

I frowned. "Trying to get in."

"We were looking all over for you."

"I've been here. Why aren't you out exploring?"

"We can't enjoy it if you're in a mood."

"I'm not in a mood. I'm fine. Go and be tourists, please. Slam your Gram."

"But this is stupid."

"What is?"

Her face crumpled, just for a second, and I wasn't sure if she was going to cry or get angry. "Sulking in the stadium."

The word sulking brought a quick smile to my face. "What? I'm not sulking. I'm trying to get in."

"But kick off's not for hours."

"I want to see the warm ups."

Now Henri tutted. "You don't even warm up when we have a match and now you want to watch the warm up of a Brazilian non-league team? Come, Max, be honest with us. Something is wrong. Someone has upset you."

"I mean, this conversation is pretty upsetting because why are we having it? I'm not upset, I'm not sulking. You guys are way off."

"You snatched your phone and flounced out of the car with a mard face," said Emma.

"I lifted my phone with the gentle dexterity of a pickpocket and skipped away from the vehicle in a state of excitement and anticipation."

Luisa played unlikely diplomat. "Max, the match isn't now. The players aren't here. We have time to get a coffee and talk. I need a coffee, Max."

I took one last look at the gate and shrugged. "Top. Let's all have a lovely cup of coffee together."

***

There was a strange mood as we found a place and sat awkwardly around a table. I somehow aggravated everyone by asking for water instead of coffee, like that was some massive display of petulance.

Luisa the peacemaker said, "What is wrong, Max?" She was to my left where Emma normally sat. Henri was across from me, in opposition, with Emma to his right. Against me.

"I don't know. We came to watch the match and I went to watch the match and now everything's kicking off except the footy. I have no clue what's going on."

"You have been very moody and difficult," said Henri. "And this is a new level."

"No I haven't and it isn't."

Emma said, "You've been weird, babes. You're being weird."

I tried that thing where instead of replying you count to ten. It's supposed to stop you saying things you regret and it worked to a certain extent. As the silence stretched I tried to see things from their point of view. What had I done? Why were they being like this? I utterly failed to see a valid reason and I felt my neck getting hot. Maybe Henri and my girlfriend had an invalid reason.

I counted to twenty.

Henri looked from Luisa to Emma and down at his hands. "Is there something you would like to say to us, Max?"

"Is there something you would like to say to me?"

That confused him. "I am on holiday, having a nice time in Brazil. Trying to, anyway. Between all your sighs and snarls and growls and the times you fail to respond to questions. Pushing your plate away, rubbing your temples, sighing some more, yawning, being on your phone during meals. We have to drag you out of the apartment and force you to visit one of the wonders of the world and everywhere we go you are irascible. And now we come to an interesting place and no sooner do we arrive than you escape us by rushing to the nearest football stadium. What is this, tenth tier? What are we to think, Max, other than you do not want us here?"

I counted to five. "Er... I think we've got some crossed wires, maybe. You're on holiday. Emma's on holiday. I'm not on holiday. Luisa's not on holiday." I made a swirling motion around the two of us on my side of the table. "We're working. When we're not working, we're on holiday. I don't need Luisa to translate anything right now so if you three want to go explore, that's fine. It's better than fine - you can tell me all about it and I'll enjoy listening. I want you to have a good time but I think somewhere along the line you guys maybe forgot the starting point of this trip. I'm here to learn about Relationism.

"Today's the first time I might see it, actually see it. That's huge. It's a monumental moment in my career and my life. If I'm sighing and rubbing my temples or whatever that's because I can't wait for it to happen. If I'm not eating it's because the anticipation is so intense. I know being on my phone is rude but I do have a football club to run and the Brig needs me to wrap up the Exit Triallists. It's proving strangely difficult. Plus guys like Lee Contreras are about to be unemployed and if I break contact that's needless stress. And we're building three football pitches and a training ground. I can't go completely off-grid or they’ll put my office upside down."

Emma said, "You don't need to see the warm ups. We could go and do something until kick off."

I counted to eight. "Emma. I need to see everything. Especially the warm ups. The drills. Where the coaches stand, how they communicate with the players. Most of the information about Relationism is abstracted to the point of absolute wank. It's all 'oh it comes from the work of this philosopher'. There are no videos of drills that I can find. How does it work? How is it actually coached? There are coaches whose pre-match warmup tells you about their philosophy. Marcelo Bielsa puts a huge square of white tape on the middle of the pitch hours before kick off. The players do their drills as usual and suddenly there are thirty seconds of craziness inside that square and then his coaches peel the tape away. What's that all about?

