11.5 - Keeping It Real [T3] (Patreon)

5.

Geraldo liked money. Geraldo didn't like me. Geraldo liked money more than he disliked me.

After the match (two-all, it's not important, stop fixating on results and also stop asking who won the high jumps), Luisa and I invited ourselves into the dressing room to ask him to put on a special training session in the morning. Geraldo said no, he had to go to church. Luisa said, after church then. He said no, he would never work on the sabbath day. Luisa said how about for two thousand reais? He said three thousand. I said deal.

Then came a separate negotiation with the players. I needed twenty and as luck would have it, there were more than twenty fit local lads in the two dressing rooms. Luisa set about negotiating a fee. I had to pay them to give them extra coaching! Luisa quickly grew tired of the discussions, got the two captains together and said the first twenty players who turned up in the afternoon would get two hundred reais cash and the chance to play with a big star from England.

"And a medium star from France," I said, which Luisa didn't think was funny.

The session arranged, I immediately set about planning the next steps. We would drive home and get our gear and come back. Find a hotel and once again be early to the stadium. No earthquake, no mudslide, no coup d'etat would stop me being there.

Emma persuaded me to relax. We could stay in our luxury apartment and have a nice evening in Rio and drive as early as I wanted the next day, with plenty of time for contingencies. Everything would be all right. Luisa agreed - if we were delayed by a natural disaster it wouldn't matter because for four hundred quid, Geraldo would keep the sabbath wholly for me.

***

We had dinner at the Pura Brasa chickenhouse in Ipanema. Another of Henri's choices, and another surprise because I always expected him to choose some hipster nightmare that served your meal in a sieve or a swanky, fancy place that replaced your cutlery every five minutes, but he actually tended to go for places with great food and he didn't mind about anything else.

I had grilled chicken with crispy skin while Henri chose the chicken heart skewer. He always went straight to the most distressing part of the menu.

"This guy," I complained. "He's not happy unless he's eating cheek, ear, brains..." I tried to think of what else I'd seen him devour. "Loins, jowls, tongue. Hoof. Marrow. Chicken heart is a new low, I think."

He wasn't bothered - he didn't see anything wrong in what he was doing. "You are right, Max. I should be like you and subsist on mushy peas."

Luisa showed off an exotic word she had learned. "What would you do with the parts of the animal you consider icky?"

"I don't know," I said. "Sell them to France. Don't take all their little hearts and skewer them. That's, er, heartless. Have some respect. Eat them one at a time like communion wafers."

Emma didn't want to talk about Henri's crimes against poultry. "Are you excited, babes?"

"Big time. Geraldo's only doing an hour and I know he'll try to rinse me in some way. Twenty minute warmup maybe, while he smokes. Then a drill. Then another. Then a mini game. Finish six minutes early. I am one hundred percent sure he will fleece me to the max and spend the rest of his life telling the story of how he mugged me off."

"I could cancel," said Luisa.

"No, I kind of don't mind, weirdly. The whole thing will cost a thousand pounds, which is pretty mental given his coaching level but in the scheme of things, it's nothing, and if he's thinking 'oh that tourist can afford it' he's right." Geraldo's Coaching Outfield Players rating, as assessed by the curse, was 4 out of 20. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't let him coach a single one of my players. "But it's like... I don't need it to be good. We know he only had a few sessions with those players and they played in a way none of us have ever seen before. It's, like, good enough. Do you know what I mean?"

Emma said, "After the session can we explore Brazilian Switzerland?"

"Babes, yes, million percent." My phone buzzed. "Hang on. That’ll be a text from the Brig. Everyone else is on mute. Er..."

"Go ahead," said Henri.

I read out what it said. "Wilfred Banks would like to video chat with you." I tutted and very nearly slammed my phone down. "Jesus Christ."

"What's up?" said Emma.

I sighed. My chicken was delicious but not for the first time on the trip, I'd lost some of my appetite. "These fucking kids, man. Remember at the Exit Trials - oh, you two weren't there. Okay so I saw some decent players. One was a box-to-box midfielder. Not quite what I need right now but I thought fuck it, let's swipe right on him anyway. If we're the only team who wants him, we'll train him up. He's too good to get no offers, right? I did big him up to other teams but you never know how serious they are. He signed for Bradford City. Er, what? Then I really liked a fast striker. He has signed..."

"For Bradford City?" said Henri, seeming to lose some interest in his own food.

"Right. There was a goalie I quite liked and again, I said I was interested just in case we were the only ones. Bradford. This guy Sunday Sowunmi, centre back, he got an offer from Bradford."

"Oh, no," said Emma. "I really liked him."

"Yeah, me too," I said. "I got Sharky to charm his parents and they fell for it big time. All that work we put into Sharky, the extra sessions, the patience, the belief, the trust, he told them about it and they ate it up. Sandra and Meghan swooped in to find out about Sowumni as a player. We made that personal connection and no-one from Bradford ever spoke to them before the contract offer. So he's coming with us."

"Yes!" said Emma, pushing me quite hard.

I grinned, just for a second. "He wants to be part of what we're doing more than he wants a few hundred quid a week. He's my kind of player." My smile died. "Right so Wilffff was the best of the lot and I went full Max on him after the match. He seemed to be super into it. He even knew who I was. He was bouncing by the time I finished with him. From 'your career is over' to 'wow you're great we want you' in minutes, right? So what happens next?"

"Bradford City," said Henri.

"Yeah. They offered him a thousand pounds a week."

Henri whistled. Luisa said, "What did you offer?"

"Our basic for Exit Triallists is five hundred. Banksy was like, er, do you want to double your offer? Trying to set up a fucking auction! So I withdrew it."

