1.10 - Transfer Deadline Day (Patreon)

10.

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

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

Imagine a world where HSBC wanted me to work in their customer retention department. In this world, they are desperate for me, so desperate they are willing to pay my employer 25 million pounds to approve my switch. The rumours of this switch, or 'transfer', are broadcast on Sky Sports, Sky News, Sky Sports News, Sky Call Centre News, and Sky Call Centre News HD, non-stop. Because, get this, there's a deadline. At 11pm all 'transfers' stop for five months. You need to get the right staff in the door or suffer the consequences for almost half a year. What stakes! What drama!

Once the fee is agreed (25 million pounds sounds about right, given my stats), HSBC offer me a contract. I'd sign, or not, and Sky Sports would discuss what it meant, in-depth, while waiting for news of Janet Clarke's move from HMRC National Insurance Specialists to Shell's Greenwashing Complaint Line.

With all the analysis, overblown graphics, speculation, and repetition of very few actual facts, transfer deadline day had the same kind of vibe as an election night. In fact, the two things had lots in common: the short-term futures of some venerable institutions would be decided, it would all seem very important, the dust would settle, then you'd get ready to do it all again.

***

I tended to be only moderately interested in transfers. If team A bought a player from team B, then team B would have to replace him with someone from team C. Who would probably buy someone out-of-favour from team A. It was just a big merry-go-round. No-one cared when call centre workers moved from job to job. What was so fun about football transfers? I liked coaches who would take players, work with them, improve them, and build a team that way. A craftsman, not a trader. But there weren't too many coaches like that in the Premier League. The cost of failure was too high. Short-term results were ALL that mattered.

But this time transfer day had me glued to my phone (as much as possible during work, then completely after). I was so engrossed in tracking and digesting all the news that I forgot to eat until my stomach started complaining.

Manchester United bought Antony from Ajax, for 100 million euros, and sold a young prospect for 15 million pounds. The Antony deal was bonkers - totally desperate. He'd been available for 50 million not long ago. The consensus was that he was a good player but not a 100 million Euro one. The player wanted to go to Manchester. He'd missed Ajax's last game. Instead of playing, he posted a photo of him and his agent watching... Man United. Message received!

Chelsea bought a player from Leicester for 70 million. Leicester replaced him with a guy for 30 million. Nottingham Forest bought more players, which seemed insane to me because they'd already signed 20 guys over the summer. Guys, you're only allowed 11 in the team! Someone tell them!

So deadline day itself wasn't earth-shattering, but when the deadline passed people started tweeting truly spectacular numbers.

The 20 Premier League clubs had spent 1.91 BILLION pounds over the summer. Italian teams had splashed out about 650 million, France, Spain, and Germany were all in the 400-500 million pound range.

The lesson: football clubs were desperately looking for talented players and would pay huge amounts for them. Would go into debt for them. In the case of Barcelona, would literally sacrifice their future for them! (Barcelona, already in debt, had sold a bunch of assets to buy shiny new players like Lewandowski and Rafinha.)

Maybe Barcelona's gamble would pay off, maybe it wouldn't. It didn't matter to me. I needed to find some talent so I could get some skin in this game. If I could find the next Antony, my cut of his transfer bonuses and salary would mean I'd never have to answer a phone again.

As if to make sure I was hearing the message of the universe, FIFA released a report saying that agents had been paid 430 million pounds over the summer.

***

In the Premier League, the big result was United beating Arsenal 3-1 with United scoring ruthless counter-attack goals and Antony scoring on his debut. Good, but to my naked eye Arsenal were much the better team.

Meanwhile the media was raging about VAR - the video assistant referees who ruined 4 or 5 of the weekend's matches with their fussy, nitpicky, and sometimes blatantly wrong interventions.

I didn't mind VAR in principle, but there was no question it was ruining the emotion and the spectacle of the Premier League. Don't celebrate a goal in case the VAR finds a toenail offside. Let's all sit around for 4 minutes watching the referee watch a pitchside monitor. It was incredibly dumb. Left unchecked, I saw a future in which the sport became less and less popular.

Which meant less and less money.

The gravy train wasn't leaving the station, but the gravy would never again be this rich, this thick, this delicious.

If I wanted some of that gravy, I had to grind.

***

I settled into my schedule, but without the days off. I was quite motivated to collect XP, even if it was slightly depressing to know that I could get 7 times the amount if I had the cash.

But I didn't. So.

On Tuesday I avoided the Ardwick Powerleague because of the incident with the nurses. Seemed sensible to let memories of that evening fade, even though nothing really happened. That meant missing Raffi's next match, but I was sure I'd find him again. I only needed 34 more XP to unlock Attributes 1, and I was very interested to rescout him with my new knowledge. But if I was being serious about this agent thing, that meant being careful. Careful to the point of secrecy. Certainly careful enough not to get marked out as a troublemaker.