"I don't know but I know it's fundamental to how he thinks about football and if I wanted to copy him I would start by trying to understand what that square meant. But I don't want to copy Bielsa, I want to copy the guy today. Geraldo his name is. That's why I'm here. That's why everyone is here. It's hard for me to reconcile saying I want to go to Brazil to study Relationism and you getting mad when I actually do it. Didn't I specifically say 'I'm going to Brazil to study Relationism' like a hundred times? This today is the whole point of the summer. It's bewildering to me that I'm being dug out for it. You can go explore. That was my whole concept. I knew there would be times when I would be doing some boring crap and when I'm doing that you can do whatever you want."

Emma seemed to do some counting of her own. "You've been working hard for a year. You finished the season and flew to Brazil to work some more. Now you're working again."

"I don't understand what I'm supposed to do. Look at some things?"

"Enjoy yourself."

I shook my head. "I'm enjoying myself as much as I can. I'm sorry if you think I've been sighing and being dramatic and all that. That came out wrong. I believe you when you say I was doing that but it wasn’t me being grumpy or moody. Really, that's not what it was. That's just... the tension. What's it going to look like? How's it going to feel? I've been anticipating this for ages. It's like Christmas. But not fun, English Christmas. More like German Christmas. You get a toy or you get a slap in the face. What if it's not what I need? What if it is?" My heart rate increased by ten just from saying the words.

Emma frowned and shifted on her chair. "You did say why we were coming. I got excited about seeing all the sights. Cramming as much into the trip as poss before we rush off somewhere else." She glanced at Henri, then me. "Maybe we misunderstood your mood."

"I think you did because just now you were mad at me for not ordering coffee." I laughed. "That's mental, guys."

Henri swept his hair across his forehead. "It seemed to be in character with this surly, grumpy version of you."

I stuck my bottom lip out. "I'm honestly, genuinely not grumpy. Rio's way nicer than I expected and I love the food and I love seeing you have a good time but... I'm excited and I'm nervous. So much is riding on today and if it doesn't work... If I see it but I can't see it..."

Emma said, "Henri, could you get me a napkin, please?"

He stood instantly and when he was gone, Emma slid across into his seat. Henri returned with a few napkins and a smile of recognition - she had played him. "Voilà."

"Obrigado." Emma put her hands across the table - mine slid out without thinking and enveloped them - and closed her eyes. She thought things through, then said something I was pretty sure she had said to me when we first met. "Explain it to me."

"Explain what?"

"This Relationism thing. Why is it so important?"

I couldn't believe my ears. "But you were there when I discovered it. You read the article. You wrote to the guy who wrote the article! You know all about it."

"Babes, it's football. It goes in one ear and out the other. But now I need to understand why it's so important to you that you'd try to break into an empty stadium. Don't," she said, squeezing my hand. "I saw the way you were looking at that gate. I need to understand it now so please explain it to me."

"Me too," said Henri, which I found surprising because he had certainly watched a few videos and I had talked to him about it. "Why now? You won't use it this season, will you? So why now?"

I turned to Luisa. She pulled a face. "I'm interested also, though I don't need you to explain yourself to me. I trust you." That was a little dig at the others, I felt. "But I don't see the attraction of this system. It has failed more times than it has succeeded. The two coaches we planned to meet were fired in the meantime."

I took my hands away from Emma and pulled the napkins towards me. Luisa automatically pulled a pen out of her handbag. I took the opportunity to think about how to explain this. It was strange because I thought I already had, many times. How much of that had only ever been in my own head? Was it possible I'd never said it out loud?

"I'll start with Henri," I said. "Why now? Because like Luisa said, it's not a system that wins a lot. We've had to come to Brazilian Switzerland to see a guy who might use it in a friendly match. There's this saying, nothing odd will do long. If you lose playing 4-4-2 you don't necessarily get fired but if you lose with your entire team lined up on the left wing you will get fired. The guy who invented this thing has been fired from every job in Brazil.

"What if this summer is the last time I could possibly see it? What if this summer is when it goes extinct? Yeah, I could do experiments and approximate it but it would be my version and not the original. I want to see the original so it has to be now. Chin Jesus will still be there next week, do you know what I mean? If Toquinho comes we can do the tourist things again and I'll be charming and we'll play on the sand like toddlers."

"Is that a promise?" said Henri.

