31 - Here Endeth the Lesson [T1] (Patreon)

31.

Sunday felt like climbing out of a hole. First, I got a lunchtime text from Emma. Just a light kind of 'checking in' message. I responded in kind. I guessed that Gemma had told Emma what she'd seen, and that while I was bonkers, I wasn't bonking women left, right, and centre. So Emma was trying to stay friends or whatever and was no longer mad at me. I didn't really need an outrageously sexy blonde friend, but it was better than nothing.

Then I got invited to watch World Cup matches by Longstaff and Junior. I did one each with them, and two on my own. Perfect!

With Longstaff, I asked him what it was like supporting a small team, how it had affected him when the previous owner had built an enormous white elephant stadium that led to the bankruptcy of the original Darlington FC, and what it meant to be a phoenix club.

One interesting thing was the frequency with which he mentioned the pandemic. By far the hardest part of the lockdowns, he said, was not being able to go to the football. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, even when it’s 6th tier Darlington playing a dogged 4-4-2. It might have been the hundredth time someone told me what their local team meant to them, but I think I was finally starting to get it. Like, really get it.

With Junior, I focused on his experiences as a player. What it was like in youth teams, his ups and downs, being out of contract for long stretches and struggling to get noticed. I asked him about other clubs, other managers, what he really thought of Cutter and the cavemen, how he trained, how he ate. Like Longstaff, it wasn't hard to get him to talk and I loved every second of it. Even when he praised Captain Caveman and his thugs for being good defenders. Tsch.

As I was leaving his flat, he begged me to keep my head down for a while. Don’t rock the boat for a while.

“I don’t rock boats,” I said. “I just point out when they’re rocking.”

“Well, give it a rest for a spell. Don’t put a target on your back. With the gaffer or the squad.”

“Absolutely.”

***

I wasn't just learning loads about life in the lower leagues, I was also racking up TINOs. My stash was starting to look impressive. If I kept grinding, I'd soon have more TINOs than I had XP at the start of the World Cup, with half the tournament still to come.

The only problem was that they surely wouldn't be converted back to XP until after the World Cup final, so if I bought new skills and perks they wouldn't be able to help me in the Broughton match.

***

Monday 28th November

I got to the training ground at 7:30, ninety minutes early. In before Cutter early. Sarcastically early? You decide.

I set up a net on my own and smashed Beckhams and Cannonballs into it, right foot and left. Then five penalties on each foot. Then a light jog around the pitches. Then, because I was bored, some kickups. I got to 50 without the slightest concern, and that's when I stopped. I tried doing some skills against mannequins but it wasn't much fun.

At twenty to nine, when one of the coaches started putting the chairs out into rows, I was in the meeting room. As soon as he put the fifth one down I said thanks and sat on it. He sighed and shook his head and finished his work. My spot was right in the middle, right in front of Cutter. Sarcastically eager? You decide.

The rest of the team filed in. Junior sat behind me and leaned forward. “Is this your idea of keeping a low profile?”

I smiled back at him. “I’m the reserve right-midfielder for a team in the 6th tier. How low can my profile get?”

“You know what I mean.”

The meeting started as something of a bollocking for the team's poor performance on Saturday, a promise that training would be extra hard, and a bit of a heads-up about what to expect from the Kettering game on Friday.

I shot to my feet, then sat down again. "Friday?"

"Yes, Best. Friday night. Under the floodlights. Is that okay with you? Does it fit your schedule?"

"Yep," I said. "Does that mean I can make plans for Saturday afternoon?"

His first instinct was to get mad at me, but his second was patience. Maybe one of the coaches had reminded him that I had almost zero experience. "Yes."

"Oh, top."

Cutter wanted to move on, but curiosity got the better of him. "What will you do?"

"Oh, I'll see if any of my mates are playing and go and watch them."

"Mates or clients?"

"My clients are all mates."

He pushed his bottom lip out and turned his head - conceding the point. He'd seen me and Henri together. "What if no-one's playing?"

This was ludicrous. The whole first team squad was watching him chat to me about my plans for the weekend. A cheeky grin slid over my mouth and I half-turned so the others could see it. "I might go to the zoo. Do you want to come, boss?"