"What?" said Emma.

I turned to her, surprised by her tone. "The little shit was on the scrapheap and if it wasn't for me he would still be there. He will never play a minute for Bradford and his career will end aged 20 instead of aged 18. Whatever. Good luck earning generational wealth on a grand a week, you stupid twat."

"Max."

"What?"

"He's just a kid. How's he supposed to know about Chip and what's best for him? You would want a thousand instead of five hundred. Everyone would."

I pointed to Henri. "He could get tons more at fifty other clubs. I could get a ton more at fifty-one other clubs. Money's important but you get it by being good at the sport. Anyway, if money's his motivation he's going to leave as soon as another club offers him more pay. Better he fucks off now than when it hurts the team."

"But you're going to talk to him?"

"About what? I'll just get mardy and sarcastic. It's a bad look. Anyway, I've soured on the whole Exit Trials thing. One of the organisers told Bradford who I was interested in, like a fucking spy. All Bradford had to do was copy the names I wrote and bosh, they've got four talented players that I scouted. They didn't even waste a drop of petrol. I flew halfway across the world and back for those ungrateful fuckers.

"Fuck all that noise. I'm done planting cedars in the wilderness. There's this thing in Japan where they get a tree and cut off all the buds except one so that one single teeny tiny bud gets all the tree juice and it grows into a five kilogram apple. A mega apple. That's gonna be Sunday Sowunmi. He's gonna get extra coaching like the world has never seen. He's gonna be a mega apple."

Emma jabbed me. "You're going to tell John that you'll be happy to speak to Wilfred - if you can finally get your head around the concept of time zones - and you're going to be nice to him and you're going to listen to what he has to say."

"No, I'm going to be a dick."

"No, you're going to be the sweetest, nicest Max there has ever been."

"You can't make me."

She picked up one of Henri's skewers. "Be sweet and nice or I'll eat a chicken heart."

"You wouldn't."

"It's for Wilfred. For his future."

"Urgh," I said, sweetly and nicely. I grabbed my phone, hammered out a reply to the Brig while cackling, then deleted it and wrote the opposite.

***

Sunday, May 25

Geraldo's Samba-Style Soccer School

I slept a bit, I think, but it's fair to say I was excited. Apprehensive, too, because the scarcity mindset had kicked in. I was fretting that Geraldo would take me for a ride and squeeze every dollar he could out of me. I wasn't rich enough to burn money and if he pushed too far I would kick off and that would be the end of the lessons.

Turned out, I was worrying about the exact wrong things.

We got to the stadium early and I allowed myself to be dragged to look at, I don't know, some sheds or something. Tourist duties? Check. Then it was time.

Far more than twenty players had turned up but we gave priority to the ones who played for the local teams. They had some minimum standard at least. I was by far the best player with Henri second followed by the sort of drop you normally only get when a plane hits a patch where there's literally no air.

The warm up was straight lines. Up and down. I was starting to catastrophise when Geraldo blew his whistle to end it. We spent five minutes doing simple passing drills. He whistled again and we were into the meat of Relationism.

Ten minutes! He wasn't ripping me off after all.

Luisa stood next to him - he did not mind that one little bit - and she translated for Henri and I.

"Nine players red and blue," she said. "Nine white. You and Henri wear black shirts. You are jokers. When a Friburguese passes to you, you are Friburguese. When Depor, you are Depor. Is it clear?"

"Yes," I said. "We have similar drills." Similar? Try identical. I was trying hard not to lose my goddamn mind for once. The jokers concept was used when coaches wanted the team in possession to have more players.

Geraldo spoke harshly and Luisa copied his tone. "The rules are, you get one point for a river."

"What?"

"That's it. Let's go."

I stood and called back. "One point for what?"

But Geraldo yelled at us to get in the middle. He really didn't like me! I didn't want to annoy him into leaving early so I obeyed.

He had used cones to mark a rectangle that was about a third of the width and length of the full-sized pitch. With two goalkeepers standing at either end of this section, we were squashed in like sardines. Someone threw a ball to the reds and it was on.

I was Relationisming!

Geraldoball in action!

Of course, I had no clue what to do. The first time someone passed to me I looked around for Henri because one thing was clear - we were always on the same team. I was about to fire a pass to his feet when some cheeky Brazilian scamp nicked the ball off me! Fuck sake, mate. Would you mind awfully not.

My English caveman instinct was to chase after the ball and win it back, which I did, leaning to howls of protest from Geraldo and a sad-eyed but silent reproach from the guy I'd tackled.

"He's on your team," yelled Luisa.

I mentally kicked myself and jogged around trying to work out the game from the inside. That was actually better than having it explained, right? That was what I wanted.

Twenty seconds passed and the action went past in a blur. I'd seen clips from traffic intersections in India where thousands of cars, lorries, and bikes just sort of drove at each other and it miraculously all worked out. This was like that but with even less comprehensible rules. The reds passed, lost the ball, the whites took over and were immediately pressed. The press was counter-pressed and the ball was jinked away and there was a flick and a scoop and a pass and Geraldo shouted something.

"One point!" yelled Luisa.

"Why!" I shouted, but I didn't want her to answer. I rejoined the Brownian motion, the playground football, the murmuration.

Minutes passed with me not getting it, waiting for it to click.

I'd seen a guy on YouTube who was good at picking locks and he had a link to a starter kit. I ordered it and learned pretty fast how to pick the starter lock. I mean, it was almost literally child's play. But when I tried on a harder lock, I got nowhere. It never clicked, it never opened.