"No," I said. "But you can poke me when I'm huffing and puffing because I'm thinking about Relationism."

"But what even is it?" said Emma.

I picked up a napkin and drew a rectangle. "Probably need to remind you what the opposite is. It's called positional play. That's the method everyone uses now. That's the current orthodoxy. Football as structure with chess pieces instead of players."

I drew lines inside the rectangle until it looked more like a tennis court than a football pitch.

"Ten boxes in each half. Small ones at the sides, a medium one that includes the penalty box, the biggest one in the middle of the pitch, two narrow ones either side. These are called the half spaces, by the way, You've heard people talk about players who are good in the half spaces. That's there. Not the middle, not the edge. For most managers, position is everything. He who controls the space controls the universe.

"Okay so one of the rules of positional play is you don't have more than two players in any vertical set of boxes and you don't have more than three horizontally. By forcing your players to obey that rule, as they move around you should always have passing options, should be able to retain the ball, should be in good position to defend against counter attacks. It's a structure and having structure lifts you up and prevents collapse."

I stared at what I'd drawn for a while.

"If you think about 4-4-2, it automatically breaks the rule. You have a centre back, central midfielder, and striker all in a line. In the early days of this, 4-4-2 merchants got crushed and it took them years to understand why. Okay but these lines aren't just theory; it's baked into the day-to-day coaching. Elite coaches have special pitches with these lines painted onto the grass. Sometimes the boxes have numbers and you get told to stay in box 7 or something. I did something of the sort once with the Chester Knights. Remember, Henri?"

"I do."

"So I'm not against positional play; it comes naturally to me but that's part of the problem. I'll come back to that. So how rigid are these rules? Very. Pep used to tell his left-sided players not to cross to the right. Thierry Henry did it once in a match, scored a goal, and Pep subbed him off at half time. This methodology is all about the coach. The coach is the star. The players are cogs in the machine. Their job is to be athletic and do what they're told to a high level. You remember when we met, Emma? Why I like sport?"

She smiled. "Expertise, athleticism, moments of surprise."

"Coaches want expert athletes to help them achieve mathematical perfection so that they can eliminate surprise."

I swirled the pen around my fingers before tapping the napkin.

"I can do this. I'm quite good at it and getting better. By the time I get to the Premier League I'll be able to use it to a pretty high level. Pep's leaving City. Klopp's gone. The new guys are fine, from what I can tell, but there's no-one who's a visionary who's going to do something unbelievable with this stuff. They will do it to a high level but one I can aspire to. I could be, say, the third best positional guy in my second season in the Prem. Whoop-de-doo.

"So here's a key question. When I'm in the Prem, who am I managing?

"It won't be the Manchester Oilers or the Manchester Boomers. It won't be the London Hypercapitalists or the London Gougers. It won't be the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

"It'll probably be Chester and it won't matter how good I am if I'm doing the same no-surprises shit as everyone else. Football is a talent game and talent costs money and Chester will have the least money by far. It's already unfair in League Two but it gets worse with every step. A year to consolidate in the Championship will help but even then I'm going to be hundreds of millions behind the others. So doing what they do with less money is a recipe for disaster. I need something else, right? I need an edge."

"Relationism," said Emma.

"I hope so. Positional play is fine. It's how you win in modern football and it's universal. I've seen quite a few training sessions in Brazil and you could scoop them up and do them in Chester, no problem, which means you could scoop up the players, too. That's good for the players here - if they want to get rich - and grabbing those players is good for me. I need to provide for my mum and myself and the people of Chester and fine, if mathematical football is what I have to do, I'll do it for a while. I can turn Chester into the fifteenth best team in the Prem and slip a mill into my pocket and do a new social program every year. Fine. But fifteenth is the limit. If I finish fifteenth in the Prem with Chester I'll probably win Manager of the Year because it'll be mind-blowing to everyone in the industry." I shook my head. "Fifteenth? That's my limit? That's my future?

"Relationism is a surprise. It's bonkers. It's crazy. No team in England has ever used it. Is that bad? No. It's good. It means no team in England has ever played against it. I think City did once and maybe there were some others but not in any meaningful way. If I can get it to work, the future looks more like this: An analyst watches Chester and tells the manager okay they use a double pivot, they have four in the rest defence, he's a good player, he's a good player.