Cutter grinned back. For once I'd pitched my cheekiness just right. "No fear. There's enough animals round this place. Primates everywhere."

"Snakes, too," said Captain Caveman, which drew snickers from his goons.

"I’ve spotted a couple of endangered species," I said, stretching out to cover more space.

"Donkeys!" said Glynn, because that's what people call footballers with poor technique. Funny but not quite pitched right. Or maybe it was the perfect pitch, since it ended the ‘banter’.

"Lovely stuff," said Cutter, ending that little escapade. "That's it. Pitch 2."

***

Training was okay, with one interesting discovery and one minor incident. The discovery was that as Junior started the session, his CA increased by one. Then at the end, it increased by another point, to bring him to 40. I hadn't seen a two-point increase in one session since I'd been at Darlo. I wondered if I'd helped him build his confidence to the point where his natural talent could really flourish. It might have simply been that he was getting more game time.

The second incident was after we'd done all the boring sprints and shape work and blah blah blah. We got some small-sided games going on. 5-a-side in a quarter of the pitch. Really congested. We didn’t have a full-sized goal to aim at, though, nor even the smaller one. No, we had the absolute tiniest goals available - as big as the ones you’d buy for a toddler. There were two for each team to aim at, set back from the playing area on diagonals. To score, you simply needed to pass the ball into either of the mini goals.

It’s not that important that you can visualise the drill, but maybe imagine a late night talk show - the playing area is the main stage, and the goals for team A were angled away from it like camera 1 and camera 2. And of course, there was the same setup on the other side, so that our attacks could turn into defensive situations in a microsecond.

I guess the intention was to simulate a match situation where you'd compete in a small area then try to get some space to play a forward pass to a winger, while stopping the other team from doing that.

I was on a team that included Captain Caveman and Colin, and we were doing exceptionally well. We had a pretty ideal mix of skills for this game. Our opponents found it hard to get past us, and then on transitions I'd open the other team up with a clever through ball or a little burst of speed. When one team scored two goals, the losing team went off and a fresh team came on. We were totally dominant, though, and had entrenched ourselves as a permanent resident. I loved it - it felt like me and my teammates were, at last, in sync.

The incident came when one of the other teams finally scored. Caveman lashed out at me. "That was your man, Best!"

"Nope. I was here for the counter."

Since the prick had never said more than eight words to me in one go, I thought that was the end of it. But my attack on Blondie had changed something. He came back at me. "You can't weasel your way out of this one. That was your man. If he scores, that's on you."

"No," I said, genuinely quite calmly, though despite watching over three anger management videos I was ready to lash out when the moment inevitably came. "The goal is to progress the ball, so you need me to stay in an attacking position."

"Gloryhunting."

"No, Captain. That's my job. If we play with 5 defenders, they'll come with 5 attackers and we'll get dicked. I've got to be ready for the transitions. If I’m attacking, they’ll keep two defenders back as cover."

"Best," said Colin. "Maybe so. But that time, you should have tracked the man."

"I've been doing it the same way this whole game and we've crushed it. You didn't complain when we were scoring with every break. It's risk reward, isn't it? They get a 5% chance to score, we get a 10% chance. You take those odds."

"Football's about giving the other team nothing," said Caveman. "Clean sheet, every match. That's the aim."

"Not my aim," I said. "If you're not attacking you're just waiting to lose."

“Attack wins you games, defence wins you titles. You know who said that? Alex Ferguson. Remember him? Managed your club. Best manager of all time. Think he might know a thing or two more than Max fucking Best.”

I wanted to tell Caveman that the logical conclusion of his viewpoint was playing with 11 goalkeepers, but Cutter stepped forward. "We need to find the balance. That's what this drill is about." He blew his whistle to restart the game.

Demotivated, I walked around for a while, half-heartedly contributing. Henri’s yellow card warning popped up in the centre of my mind. Well, the only person I could hurt this time was me. I went to one of the mini goals and lay down in front of it.