More points were awarded. There was no debate, no argument from the opposition. Someone had done something to earn those points; it was inarguable. The session was being played out by two local rivals and they each wanted to win. They wanted those points and were getting them.

It didn't click.

After exactly ten minutes we took a break.

I was sweating and felt drained. I must have looked ridiculous to the CA 10 players. This guy paid himself thirty thousand reais a week? You're joking, right?

Henri was sweaty, too, which was pleasing. "I know what a river is, Max."

"Don't tell me," I said.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Geraldo said something that Luisa didn't bother to translate and we got back to the drill.

Pass, move, chaos, disorder. The complete lack of structure was so alien it was kind of tugging my brain in directions it didn't want to go. Suddenly there was a rotation of players that left one guy open on the left, if only someone could get the ball to him. I sidestepped right, demanded the ball, and pinged one of the most sublime passes in the history of physics through a mass of legs, spinning, curling, right onto his toes. There should have been applause, gasps even. Nothing. Worst of all, I didn't even get a point.

How could you not get a point for that? What was of higher value than that pass?

I crouched while I thought for a few seconds. I decided to do what I always did when times got tough - I played one-touch. I booped the ball back to whoever passed it to me. When that wasn't possible, I bounced it to a teammate. I had to concentrate on which team I was on at any given moment and that took most of my mental run time.

I stopped stinking the place up and with slightly more confidence turned my attention to working out the rules of the game.

A red was about to pass the ball back to his mate, who was going to be pressed by two whites. I sprinted to offer him an angle; he took it. I had a guy coming from my right and pretty much any touch I had in that direction would have given him the chance to barge me off the ball and take it. The irony was that at the point he got the ball, I would switch to being on his team. The best play would be for him to lightly jostle me, but that's not how these Brazilians rolled. He would have wiped me out and worried about his next move later!

So I tried to do a dainty skill where I would jump, let the ball roll onto the inside of my foot, and gently coax it to a spot on the other side of the approaching player. He could smash into me but I would have the ball.

I was just tired enough and just out of practice enough that I achieved none of those things except getting slammed by the white. The ball rolled right through me.

"Yes, Max!" called Luisa. "One point!"

The fuck?

The school bully held out his hand, pulled me up off the deck, and said something. I didn't know what, of course, but I knew the tone very well. It was the cheeky resignation of a guy who I have just nutmegged. "Nice move, lad."

Except I hadn't done shit.

I did something I detected very quickly in my own training sessions and stamped out mercilessly - I hid. As the ball went left, I joined the blob on the right. Henri might have spotted that I was doing something out of the ordinary, but Geraldo didn't know me as a player.

But from this safe position, where I didn't have to concentrate on so many things at once, I saw it.

A white took a pass, flicked it forward, and when the return pass was played he fizzed it diagonally. His intended target let it run through his legs. A third player controlled the pass.

"One point!" called Geraldo, something I no longer needed a translation for.

Rivers! I thought they called it ladders. A structure where three players line up and the ball is played from end to end, often with the player in the middle not even touching it. 

The surge of triumph, the fact that I had managed to unpick that damned lock, lifted me up into the clouds and I went to the next plane of existence. Or put another way, I raced back to the middle of the pitch to get as involved as possible.

Of course, that was the exact second Geraldo chose for a break. I thought about complaining but as I took on some water I checked Luisa's stopwatch and it had been another ten-minute session. Nothing nefarious. How could it have been?

I waved at Emma, who was in the stands recording us. The first two mini sessions would be utter cringe from a personal point of view, but it would be interesting to see what Henri had been doing, and it could have been interesting to lock onto one player at random and see what sort of movements he made and why.

The third and final session started. Geraldo changed precisely nothing.

Since it was going to be the last section and the lads wanted to make sure they got paid, it was fast and furious. The Indian traffic jam with hovercars. Brownian motion on one point five speed.

I dropped for passes. I scanned behind me to see if there was anyone there who could be the end of the river. My teammates understood the game better than me and there was usually someone moving in behind, but the other team knew the rules too and they would try to block off those lanes to deny us points. We had to keep cycling the ball around until an opportunity presented itself.

Many strange things happened.

I found myself thinking in radical new ways. Invading space like Pascal didn't help much with this game. You scored points easier by being closer to your teammates. Moving further away quickly became frustrating for everyone, but it was still good to have an out ball for when the pressure was too much.

I found myself drifting to the edges of the pitch even though common sense told me I could be more involved in the middle.

I found my technique failing me.

Oh, there was no problem controlling passes and deflecting the ball with one-touch flicks. No, it was the easy things that got suddenly impossibly hard. There were so many players zipping around that when I tried to buy myself a second to sort my feet out it was already too late.

The drill was a zombie movie. If your dead wife, now reanimated, comes at you, you've got to strike fast. You can't think 'oh no not Eleanor' because she'll eat your brains. You've got to decide before the ball even gets to you. And skills? Use with care. A cheeky nutmeg might be satisfying but by jinking past one player you're running into the rest of the zombie horde and you're going to get swarmed.

You had to stop trying to beat the press and sort of co-exist with the press, but I was too slow. I couldn't work out what I was doing wrong and why these zombie-tier players were so much better than me.

By the last minute of the session, my head was mush and I regressed to being a complete liability. I moved into space on the goal line with the intention of not being involved for the rest of the sesh, but someone from the reds passed back to the goalie and I was his best option. From where I was, I had a bit of time. I looked around and pinged a deeply beautiful big diag that landed on the laces of the red furthest from me.

Amazing. But no points.

