1.16 - Pep Talks (Patreon)

16.

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

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

"Nigel," I said, because it seemed pretty normal that I'd know the names of these guys. Sure, they weren't Royal Family famous, but here in this stadium they were the big dogs. "I'm Max. Ziggy's agent. Can I ask a tiny question?"

He clearly had much better things to do, but was such a friendly dude he couldn't turn me down. "Sure."

"Callum Gribbin. Call me crazy but he's by far the best player here. He should be pissing all over this match. But he's played, like, one league game in two seasons."

"Your question is... why that?"

"Yeah."

He looked over at the white team's half of the pitch, where most of the players were sitting or passing a ball to each other while having a chat. Gribbin was on his feet, juggling a ball with ludicrous ease, his expression one of blissful emptiness. "It's a shame," he said. "Can't tell you what happened. He's got the world at his feet. He doesn't want it. It happens. As a coach there's one thing you hate. Wasted potential." He shook his head and pottered off, the drinks clanking in their little basket.

Wasted potential!

Of course. SO STUPID.

Potential.

The word scrambled my head.

I knew, for sure, completely, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, what PA was. It was potential... attributes. Potential ability. Potential... acumen. Whatever the A was, PA meant talent. Ronaldo: 200. Gribbin: 144. Ziggy: 58.

Ronaldo, presumably, had extracted every ounce of his talent. 5 times Ballon d'Or winner. 5 Champions League medals. 800 career goals. Had he been born with PA 200, or could you work at it, somehow? No! No tangents. I needed to start from the bottom before working up to other questions. This was important.

So, Gribbin. PA 144. Compared to everyone else here, he had what podcasters liked to call a 'high ceiling'. Not enough to play in the Premier League, based on what I'd seen so far, but the level below that, surely? So why hadn't he made it? Lots of reasons. Injury. Lack of motivation. Bad friends, unsupportive family. Yeah, I supposed it would be pretty common to get nowhere near your potential. That... that was worrying. But then again, there was still time. He was only 23. Maybe something would click and he'd never look back.

And then Ziggy. Potentially one of the best players for FC United. But he'd never had any training. No-one had ever noticed him. Why should they? His talent was virtually invisible. Even I had never seen him do anything of note. His Youtube highlights reel would be one routine defensive header.

So I'd found a player that no-one else would spot. That was my unfair advantage. My edge. There had to be ten thousand guys like him in England. Maybe ten thousand in Manchester alone. If I signed 10,000 and 9,000 didn't get anywhere near their potential, I'd still be as rich as Yorkshire gravy.

So PA was talent. Then... then it was clear that CA was an expression of talent. C. Current. Current ability and potential ability. The obvious correctness of this fact gave me full-body goosebumps.

Ronaldo had CA 182. That... that made sense. His career was waning - he looked slower and older in every match, having defied time for so long. That kid Garnacho I'd seen - he had CA 90, well on his way to reaching his potential of 173.

How long would it take Garnacho to hit his ceiling? Most players peaked at 27 or 28 years old. Was it connected to age?

Ziggy had moved from CA 1 to CA 2... maybe he'd add 1 point every time he played a match with these semi-pro guys?

No, that made no sense. Garnacho had only played a few minutes of professional football. He didn't have 90 CA from playing. And if you never played, you'd never be good enough to play.

And I wasn't getting XP watching this game, so Ziggy wasn't getting CA points from playing in it. Probably, anyway. I'd been wrong before. The whole thing was just guesswork.

One thing was clear, though. I needed to keep Ziggy in this environment as long as possible. I needed to make sure he got a second date.

I'd been standing there in the centre circle for ages. I snapped out of it and looked around like I'd just woken from a winter nap. I checked my chin for drool, but I was dry. The whole thought process must have taken seconds. I wandered towards Neil but once again, the world's greatest ever villain blocked my path.

Jackie was doing a Pep talk, talking to most of the first team, excitedly waving his arms around and doing little tippy tappy dances. He kept turning sideways. He was trying to illustrate some point and when I got within range he decided to use me as a prop.

"Secret Agent, you be a defender here." He manhandled me into position and then started miming that I was a defender and he, just in front of me, was receiving the ball from a teammate. "So like this, here, I'm square, yeah? Too square." Square is football-speak for horizontal. ‘Play a square pass’ means pass at a right-angle, i.e. sideways. "So then Secret Agent here, he holds me up, I have to turn, and that extra move gives the defence time to get set. Yeah? So now," he said, resetting so that instead of facing his own goal, i.e. instead of being square, he turned his body about 30 degrees off. "Half-turn. I do the same, but quicker. No time for dem to get set." Dem is Scouse for them. In this case he meant the defence. "Int that right, Secret Agent?"

I was unimpressed. "What's the difference though, really? The first pass is just as easy as the second."

"Easy, he says." Jackie was delighted. He hadn't set this trap but I'd fallen into it anyway. He called out three names - two to be defenders and one to be a winger. "Right, now there's Andy and Eddie at the back. You're going to get the ball and pass through them, into Sandro's path. You said it was easy, remember."

I noticed that half the white team had wandered over to watch the performance. Ziggy was at the back, looking terrified.

"Piece of piss," I said. There was general approval from the players. I was there in my call centre suit, wearing nice-ish shoes. I hadn't kicked a ball for three years. It was clear I would mess it up, but they approved of my bravado.

"Set up," said Jackie.