Cutter stopped the game. "Fucking hell, Max! What the fuck are you doing?"

"Defending the goal with my life, boss."

He fumed at me, and I saw his internal rage-o-meter filling rapidly. It shot past 'Conceding a sloppy goal in the first minute of a local derby' and was rapidly closing in on 'Little Manc twat ruining my training sessions with his unprofessional antics'. But a noise made him turn - his assistants were laughing. I got a piece of luck, just then, as one of the cavemen on the other team decided I was a nice juicy target - he hit a hard shot right at me. I adjusted and volleyed the ball away, in the direction of the opposite mini goal. It didn't go in - I wasn't that good - but just for a second, everyone thought it might.

Cutter blew his whistle and gestured at me. "Get off the pitch. Red card. Lads, you're down a man. 5 against 4. What are you going to do about it?"

Caveman tried to murder me with laser vision he didn't have. I helped my team by springing to my feet, flicking a ball into the air and doing jaunty three-metre high kick-ups. Cutter whistled again. “Best! You’re done. Go and wait in my office.”

I did as he said, and hung around for half an hour. I started out defiant, but got more and more depressed as the minutes ticked by. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t fit in with the cavemen socially. I couldn’t even get through to them about football. It was the same thing with Ian Evans. He had his ideas and they were fixed, even in the weight of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I needed to be able to talk to these people if I was going to survive in the world of football. So far, I couldn’t, and my failures were making me act out.

Cutter turned up and yelled at me for a while. Really let rip. When he was done, he told me to get out and buck up my ideas. I didn’t move.

“Best? I told you to go home.”

“Boss. I need help.”

“What?” I don’t think any player had ever said that to him before, unless it was about moving house or something basic.

“I don’t know how to communicate with people like Captain. I try, I take deep breaths, I count to ten, and it all goes wrong anyway. How do you talk to people you don’t like?”

“If I knew that, I’d be in the Premier League.”

He wasn’t going to help. I nodded, and stood up to leave.

“Best,” he said. “Are you really asking?”

“Yes,” I said, though the S didn’t really come out. Got stuck in my throat somewhere.

Cutter stood up from his spot behind the desk and came to the chair next to me. Down to my level. “Max. You’re wild and flighty and some of the lads love it and some hate it. But none of them trust you. I don’t trust you. You’re out of position when I want you in, and in when I want you out. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s not that you can’t communicate. It’s that you can’t get people to trust you.” He looked out of the window. “You’ve made a big effort with Junior. Everyone can see that. That’s good. But me? I wonder why you’re doing it. And then I wonder why I wonder that. Do you get me?”

“Okay but I don’t want to be best friends with everyone. I just need them to listen when it’s about tactics or what the other team are doing or whatever. I spotted Hereford had gone defensive and told everyone, but the guys didn’t react until they’d seen it for themselves.”

He sighed. He didn’t have time for my weird garbage. “When I broke into the first team, I was a skinny weirdo. I scored an own goal in my second game. The guys didn’t trust me. You know how I earned that trust?” He stood. “One day at a time. Now fuck off, I need to make some calls.”

I headed for the door. When my hand was on the handle, he called out.

“It’s good you’re trying, Max. I like that. You’re starting on Friday unless you pull another stunt like today.”

“Yes, boss. Thanks. I’ll behave.”

***

After training on Wednesday - in which I was a MODEL CITIZEN - to test a theory I watched part of the second World Cup match and then drove to the school.

I watched a few seconds of Miss Fox's English lesson - she was dressed to kill, again, holy shit - then let myself in without knocking. The lads all sat up. "Guys," I said. "I don't get why you're always slouching. If I was in one of Miss Fox's lessons, I'd be erect the whole time."

The boys loved it. Miss Fox less so. "Max Best 77. Nice debut. But scoring a lucky free kick doesn't mean you get to interrupt my lessons whenever you want."

"Noted," I said. I pointed to her desk and said, “May I?” Without really waiting for a reply, I settled onto the front edge, facing the class. She had to move to the side to be seen. "Miss F... Faulkes. I need help. If that's all right?"