Geraldo was shaking his head, very unimpressed, and blew his whistle. He said something dismissive like 'typical English' and shook his head a few times while finishing a cig.

The players went over to get his final verdict. I started with my hands over my head and decided I was tired enough to warrant hands on knees.

Geraldo blabbed a few things and I let it wash over me.

Suddenly there was a gap around me. Everyone was looking. Luisa said, "Coach wants to know if you're satisfied."

"Did I suck?" I said.

Luisa translated and there was a lot of good-natured laughter. Not from Geraldo, obviously. He barked out a one-word reply that needed no translation. Then he added something Luisa was happy to repeat. "He says Henri was good."

I sucked in a breath and thought about my life choices. At some point I needed to get to Chile for the under 20s World Cup. The next Messi might be there, along with the next Ronaldo, the next Dino Zoff, plus at the Transfer Room there had been a hot tip about a Peruvian striker. It was pretty much vital that I be there.

I shook my head, just sort of mad and angry and all kinds of things. I looked at Geraldo and lifted my chin. "Same time tomorrow?"

***

On the way back to Rio I stayed pretty quiet while Henri and Luisa chatted away. Luisa was driving and I was vaguely aware that she was giving Henri some numbers to type into his phone.

I had a lot to think about. I was naturally worse at football than a selection of randos. I didn't grasp new concepts easily. I was dogshit.

Henri showed his phone to us in the back and when he realised neither Emma nor I were paying attention, read out a number that started with 'a million'.

"Max," said Luisa. "We need to load credit into our payments app so we don't have to carry thousands in cash. I was just saying to Henri that if you hire Geraldo at three thousand a day you will make him the best-paid coach in Brazil. Over three hundred and sixty-five days you would have to fork over - " she loved cutlery-based language - "more as one million reais."

That did sound like a lot. "What's that in pounds?" I mumbled.

"140,000," said Henri after a few more taps.

That was almost the same as my massive new pay packet from Chester. "Mmm," I said, because I didn't give much of a shit.

Henri gave me a slightly worried look and put The Stone Roses on the stereo. That was his way of cheering me up.

***

Monday, May 26

I dreamt of Relationism, or at least the terrifying zombie-attack version I had experienced. Emma said I slept a lot more twitchily than usual.

Over breakfast she and I got an atlas and tried to devise a hyper-efficient path through Chile that would allow me to see every single team at the under 20s World Cup at least once. The tournament started on May 31 and we calculated that we needed to get there by June 2 at the latest. That gave us exactly one more week in Brazil.

Luisa got in touch with Geraldo to book more sessions with him and much as he found me offensive in some way, the money was just too good to turn down. He would make himself available every day I desired.

"Top. Every day till Sunday, please."

"Babes," said Emma. "You know I support you. If you think the, like, tenth and eleventh days are going to get you where you want to go, you do that. But seems like it probably won't, right?"

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying go full Max this week, but then let's have the weekend together. One weekend where you let me go full Emma."

I smiled. "You can go full Emma whenever you want. You don't need a Geraldo."

"I need my Max."

I got up, went behind her, and draped my arms around her neck. "All right. What does that look like?"

"It looks like the first two days we got here but you pose for photos and smile and don't complain about every single thing like a little brat."

I laughed. "So I can be miserable until Friday night. Sounds like a deal. Right, but listen. We can't keep driving two hours up and down that fucking motorway, the four of us. I wasn't joking when I said I wanted you to go explore and have fun. Henri, do you want to train tonight?"

"Do you think this helps my career?"

"Not really."

"I would like to do tonight with you, but perhaps not tomorrow. It is interesting, but it is not as interesting for me as it is for you. Also," he said, stretching in a self-satisfied way like a cat, "I'm a natural." He basked in Luisa's admiration. "I think you will propose that we split up, no? You stay in Nova Friburgo while we explore Rio?"

"Just, yeah, whatever you want. I don't think I'm going to enjoy the sessions, exactly, but I'll enjoy them a lot more if you're out and about sending me photos and enjoying life. Maybe Chelli and Tockers will stay out there with me."

***

Geraldo's Cigarette School, Day Two

We warmed up like it was 1988 and I wondered if that was when Geraldo had first broken into a football team and he had never found a reason to change his ways. If so, that mentality was probably why he was rated 4 out of 20 for coaching, but to be fair I didn't know the first thing about him and didn't really want to, either. I was hyper-focused on the Relationism thing.

We did the same remedial passing drill as the day before, but then it was into the meat and we had three juicy chicken hearts to gorge ourselves on.

The first drill took place in a hexagon about twenty-five yards across. Eight players stood on the sides. Eight players in yellow bibs pressed in the middle. Three guys in orange bibs had to get the ball and keep possession. They could dribble, do first-touch, or use anyone at the sides.

It was a constant frenzy of pressing and trying to beat the press, but once the attackers got into the rhythm it was surprisingly easy to retain the ball. Not for ages because unlike in a real match you couldn't pass back to the goalie or to a centre back who had dropped deep. But keeping the ball for ten, even fifteen passes was totally reasonable even for these low-level guys.

I absolutely smashed this drill, but it was all about finding space and having a good first touch so I took no satisfaction from it. Being amazing at anything 'positional' was all the curse. So, yeah, I could anticipate and do mad skills and feints and one-touch passes and nutmegs? Okay the nutmegs were all me, but the rest was fake. I spent most of the drill watching myself from above, watching the endless cycling of the ball wondering what the others were learning. There were not many pops in a Geraldo session, or if there were they were from attributes I hadn't unlocked yet.