Nigel, the friendly bald coach, stood a few yards in front of me, a ball at his feet. Jackie was right behind me, his hand on my lower back, and fifteen yards further back, the two defenders were standing with a five yard gap between them. Sandro was on the right of that line, waiting to sprint forward and collect my pass. The way he was bouncing, he looked like an NFL wide receiver before the snap. I think that was his way of taking the piss out of me.

"Nigel," I said. "Let me have a couple of touches." I thought this would lead to an outburst of mocking, but it didn't. The group seemed to approve. Jackie took his hand away. Of course I'd want to get a feel of the ball. Pro move. Nigel passed it to me and I touched it back. He passed it again and I stunned it, rolled it around, and kicked it back. "All right."

"You ready?" said Jackie.

Something in his voice made me turn and look at him. "Are you going to boot me up the arse?"

"Me? Never." That grin. What a prick.

I turned and waited for Nigel to pass to me. When he did, I felt Jackie sort of lunge at me, but as I'd expected, it was just a fake. Just to psyche me out. You'd have to be legit psychotic to tackle an amateur in a suit, so I had mentally discounted Jackie and focused on the ball.

I touched it square, exactly where Jackie had said was 'wrong'. I planted my left foot just beside it, and allowed my weight to shift through my body, almost as though I was falling, to the right. At the last second, I clipped the ball with my right foot. I pushed through the contact to make sure the ball would fizz through the gap between the defenders, but put some backspin on it so it would start to slow before getting to the penalty area, so that if the goalie rushed out to clear the ball, at least he wouldn't be able to use his hands.

"Sandro," I yelled. "What the fuck!"

The lazy shit had just stood there.

He looked stunned. "Sorry, man. I thought you wouldn't do it."

"Making me look like a twat," I complained.

"Good lesson," said Neil. "Always make your runs." Neil didn't say much, but when he did, the lads listened.

Attention naturally turned back to Jackie. "Not bad," he said. He'd lost, but he didn't seem unhappy about it.

I'd fallen into some sort of trance - I wasn't really aware of what was going on. I should have been thinking about Ziggy and his needs, but I just wanted to learn about this half-turn shit. "So," I said, thoughtfully, "What's the benefit of the other way?"

Jackie looked at me like I might have been trying to undermine him, and if it had just been the two of us he might have reacted differently. But he was at work, and he was a professional. He looked around - the whole squad was watching. Teaching me was as good as teaching them. "Get back in position. Right, now, not so square. So when Nige passes, take a touch and then freeze. Yeah?"

Nigel - Nige, I suppose - rolled another ball to me. I had reverted to standing square. "Oh, fuck. I forgot the first bit." I kicked it back to him.

There was some friendly laughter. Nige rolled the ball again, but this time I'd sort of pre-turned. I touched the ball and stopped.

"What do you see?" said Jackie.

I shifted my weight like I was going to play the pass, then eased back. I looked around. "Yeah. It's a bit faster so they have less time to react. But so does Sandro."

"That's why we practice it. To get in sync."

I nodded. I scanned the pitch again, imagining if this was a real game. It was actually thrilling, kicking a ball on a nice pitch in a real stadium. It was so... so serious. Not many people get to play football where the pros play. I got back inside my head just in time. "I suppose from this position I could hit a pass to the left, as well."

"That's it. It's more dynamic. More proactive. You take control of the pitch. You're on the front foot; they're on the back."

"All that from one little half-turn?"

"Yep. Details. Details add up. Don't they, lads?" He was beaming now. Delighted. I could almost see his brain whirring: Let's get noobs in more often. They're a great teaching tool. "Want to try?"

"Yeah." We got into position, but then I looked at Sandro. "Mate. You going to run this time?"

He made a noise and gestured at me.

Nigel rolled the ball, and from the new starting position I took a touch, looked at where I wanted to play the pass, and hit it straight at the left-sided defender.

"Fuck!" I shouted.

"I knew it!" shouted Sandro, who got jeered.

Jackie slapped me on the shoulder. "It happens. You're programmed to hit that line." He drew a virtual line where my first pass had gone. "When you change your starting position, you've got to change your mechanics. That's why we practice."

"Speaking of," said Neil, and everyone took that to mean what it meant: time for the second half.

I wanted time to think about what I'd just learned, but that would have to wait. I jogged towards Neil - for the first time, Jackie didn't block me. "Neil, do Matlock Town play a striker at left-back?" Matlock were FC United's next opponents.

He looked amused. He knew where this was going. "You want your lad up front? I know. But this is a sesh for the first team. We don't have time to sort that lot out as well."

"Yeah, I get that. So let me do it."

Jackie had stayed within earshot. "Here we go. He's an agent, he's a silky smooth playmaker. And he's a master tactician an all. Tommy Tactics."

Neil grinned. "Maybe he is, though."

I held my hands up. "I've been watching them," I said, nodding towards the whites. "And with those players they should be set up in a 5-3-2. And you know who plays 5-3-2? Matlock Town." This last part was pure bullshit. Until I'd checked the fixtures that morning I had literally never heard of Matlock. I mean, there was an American TV show with that name. That was the extent of my knowledge. "I'll set them up in thirty seconds."

Neil gave me a curious glance. "Go on, then."

I zoomed off before he could change his mind. I wasn't going to stay for 30 seconds. The way I saw it, Neil had put me in charge of the whites, so I had half an hour to do something with a team of semi-pros. I was moving up in the world! And Ziggy was moving up the pitch, where he would finally get his shot at immortality.