She sighed. "If it’s going to get you out of here faster. Tell me what it is."

I looked around. It was all the academy lads, including Benzo and Bark, who I hadn't seen since I left the digs. "Guys, I want to be a football manager. I need to present an image of someone who could manage a team. Which is hard because I keep flying off the handle all the time. But that's not my fault - society's to blame. So two questions, I think. One. During matches I've been going over to the manager to discuss tactics with him. Has anyone seen that?" Several hands went up. I pointed at one. "What did you make of it?"

"Looked like you was scheming what to do next," he said. "Like you was assistant manager or sumfink."

"Oh, I got the opposite," said another kid. "I thought you was saying you didn't know what to do."

"Right," I said. That was the end of that little bit of pantomime, then. "Thanks. All right, question two. The media have been calling me a mystery winger and stuff. Which is pretty cool. I like it. Being mysterious seems fun. Like I've got superpowers. Or a curse. That's not going to help me get a job, though. My plan is to score, like, ten goals in the next match and then do an interview where I show how much I know about football."

"Short interview, then," said Benzo, to much laughter.

"No, Benzo, it would be very long." A dozen innuendos sprang to mind, but I glanced at Miss Fox and she already looked bored by them, even though I'd kept them in my pants. "The problem is if I talk about formations and stuff, they won't print it."

"Print?" laughed one kid. "Print is from the 1900s. If you want to control the narrative, that's what socials are for."

I knew it. "Social media? Ugh."

"Another thing, Max," said Bark, "you need to match the message to the medium. If you want to show off your tactics, you need to go on a deep-dive YouTube channel, or do a podcast. The newspaper's just gonna take half one sentence as their pull quote. TV's the same. If it was me, I'd start with short tactics videos on TikTok and have longer ones on YouTube. Post reaction comments on Twitter, and do lifestyle things on Insta. When you've got some content there, get invited on a podcast and talk them through a match. They'll link to your socials and you'll grow a following."

"Yeah!" said Benzo. "It's looking like it'll be England v France in the quarters. You and Henri Lyons could do a predictions video! That'd be lit!"

That got a big buzz in the room. Benzo had definitely hit the nail on the head, there.

"Mr Best," said a kid I'd never seen. Sometimes the Scholarship kids were at the Eastbourne training complex, so he must have seen me then. "Your skills are amazing. You could crush it with kick-up challenges or free kick tutorials."

Oooh, no thanks. "Like a performing monkey?"

He flushed, but stood his ground. "No. Yeah, but. But no. I mean, you can talk tactics for an hour but that won't get eyeballs. That's just nerds that watch that. I'm saying, come to watch you score from a corner, stay for the tips on how to beat a press."

I nodded and gave the kid a thumbs up. I still didn't like what he was saying, but I liked that he'd said it. His blush deepened; he seemed really pleased.

I bit a nail.

Miss Fox chimed in. "Excellent, boys. Good ideas. But we've missed two of our Ws. Who is Max's target audience and where do they live online?"

"Old white men," said a young white man. "CEOs. Managing Directors. Rich guys who own teams. They're in anti-vax Facebook groups."

"And LinkedIn," said another. The name was met with howls of derision.

"Jesus, guys," I said. "I'm not going on LinkedIn! No-one's that desperate. Oh, wait. The one director I know listens to talkSPORT."

Miss Fox said, "You need to build your profile before you get invited to contribute there, Max."

"So that means Insting and Twitting and Tikting and all that?"

She shrugged. "If you want to use the media, yes. That's the standard pathway. I'd suggest 90% entertainment, 10% showing that you're not just a pretty face."

I sighed and stared out of the window. There were football pitches visible in the distance. Calling to me.

"Guys, Miss Fox, thanks for your help. Ten out of ten lesson." As I got to the door, I paused, turned, and asked Miss Fox, "How many goals do I need to score this Friday to interrupt next week?"

Amusement flickered on her lips. "Two."

"Only two?" I said. "So you don't mind our little chats. Good to know." And I eased out of the room while the boys made the noise that boys make when they've seen some next-level flirting.