Attributes. I felt pretty sure I wasn't going to buy Relationism any time soon. Certainly not until I felt I had earned it, which seemed a distant prospect. (As with any training session, I wasn’t earning XP, and nor was the price of the perk reducing. If any sessions should have generated XP it was these, but the curse only ever awarded me experience for watching or playing in matches.)

I started to give very serious consideration to unlocking more attributes. I could afford two and they might tell me what was helping these randos be good at Relationism. It was self-evident that unlocking attributes before the World Cup was a good idea. I decided not to be hasty, since there was a pretty strong counter-argument. The priority was to learn this new style and if I had more numbers to look at, I would look at the numbers. Yeah, maybe the best compromise was to make a mental note about which players were good and unlock the attributes during the last session and check my working. Until then I would go hard at learning the stuff. Good plan, brain!

The second drill was one Jackie Reaper would have loved. "Duelos!" cried Geraldo. Luisa didn't translate. I told myself to have a word with her later, to remind her that I was English, after all, and she shouldn’t overestimate my language skills.

There were two strips of tape about twenty yards in length, perhaps eight yards wide. Two 'servers' stood at either end. One passed to an attacker. His job was to dribble or pass from end to end as many times as possible while a defender tried to stop him. Passing was almost impossible until the final few yards so it was very much about using skill and speed to get past your opponent. As in England, the results were massively in favour of the defender. An attacker might dribble them once but on the way back they were mincemeat.

Unless it was your boy Maxy Best as the attacker. He fucking ripped new buttholes all over Brazilian Switzerland!

At one point, Geraldo whistled and made everyone come and watch my duels. He sent some poor sod to try to stop me while I dipped into my substantial toolbox to get past him time and time again. I made it eight times end to end before I got bored and let the defender tackle me.

It was sort of useless doing those drills with me, really, but I didn't blame Geraldo for assuming I was shit at the sport based on what he had seen. I did like the way he had tweaked the drill to make it relentless. What's that video game niche? Rogue-like? You keep going until you die. Attack till you drop. We didn't drill it like that in the UK but maybe we should. Something to discuss with my coaches.

The final drill was the one I'd been dreaming about. Two seven-and-a-half minute blasts of Deflationism.

I went from top of the class to bottom. If anything, I was worse than yesterday.

***

At the half-time break I got a water and stared straight ahead like a disaster survivor. There were quite a few people in the stands who had come to watch this curiosity. Come to see the Englishman who thought he had a right to tell people how to play football.

While I was mentally penning a combination 'accepting my Premier League Manager of the Year award' and 'announcing my resignation from the position of Chester manager' speech, Luisa came over and cupped my chin. It seemed an intimate gesture but she was just trying to make me watch footage of myself.

"Too slow. Too big pass. Look."

"I know," I said, pushing her stupid phone away. I didn't need to see it to know it.

She growled in frustration and stomped across to the nearest ball. She pointed to it. "This is you." She approached the ball with her fingers steepled above her head, spinning like a ballet dancer, before doing a mid-air split and a sort of dying swan move over the ball. "This is them." She got on her toes, agile, and flicked the ball up and away. "This is them," she said again, feet nimble, centre of gravity low.

"Yeah, I get what you're saying," I said. "But the game is to score points. You don't score by flicks."

She sucked her lips in and walked away.

We did the second 'Riverdance', and when my approach continued to fail, I tried it Luisa's way. When someone pressed me I wouldn't try to play a pass through the lines but would flick the ball to a teammate. The first time I did that, Geraldo yelled something.

"What did he say?" I called out, but Luisa was mad at me and refused to translate. "Fuck SAKE," I yelled, just as the ball came to me. I slapped it hard and it flew straight as an arrow for fifty yards before clipping the inside of the goalpost and nestling into the net.

There was a moment of utter stillness before another ball was thrown into the rectangle and the mayhem kicked off again.

***

Tuesday, May 27

My black mood was boosted by the arrival of Chelli and Toquinho. Chelli was just a likeable guy who made everything better and Tockers (age 17, CA 1, PA 154) had never left Sao Paulo and since we had someone with us who was even more of a travel noob, we delighted in showing him what Rio had to offer.

He thought we were lying about having the whole massive apartment to ourselves but when I took his backpack from him and put it on his bed in his bedroom he started to believe it. I slapped him on the back and bade him to follow me.

We went out for a late lunch and now that we had two translators the conversation flowed even more easily. I especially liked the parts when Chelli and Luisa would go down rabbit holes exploring the difference between Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese Portuguese. I didn't understand a word but they seemed to be having a nice time.

Chelli did some agenting.

"Toquinho is worried about moving to England."

"Why? It's top," I said, which was strange since no-one spent more time digging the place out than me.

"Ah, the weather. The lifestyle. Do not misunderstand, Max, he thinks it's a great opportunity. A very interesting offer. I think he is nervous. This was his first time on an aeroplane."

I nodded a few times while clearing my mouth of ham. I pointed to Emma. "Tell him all the women in England are this beautiful. In fact, tell him, Emma is considered quite plain back in her native Newcastle."

Emma's chewing slowed but she waited to see how Tockers would react.

Chelli translated and there was a thrilling half-second where the universe could have tilted either way. "No!" laughed Tockers, waving his wrist to show he knew I was lying.

Emma beamed and got up to give him a forehead kiss.

I laughed. Tockers had scored big-time brownie points with that reaction. I looked at him. "You do what you're told for a few years and I'll make you rich." I waited for Chelli to translate. "Every year you give me is a new level of wealth." I put my hand low. "Buy your mum a house." I moved up a few inches. "Buy yourself a villa." Next level. "Lambo and your own clothes label." Last level. "Superyacht." I smiled. "You get that when you put football first. I have to talk to a guy when we get back to the flat. He's money first. It doesn't work like that. You work first and the rewards come later."