"Pretty standard so far. Oh, he says, just before they pack up and get lunch, by the way, they can fucking reshape the entire sport any time they want. Manager blinks. What do you mean? I mean the entire team squashes itself into a tenth of the pitch and moves along the touchline like an introvert hugging the wall at the school prom. Sorry, can you stop using similes and say exactly what you mean? Okay, I'm saying you can prepare for one thing and if you shut them down they'll do something completely different that's impossible to prepare for.

"I'm saying they can compete using 3-4-3 or they might decide to play hopscotch and there's nothing you can do about it. Er, okay. Thanks for the warning."

I got another napkin and drew another rectangle.

"Imagine seeing this on a pre-match formation graphic. There's a goalie. There's one guy who stands over here. And then there are just millions of players over here in a blob."

I drew circles on the left of the pitch where I'd seen players go in the videos.

"That's only ten players," said Luisa.

"Right," I laughed. "See, I don't even know where they go. I'm not sure if they know where they go. That's why I'm so desperate to see it, right?" I put the eleventh guy at the top of the blob. It felt more right than putting him at the bottom, but I couldn't have explained why.

"This? How do you coach this? How do you defend it? How do you maintain the intensity over ninety minutes? I've got hundreds of questions." I tapped the pen against my lips. "Another reason why it has to be now. It's going to take me years to understand it completely but one thing I can start doing is putting together a team that can actually play this football. One reason why managers get sacked for doing this might be that they don't have the players who can do it. I suspect you need flair. If that's true I've got four years to assemble a team with high flair before I unleash this on the Prem. Do you get me? And I'm not going to get sacked if it doesn't work right away. I can dick about more than most managers. More than anyone in the world I can try to make it work."

Henri turned the napkin to face him. "The Premier League, Max? With Chester?"

"Yeah," I said. There was something tragic about the little cafe we were in. Something that made me sure it would be out of business within six months. Maybe that got me to open up even more, as though I was whispering a secret to a rock and throwing it into a river. "I think I'm one of the best in the world at making numbers go up. Find a player, train him, sell him, repeat.

"The other day someone said there were only two players left from when I first arrived at Chester: Ben and Magnus. It doesn't feel like it but it's been quite a churn. It'll keep going like that, all the way to the top. I like the squad building and allocating resources and making decisions but it's also quite easy. Glenn Ryder can't play League Two. It's difficult because he's a human being but it's just not even close, right? He just can't.

"It's possible for Chester to slip into a doom spiral on my watch. That would have been last season if we didn't go up and Wibbers and Youngster left for tiny transfer fees that didn't move the needle. But from where we are now, I'd have to be very stupid, I think, or incredibly unlucky to mess it up.

"So what's the challenge? What's the point of it all? Yeah, money and security and having a house and things like that. That's motivational. Getting to the Prem and having a vote on major issues, that's motivational. Taking a fan-owned team to the top is motivational. But that comes from this talent of mine. I'm riding it pretty well but in the end, it's not my horse."

"What do you mean?" said Emma.

I inhaled slowly and exhaled even more so. I couldn't mention the curse, which made explaining myself almost impossible. "You know Angel? She got a good sponsorship deal from Grindhog. First of many, I reckon. She has scored a few goals but basically she got that for being beautiful. If I were her I'd want to prove I had something beyond what I was born with. I hope she does, too, because she's really talented.

"My talent is, like, finding good players and knowing when they aren't improving. But that's not me. It's, er, god-given. I just tried it one day and could do it with no effort. So... It's amazing to be able to help people like Tomzilla and Youngster and even Zach and Christian but it's not in itself motivational. Like, if I had a billion pounds in the bank, would I still do it? Not like I do now. I wouldn't go rushing to every football pitch in Wales for weeks on end.

"When you found me at the stadium I was looking at the high jump. Henri, I bet you were good at all the athletics things."

"I was exceptional, yes, thank you for assuming that."

I smiled. "Dick Fosbury looked at how people were doing the high jump and he thought, I wonder if there's a better way? He said, okay there are those mats there now. Crashing into them isn't so bad. Why don't I jump backwards? I don't know how long it took him to nail it but he got that gold medal and a move named after him and the whole sport does it his way now. I want to do that with Relationism.

"Taking a flawed, fun idea and perfecting it. Bringing something niche into the mainstream. Smashing the big clubs while making billions of football fans point at the screen and yell 'what the shit is happening?' Think how boring elite football can be and think how wild I could make it. That's motivational."

They were looking at me in a very different way from before the car ride. They were with me. Wild as my dreams were, they were my dreams, but now I had to try to explain something that was so deep inside me I could barely begin to describe it with words or pictures.