***

That interruption proved productive in two ways. One, the ideas about using social media and all that. It seemed exhausting and bad for my mental health, but I was doing a lot of things that were bad for my mental health, so what difference would one more make?

The other thing was that since I'd watched the first five minutes of the World Cup match and answered the first two questions before leaving the house, I wasn't penalised for missing the whole match. I didn't get the chance to answer the other 8 questions, but I didn't get the 127 TINOs stripped away. So I could, for example, watch a few minutes of the Wednesday evening match, then zip out to watch Middleton Rangers and get some actual XP.

I didn't - I wanted one more incredible performance in the bank before insinuating myself into the Middleton setup.

But it was good to know.

***

Thursday morning was shockingly important, and it all started out so innocently. So bland. So average.

Drills. Shape work. Nothing too serious the day before a match, but it wasn't my finest hour in terms of effort and intensity. The coaches knew I was half-arsing things but they couldn't really complain if I was 'only' finishing third in races or 'only' making 95% of my passes.

The truth was, with it being December 1st, I was hoping I'd finally get paid my redundancy money. Margot said the Darlo payouts were on the 15th of the month, so if I didn't get my call centre cash, I didn't know what I'd do. I couldn't live for two weeks with zero spending money.

So yeah, distracted. Which is why it took me a while to notice we had two new guys training with us. I was pretty confused because they were both 19 - too old to have been sent up from Darlo's youth system - and because they were both shit.

There was some rando mincing around the touchline, chatting away to Cutter, who seemed to think this guy was the bee's knees.

I got on with the sesh, then had my shower and lunch and whatnot. As I was getting to my car, Cutter was returning from somewhere with this dude. Probably gone off to get lunch together somewhere a bit more upmarket than the canteen.

"Max, come here," he said. "Brad wants to meet you."

This guy Brad was on the short side and stocky without having an ounce of fat on him. He had short, fluffy hair, a fake perma-tan, fake perma-smile, and a big, chunky watch. Patterned shirt, striped suit, and a Bluetooth handsfree earpiece.

I fistbumped the guy. One annoying thing about being a footballer was the sheer volume of handshakes involved. It was never ending. I tried to bump where poss. "Hi, Brad. I'm Max."

"I bet you are," he said, in a camp way.

Cutter thought that was delightful. When he was done chuckling, he said, "What did you think of the trialists, Best?"

"That was just a trial? Thank fuck. I thought you'd signed them."

The mood dipped a fraction, which I only realised retrospectively. "Why? What's wrong with them?"

Finally a chance to talk football with my manager! "Carmine combines being slow with having bad stamina. He can play a pass, but where's he going to get the time? A retirees league, maybe. In Italy. Thornton has the worst technique I've seen in Darlington, and I've been watching Caveman and Shrek for weeks."

Cutter's face had solidified, the muscles going taut, pulling his lips up into a snarl. "You're just saying that because he plays right-midfield."

I was astonished. "Which one?"

"Carmine."

I laughed. "Carmine? Right-mid? He's a defender. Right-back, maybe. Midfield? Forget it."

"Now listen here," said Cutter, but the Brad guy soothed him with that soft, sibilant voice.

"David, it's okay. You asked him! And by the way, not bad. He has spent most of his career at right-back. His last coach moved him upfield to great effect."

Cutter's anger turned to confusion. How had I seen all that in one distracted training session?

I looked up at the sky and shook my head. "I've put my foot in things again, haven't I? You're their agent."

"I am. Bradley Rymarquis, at your service." He pronounced the last syllable of his name 'kvis'. He put his finger to his cheek and tilted his head. "You've made quite the start to your career, Max Best. Very exciting. Do you have representation?"

I was about to open my mouth to say I didn't need an agent, but it struck me as pretty stupid. Why not string this guy along for a while and find out what he did? Playing for Darlington was a way to see how a real manager acted. Why not see what a real agent got up to?

"No," I said. "I don't. Yet. Do you want to help me with my career?"

"I think I do, my dear boy. I think I do."

"Fine. Promise not to put either of those two in the same team as me and we can talk."

I couldn't have known it at the time, but I'd just made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.