The translation finished and Tockers got thoughtful. I got the feeling what I'd said was what he believed. He spoke back to me and Luisa translated. "How long did it take you to get the apartment? He means our AirBnB."

I lifted my eyebrows. How long had it been? "Er, two and a half years." I swirled my finger around. "But we're sharing the cost. I'm not quite at that level yet but yeah, two and a half years is about a million reais."

"Can I get that?"

I thought about it. He was starting from zero, but if he moved to Saltney and trained hard at Bumpers Bank with my elite coaches, in three years it was just about conceivable he could be CA 90. I would certainly pay a CA 90 guy 1,500 a week. I did some maths. "More like half a million." His eyes showed he didn't mind that one little bit. "But that's just the start. The first few years are all training. The real money comes later. The real Real. Does that joke work in Portuguese?"

"It doesn't work in English," said Henri.

I checked the time. "Should get going so I’m back in time for my video chat. What did we agree, babes? I'd limit myself to five personal insults?"

"You promised to be sweet and nice."

"Christ. No-one translate this for Tockers. I need him to be in awe of me. Er, excuse me? Why are you sniggering?"

***

I stood in the kitchen in a slightly awkward position but that was where the Wifi was strongest and I needed to charge my phone. I balanced it on some cookbooks and moved a pot of whisks and spatulas to the side in case they were bad for the signal.

The others were interested in the call and were dotted around drinking coffees and reading on their phones. I kept expecting to have to tell Tockers to shut the fuck up but he was good as gold. I remembered something Chelli had said about the kid’s dad working from home. He knew not to interrupt important bizniz.

I got a red or green option on my phone, tapped green, and as I did I found I was very much not in the mood for Wilfred Banks and his money-grubbing ways. I had summoned some positivity to make my guests from Sampa feel welcome but I was still in a grump from failing at Relationism.

The familiar split screen of a video chat arrived. Four quadrants. One was empty, one was the Brig - a welcome sight - and one was a goalkeeper who had been cut from his academy.

"Max!" said the Brig. "How's Brazil?"

I was going to say it was shit simply to end the chit chat but I had a sneaking suspicion Tockers would have understood it. "It's great. I haven't done much scouting in Rio but I'm learning a lot."

"Splendid, splendid," he said, in a weird fake jolly tone. It struck me that he was as angry and disappointed as I was but he was going the extra mile for the kid even though he didn't deserve it. The blame was to be put on the Exit Trial organisers or on Chip Star but not on Wilfred. Well, maybe that was right but I couldn't feel it in my bones, if you know what I mean.

"Mmm," I said, very deliberately looking off-camera at something I found more interesting than the conversation. This turned out to be a plug socket in a line of three with the middle guy slightly raised. A river! A ladder! Pass from one side to the other with a dummy or a little flick and you get one point!

"Max?"

"What? What?"

"Did you space out? Are you sleeping well?"

"No," I said, picking up a fork. Four prongs. Double river! "I mean, yes. Everything's perfectly normal. Eight-hour average. Heart rate nominal. What, er, what are we doing?"

"Wilfred would like to talk to you alone. I'm going to hop off now."

"Yeah," I said, staring at the socket again. It had a lot more relevance to my life than the ungrateful brat who was wasting my time. Time dragged on and when I snapped out of my funk, Wilfred Banks, PA 155, was looking left and right, not sure what to do, while the Brig had clicked off. "Sup bro?" I ventured.

"Mr. Best," he started, but stopped, almost as though he wanted me to say 'call me Max' or some shit. Fat chance. I think I did one of those big sighs that had so vexed Henri and Emma early in the trip; Wilfred got flustered.

He was a pretty decent-looking kid. Soft, light, billowy hair quite similar to Henri's in floppiness, decently symmetrical face, quite slow and thoughtful off the pitch. Had done well at school. Kind of the perfect boy-next-door, though maybe if you were a teenage girl you'd want him to have about 8% more danger like Toquinho had.

Wilfred had made it through every year of his academy but every year had been by a slimmer and slimmer margin. They didn't think he had the killer instinct to make it as a pro, and growing pains and a few injuries hadn't helped. He had been the third or fourth choice goalie for years but every time they wanted to bin him off he had sensed it, responded, and done juuuuust enough to scrape through. How they hadn't taken that for fighting spirit I couldn't tell you, but I was aware that I was sometimes unfairly critical of academies and my fellow pros. I had a magical number to help me; they didn't.

Truth is I would have binned the bastard off a million times over just on this video chat.

"Mr. Best, what it is, right, is that I was wanting to know why you didn't want me no more."

"Oh, that's easy, Wilfred mate. It's because you want to be paid more than my star striker." The slight exaggeration made a couple of heads in the room turn, but Henri was only currently on twenty pounds a week more than this prick was demanding. "Because you told me you had goals and dreams and I thought we maybe had something in common but no, you wanted a pay rise before you'd even started. So that's why. All right?"

"Max!" hissed Emma. I forced my flappy gob closed.

Wilfred was rubbing his forehead pretty hard. He couldn't look at the camera. "It was me dad."

"What?"

"We got the offer from Bradford and me dad said to get you to match it if you were serious, like. So then you said there was no offer and now it's just Bradford and I don't know what to think."

I kept my mouth shut. Emma blasted me with silent approval.

"When you came at me after the Trial the other lads were like, oh, you jammy bastard. They was all like 'ah that Max Best is here scouting us' and it was like you're the one they wanted to impress. And it was me and I thought you really liked me."