So I went to Platt Lane and picked up the XP I needed, and bought Attributes 1.

A generic player profile popped into my vision - it displayed the attributes I knew, such as acceleration, in the standard database format I'd gotten so used to, while a flashing block jumped from unnamed cell to unnamed cell. Some sort of random number generator thing as seen on a crappy TV game show or website. I couldn't be sure because it all happened fairly quickly and was quite unexpected, but I thought I counted 31 attributes in total.

At the end of the little cell dance, I was rewarded - and I think that is the perfect word - with Finishing.

The hardest thing to do in football is score a goal. It's a low-scoring sport. A player who can score goals is worth his weight in gold. Or in the case of Erling Haaland, ten times his weight in gold. I wasn't sure what the missing attributes on a player profile were, but finishing was surely the best I could possibly have unlocked. As an agent I'd rather find a top striker than a top defender. Did agents get a cut of a player's goal bonus? Well, I'd be the one writing the contract, wouldn't I?

I scanned the players in the match I was watching with a big, cheesy smile on my face. James Wedge, finishing 2. Okay! Good to know. Information is power!

In a Marvel movie, the unlocking of a new power would happen just before, or during, a fight scene. I looked around for any generic grey monsters that had just come to earth, but didn't see any. So I took a sip of tea from my thermos. It tasted like the nectar of the gods.

But then again, tea always tastes like that.

I had a little daydream about finishing and what I'd see if I could rescout Ronaldo, Salah, and Haaland. It was mad to think I'd seen three of the world's most elite goalscorers in just two games in Manchester! Would they all have finishing 20?

I guessed Ronaldo would have 20. His problem wasn't scoring goals, but getting into position to have a shot. Normally, when he was in a dangerous place the pass from his United teammate was dogshit. Certainly, if his finishing was less than 20 then that was simply a function of his age. The guy had scored 800 goals, for god's sake.

Salah? Let's try 19. He was lethal with his left foot, and could craft a shot out of nowhere. His stats, though, despite being in a team that was attacking most of the time, were nowhere near Ronaldo's, Benzema’s, or Lewandowski's. And I'd rather have Ronaldo's weaker foot than Salah's.

Haaland seemed to score a hattrick every week, but when you watched him he missed a lot of chances, too. I'd put him at 18, but wouldn't have been surprised if he was even lower. Or maybe he was 20 and the missed chances were just statistical noise.

My grin came back. I didn't have to wonder or think or make assumptions. I only had to get back into a stadium with these guys. Then I'd know, definitively, for sure. Objective truth. It's a hell of a drug.

So this was all very tremendous, but I was already thinking of the next steps. There was good news and bad news. The good news was that Attributes 2 was available, as I'd assumed. The bad news was that it was much more expensive - 630 XP. Double! If it kept doubling every time, the last one would cost more XP than grains of sand in the universe. Something like that, right? I didn't feel the need to worry about that just at the moment. Take it one game at a time, baby.

I had also unlocked some other perks I could buy.

There was one called Playdar. It promised to direct me to the player with the most talent who was currently playing football within a certain radius. On the one hand, sort of useless. On the other hand, if I was at Hough End or Hackney Marshes, it would lead me to the best player and I wouldn't have to waste time on the other games. It was expensive - 8,000 XP - which suggested the curse thought it was a valuable thing to have.

Match Stats 1 was available for 315 XP. No explanation was provided.

Player Comparison would allow me to nominate two players and see how they fared side-by-side. 630 XP. That'd be a timesaver down the line, but right then I had no need for it. I could see Ronaldo's profile any time I wanted just by thinking about it. In theory, I could write down his stats, then call up what I'd seen of Salah, and write them next to Ronaldo's. Buying the comparison tool was a quality of life upgrade that I didn't need.

And, of course, I still had access to 4-4-2 diamond, which would lie on the shelf, unwanted, gathering dust, until the end of time.

***

On Wednesday I decided to scout a bit further out and drove to the Powerleague in Stockport. It was basically straight, turn right, straight. But the previous sentence tells you nothing about the traffic, the constant stops for traffic lights, the feeling of rage that was venting out of every car. Especially mine.

It took over an hour and cost me quite a bit in petrol. I'd have to be very, very careful with my spending. I knew I was living very slightly outside my means, and I presently had no means of increasing my means.

So I was slightly grumpy and fractious when I got there. Fortunately, no-one paid me any attention. I wasn't wearing a sports kit because it was my first time there; no danger of me being kicked out for being a creep. I was dressed in my most formal call centre outfit, which helped with what came next.