"I want to do it myself. I want to learn it from the inside like a normal student. I never went to university and I didn't work hard in school. This is my one chance to really try to learn something hard without cheats, just me on my own. Me and my brain. Starting from zero.”

What I couldn’t say out loud was that if I couldn’t do it on my own, I wasn’t going to unlock the Relationism module.

"If I can't learn it, if I'm not actually that smart or that good, then fine, I'll have to live with that and maybe I'll decide that being fifteenth in the Prem is a good life or maybe I'll take my Manager of the Year trophy and I'll put it on the shelf of my cottage in Wales and make a hedgehog paradise in the woods I own."

"We own, babes," smiled Emma.

My throat was suddenly tight. I took a sip of my controversial water. "That's what I said."

Henri was nodding. He let out a huge sigh. "Of course. Of course you are trying to create some football while we berate you for not being present. How can you be present when you are living four years in the future? How can you find meaning in the Selaron Steps when you seek the meaning of life itself?"

"It's not the meaning of life," I said. "Just the meaning of the next ten years. Am I going for it? Have I got it in me to really go for it? Or is my talent just what it seems?"

"What is that?" said Henri.

I didn't want to use the word curse so I decided to change the topic. "It's not the end of the world if the guy today plays a straight 4-4-2. I'll try again. Chelli's talking to everyone in Rio and we'll find something, I'm sure. Worst case scenario is we find one of Diniz's coaches and throw cash at him to put on some sessions or I go to Argentina early and try again there. I don't know. But that's me, right, that's my journey. You don't have to suffer. Go to Sugarloaf Mountain. Go to the library. Do all the things. I want you to."

There was a very tiny pause. Henri pointed to my glass. "Why didn't you have coffee?"

"I want to be completely sharp. No chemicals."

"Eh bien. You are all in, I see." He tapped the table. "Three hours before kick off. Maybe if we go to the stadium now we will see in which order they plant the corner flags." He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "It could be very important, mon ami." I tutted, but he laughed. "I am rinsing you, my friend! I am extracting your urine. No," he said, quite seriously. "I want to see what you see. Maybe one day I will look back on this day and know that this was the day you saved English football."

I sort of sigh-laughed. "Are you still rinsing me?"

He shrugged. "I will tell you in the stadium. I will be your assistant manager, naturally."

"Fat chance," said Emma, pushing her chair back, standing, and picking up her little purse. "Position's filled."

Henri stood, languidly rescuing his sunglasses from the table. Luisa turned, letting her arm drop behind the chair. Waiting for me.

"All right," I said. They were going to support me. It was bonkers with so long before the game, but my pulse went sky high again. "All right, Brazil. Show us what you've got."

***

Friburguense Atlético Clube versus Deportivo La Coruña Brasil Futebol Clube

There was a new sense of unity in the group as we sat two by two. Emma by my side, Henri diagonally to the front, Luisa ahead.

I'd given Emma permission to poke me or shake me if I was sighing or huffing or if I had slappable resting face, but so far she hadn't used her new power. I spent a good portion of the wait leaning forward with my hands pressed together, lips pressed to my fingers.

The corner flags came out - Henri looked back and said "One at a time, Max! Oh! Clockwise! Write that down." Luisa gave him an annoyed dig but I didn't mind the teasing one little bit.

The teams - local rivals, it seemed, but I didn't give the slightest shit - came out and started their warm ups and I almost instantly felt sick. The blood drained from my face and I stared, aghast, stomach reeling, as they ran up and down in straight lines. Absolutely conventional - from 1988. There was no chance a team warming up like that was going to do anything other than 4-4-2.

Sure enough, an hour before kickoff, the Match Overview screens kicked in and I knew the formations of the teams. Friburg's 4-4-2 against Depor's 4-3-3. The CAs and PAs were pitiful. There was nothing here for me.

I fell into a bleak pipe lined with miles of the cringe I'd laid during my big speech, the speech I had given to justify why I wanted to come here and watch this. The same match I could have seen anywhere in the world. For this I had distressed my girlfriend, annoyed my friend, and weirded out the hot waitress half of Chester had fallen for.

Shaken, I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I splashed water on my face but there was a vague smell in the room that made me feel even more queasy. I escaped into the fresh air and wondered what to do. What could I do? Nothing but suffer.