"Let me simplify this, bro. I work for Chester FC. We've won two leagues in two seasons and we're flying up the divisions. We've got talent for days and a new training facility and two 3G pitches. We've got elite coaches and great team spirit. We've got everything except money. When we met I offered you a complete footballing education.

"I'm out here in Brazil getting my arse handed to me by complete randos who wouldn't get in Bradford's reserves, which is the team you'll be the backup keeper for over the next two years. Why am I spending all my money doing this insanity instead of taking my hot girlfriend to the beach every day like a normal guy? Because I want to learn football and that's everything. I learn it and teach it to you, that's the deal.

"Chester can give players everything on the football side but we can't give you a competitive salary. I withdrew the offer because even if you come to us now every year I train you up you'll have offers and next year or the year after you'll fuck off to Bradford or Wigan or Coventry. It's just a matter of time, isn't it? I could get you to the England team but I can't compete on money and you've shown what's really important, haven't you? So go to Bradford and I wish you all the best there."

There was a decent-sized break. I checked with Emma; she didn't mind how I'd spoken.

"But I didn't want it. It was my dad. I said I wanted to go to Chester and he said well make them prove it and I said but Mr. Best was the only one who was there. He jumped over the fence and grabbed me as soon as the final whistle went! Why would I go to Bradford when I've never met anyone there? All the lads wanted to be scouted by Mr. Best but he only wanted me. But my dad, he's, like... We're not well off and he's... I dunno. Um... And you said I should sign with that agency and it's like ten percent and my dad didn't like that. He looked it up and he said your girlfriend was part of it and he didn't like that."

"Does your dad listen to TalkSPORT? Does he read the Daily Mail?"

"Max," hissed someone from my left.

"I'm just not interested in bickering about money, Wilfred, or defending myself or my girlfriend. There's a kid here who's willing to uproot from beautiful Brazil to some fucking digs in Chester with loads of people who can't even do the forbidden dance and he's doing it to learn football. He'll get paid later. This whole conversation makes me queasy. I don't understand why we're still having it. I don't want to have it. I want to hang up so I can go and get smashed up on the training pitch again because it never happens to me like this and I love it."

"Do you?" said Emma.

I turned to her. "I think I do, yeah."

"You don't look like it."

I smiled. "No-one said I have to like getting dicked. But embarrassment is the cost of entry." I turned back and the kid was still there. "Yeah, like I said. There's one thing Chip Star has in spades and that's his daddy's money. By all means take a slice. All right, if there's nothing else..."

Wilfred sort of sat there, or stood there maybe, not doing much. His lip might have been quivering, I couldn't really tell you. "I don't know the rules."

I sighed far louder than I intended. "What?"

"Like if a club wants me I should be able to negotiate. It's like that in Soccer Supremo. Why can't I do that now?"

My eyes bulged out about three inches. "Because ten minutes ago you were on the scrapheap and because the only reason you have two offers is that I wanted you! I bid for five players and Bradford tried to gazump all five! Your dad thinks you've got two offers and you can play us off against each other but I don't exist in the same world as Bradford! I'm a football club! They're a billionaire's plaything!"

A hand rested on my shoulder. Henri leaned over and adjusted my phone so he would be in the frame. "You are Banksy, no? I am Henri Lyons. I'm afraid Max is correct in that your wage demands are absurd. I would encourage you to look up the relationship between Bradford's new owners and Max but that would only discourage you. Curious, n'est pas? But you find us at an interesting point in our relationship. Max and I have not talked about my pay rise for this season."

"And we're not going to," I said. "You get whatever scraps are left after I finish building my squad."

"We must teach the next generation how to behave, the way I teach you every meal in which hand to hold your knife."

"I like it the opposite to you. Stop pecking my head about it."

"Max, will I get a pay rise?"

I rolled my eyes, but why not have the chat now? Doing it in a kitchen in a hidden apartment in the southern hemisphere while a talented prick watched on video was suitably absurd. "Yes."

"How much?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't you know?"

I sighed. "Because I'm going to the under 20s World Cup and I want to sign two players but down here the season runs till December so it might be that one or both joins us in January. And it might be that I can give you a pay rise now and find money for those guys in the meantime. Or it might be that I sign them now and give you a raise in January. It's hard, mate."

"It wasn't hard to give yourself a bumper rise."

I laughed. "Yeah, well. If you find a better scout I'll take a cut and if you find a better manager I'll take a cut and if you find a better player I'll take a cut."

"There are twenty better players at every Relationism session here in Rio."

"What's Relationism?" asked my phone. So rude.

I said, "Okay but seriously you need a raise but I know you don't want a raise if we finish thirteenth when I could use the money to get you another league winner's medal."

"I would like to be kept informed."

"I mean, there's nothing to say. If I don't find anyone in Chile or they're all too expensive, I'll be leaning into free agents. It won't be much longer, mate, but right now I'm still not even at the first step. A lot will happen in the next two weeks, I can tell you that."

"It seems to me our squad is weaker than at the end of the season."

"No," I said. "That's not right."

"No?"

"No. We've lost some flexibility but we will slap extremely hard."

"I want a goal bonus."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you love scoring goals anyway. You love the attention, you dick. Hey, listen."

"Yes?"

"This season you're gonna go big. It'll be your finest hour." I waited for a snappy response, but none came. I couldn't read his face so I ploughed on. "After that I think I'd like to see you go somewhere else for a year or two and absolutely rinse whatever club gets you while you continue your scoring spree. But then I want you back. Maybe at Saltney and you can slap Europe till it's pink, I don't know. But wherever you go, I want you in charge of Seal Studios."