I slunk back to my seat and suffered while a man smoked in the vicinity of the dugout. He was in a basic light blue shirt and was wearing gold rings and a chain. Since it was winter and it was so, so cold he was wearing a black cap that matched his scruffy stubble. He took another drag of his cigarette.

This expression of masculinity was the great Geraldo and all my hopes were pinned on him.

I found I was cupping my hands around and above my eyes and wondered if I was doing it to see as little as possible or to stop people from seeing me. I sat back, crossed my legs, tried to look relaxed. Ten seconds later I was back doing the eye tent thing.

The agony ratcheted up as we neared kick off. In the last minutes, I formed my hand into a fist and gnawed on my nearest knuckle.

Then the match kicked off and, sure enough, it was a bog-standard lower division match. Hoofed high balls, headers, throw ins.

It took about thirty seconds for my stomach to calm down. Thirty seconds for feeling to return to my cheeks. The day was a bust, so what? My friends would forgive me, especially if I really, really made an effort to join the holiday. Maybe we could find a jazz bar in Rio and have cocktails and I would pretend to be sophisticated and urbane. Pretty much the opposite of what I had done so far.

"Argh!" I yelled, as I shot to my feet. The moment had caused me actual physical pain and now I was dizzy. Spinning. I felt like I would tumble down the steps but I couldn't take my eyes off the players.

The team in red and blue halves, coached by Geraldo, had drifted off to the right of the pitch and there they were in a mass. That beautiful blob! That sublime disorder! They were really doing it. It lasted all of ten seconds before one of them played a stray pass and the whites collected the ball. Friburg swarmed them but their counter-press led to a Depor throw-in and the game took on the traditional shape again.

"4-4-2 out of possession," I croaked. The moisture from my throat was seeping out of my forehead.

I checked my experience points and they hadn't changed.

XP balance: 9,030

No, I thought. That wasn't right. I had felt it. I had felt something happen; it had hurt.

A wild idea took me to the perk shop. I had reordered the perks in order of desirability and the one I wanted was right there at the top.

Relationism: 29,999 XP

It had got cheaper! One XP cheaper!

Henri was up by my side and he was grabbing me. I made to tell him I was okay but he had a Rio Grande-sized smile on his face. "Max! I saw it!" He laughed.

Emma was laughing, too, the kind of laugh there must have been when Fosbury first flopped. Giddy, confused pleasure. "What the hell was that?"

Luisa turned, her eyes huge. "Moments of surprise."

I stood, chest heaving, hands clasped tight as though I was freezing cold. It was a heady mix of euphoria, relief, disbelief, and the same sense of shock the others were feeling. Relationism was so much more thrilling in person. I'd had ten seconds of it and was high. My entire body had pins and needles and it wasn't pleasant.

The next time Friburg got the ball they passed around in a pretty conventional way, but slowly their players congealed on the right of the pitch again. The tactics screen tried its best to show what was happening but it simply wasn't designed for the task; it showed several players on top of each other. The red and blue shirts played a few simple passes and suddenly they were thirty yards further forward and their opponents didn't know what to do.

Henri watched with his jaw dropped. Emma giggled nervously with every pass. Luisa was hunched forward taking it all in.

Relationism: 29,998 XP

The pins and needles feeling was only increasing; it was getting to be genuinely painful. "I want it," I said.

Geraldo, the ultimate expression of virility, was on the touchline using his cigarette to give instructions. His gold flashed. Gold medal winner. If I had my way they would rename the sport Geraldoball. I felt myself wobble and knew if I stayed standing I would literally topple. I sat down feeling like a criminal casing the joint as I concentrated harder on the action than any match since I'd been cursed.

"I want it. Fosbury won a gold medal doing things his way." The pins and needles weren't going away. My body was screaming at me, telling me what I already knew. "This is the missing piece. I'm going to flop above all the other teams. I'm going to flop my way to the top."

"Quite a slogan," said Henri.

"Hey," I said, jabbing him on the shoulder. "I’ve got a week of exercise to catch up on. At half time, let's do high jumps."

He scoffed. "I would crush you. There is no fun in it."

I scoffed twice as hard. "You wanted to play me at beach footy."

His eyes narrowed as the challenge landed. "Very well. I will beat you on the beaches, I will beat you on the football grounds.”

I leaned all the way forward and put my arms around his neck. “Henri Churchill! Henri Lionheart! This is the life, isn’t it, mate? This is it right here.” I looked from Geraldo to the high jump to the graveyard. “I’m in the exact right place with the exact right people. What more could a grumpy Manc twat want?”

...

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