"What?"

"You're a great striker but you're an even better director. Producer? The documentary's so good, mate. I had tears in my eyes loads and I already knew the story. It's funny, too! Some of the cuts! You're a genius but it's the overall vibe. The way you keep the interest and the pacing. I know that was you and not Sophie; she told me. I'll be mad if you don't go hard at the rest of your career but I want you around so you can do our stuff.

"Marketing, player announcement videos, sponsor bits. We'll think of meaningful stuff, too. There's gonna be loads to do but it has to be the way I want it. Show football how it really is. Fun but hard and dirty sometimes. Who's more fun and hard and dirty than you? I need you."

Emma wandered over with a confused look on her face. "Did you hang up on Banksy? Oh! Max, he's still there!"

"I can't get rid of him."

"Don't talk like that," admonished Emma, unplugging the phone and walking off with it. "Banksy, I'm Emma. I'm the dastardly agent your dad warned you about." She laughed - it was unfair, really. Any red-blooded teenager would have melted. "Here's Toquinho. Max started calling him Tockers, which I think's going to get confusing, don't you?"

"Max does tekkers!" said Wilfred. "I saw the video on your Insta!"

I moved to get my phone back but Henri grabbed my arm and raised his eyebrows. He whispered. "Is that young man where my salary increase is going?"

"Yes."

"You said he could play for England?"

"I think so. Not sure exactly who he will be up against. But he'll be close-ish I reckon. Third choice, finish his career with ten caps. Something like that."

Henri nodded. "Then shut your mouth and leave it with us." He pushed his hair back. "Okay?"

***

Geraldo's Too Cool for School, Day Three

Emma did a number on Wilfred and then she did a number on me. Without knowing how, exactly, or why, I'd agreed to reinstate my offer of a two plus one for five hundred pounds a week. The keeper had a choice: join the Chester revolution, or earn double at Bradford. I knew the answer already.

Whatever. The important thing was what Geraldo had up his sleeve.

We arrived and Toquinho nervously explained his predicament to one of the local lads. He had come from Rio without his boots. Could he...? Feet were checked. Sizes assessed. Within minutes a lad's mum was on the scene holding a bright orange pair that fit Toquinho pretty well. Well enough to instantly be better at Relationism than me.

Yes, it was one of those. But first it was important to make a fuss of the mum and the player who had lent us the boots. Pay it forward. No good deed goes unnoticed. Hugs and smiles all round.

Warm up, passing drill, a quick foray into transitions (sprinting and scoring into empty nets after a certain set of passes) and yet more evidence that Max Best was sensationally good at rules-based, structured, European football. Geraldo's revenge came in the form of a new variation on the Riverdance. This time Luisa got in his face and made him explain the key word.

"You get a point every time you do a one-two," she called out. Henri was joining in for what would be the final time because he wanted to play with Tockers and wanted to show off in front of Chelli.

Okay, I thought. One-twos. Wall passes. Give and goes. Kick the ball to a dude, run forward, and collect the return pass. Pretty much the easiest skill in football, right? It's going to be a piece of piss, right?

If Henri was doing the edit on this scene, he'd probably end it on that thought and cut to me sticking the key into my hotel room in Nova Friburgo. Maybe he'd linger on a wide shot until I Fosbury Flopped backwards onto the bed. Maybe he'd zoom in as I grabbed a pillow and covered my face with it.

Probably he'd add some detail inspired by the weird books he liked.

MAX BEST, the text would go.

RELATIONISM LEVEL ZERO.

Helpfully, in brackets, would be the crucial information that this was being scored out of a possible 9,000.

Fuck you, Henri. Fuck you, Brazil.

I sulked for a while before plugging my phone in. I sat up on my bed and watched the footage of the sessions. Then I watched them again. And again. And again.

Later than was polite I texted Chelli. He was still up and we took Tockers - now CA 2 - to a bar where I bought them drinks. "Chelli, listen to this bit from the session." It was when I'd done a flick instead of trying to play a beautiful pass. The time Luisa had refused to translate. "What does that mean?"

The sound quality was bad and the bar was noisy, but after holding the phone to his ear and playing it a couple of times, Chelli felt confident. "He says, er, you made his asshole fall out of his buttcheeks. It's, how to say?"

"Fucking finally," I guessed, based on the tone.

"Yes!" laughed Chelli. "Fucking finally! This is what he means, not what he says."

"Right."

"Then you take the big shot and score the big goal he says, if you want to fuck me, kiss me first. It's because foder means sex but also to make a mess. Luisa can explain better."

I smiled. I wasn't interested in the local idioms. "Geraldo is a pretty direct guy."

"He keeps it real. That's good, no?"

"Yes, it is. The situation is very clear with him. I've got three days to get good. Yeah," I said, nodding, eyes narrowing, jaw setting. "It's clear. 72 hours of Great British graft. 72 hours of blood, sweat, and tears. No distractions. We train till our butts fall off."

"When you say 'we', who do you mean?"

"Me and Tockers."

He nodded, sagely. "Good plan. Let's do it." Chelli lifted his margarita. Tockers automatically raised his coke and I brought up my water. We clinked our glasses together as Chelli proposed a toast. "To training till your butts fall off!"

...

Thanks for your support!

If you like this story, it's worth setting yourself up on discord. Yes it's overwhelming at first but you'll get used to it and the chats going on there are really amazing. 

Also special thanks to everyone who's helping me keep track of the dates, creating entire fixture lists for the u20 World Cup, league fixtures, creating the chapter discussion threads and much, much more. I appreciate it!