15.

Saturday, December 19

The Lufthansa lounge was packed, so we had to split up. Emma and Briggy grabbed a couple of recliners, while I went with Angel to a sort of alcove thing with two comfy armchairs separated by an ugly square table. I bagsied the space German-style by leaving a scarf - a gift from Bayern Munich - on the seat. Angel left her coat there and we went to the buffet.

I wasn't hungry but there was a selection of wines, a couple of draft beers, some soft drinks, and I must have been staring at the options with a gormless look on my face because a fellow traveller said, in German, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Ja," I said, holding up my cast, which was now painted like a rainbow. "Ich brauche eine Schnabeltasse."

She laughed hard and squeezed me on my good arm. In English, she said, "You're so funny. Are you with your princess?"

Princess Emma, as the papers had been calling her. "Yeah. Going home. Germany breathes a sigh of relief."

Angel appeared next to me with a yoghurt topped with fruit. The rando took that as her cue to leave. "If there's anything I can help you with..."

"I'll give you a wink," I said.

She left, mood lifted. Angel said, "You're shameless."

"What? It's an early Christmas present for a nice lady."

"What was it you said to her?"

"Er, I need a... wow, I forgot the English word. Those little plastic cups for babies with two handles."

Angel frowned. "A sippy cup?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"First, how is asking for one of those flirting?"

"Because I'm being cheeky and surprising and she loves it."

"Okay, weird and wrong. Second, how do you know that word?"

I tutted. "I was the manager of a massive football club in Germany. There are words you need to learn, do you know what I mean?"

"How do you say sorry in German?"

"Er, it didn't come up."

"Yeah," said Angel. "Thought so. Did you actually want help?"

"If I get a bottle of water will you open it for me? The caps here defy me."

We took our swag back to our seats and settled in. The lounge was fine. Modern aesthetic, some nice touches, but mostly sterile. Pleasant but not so welcoming you'd want to spend absolutely ages there, which was probably exactly the response the designers were looking for.

Angel tucked into her yog while I thought about my German skills. I hadn't tried to learn but seemed to have picked it up by accident. That didn't make a lot of sense, really. I'd never been good at languages in school.

I leaned forward. Ah, but hang on. There were a lot of things I was good at now that I hadn't excelled at in my youth.

I brought up the profiles of Sandra Lane and Pedro Porto. At the top of all staff profiles was an attribute called Adaptability. Sandra Lane's was 5. Porto's was 20. Now consider that Sandra was tactically flexible and was happy to go along with my wild schemes once I'd explained them, while Porto always played the exact same formation. What I knew about their characters didn't tally with what I knew about their numbers.

What if, when I had edited my Soccer Supremo player profile to make 'Max Best' a superstar, I had also edited my manager profile? Had I given myself Adaptability 20?

I was starting to suspect that Adaptability had nothing to do with tactical flexibility but was about working in new environments. New countries. The ability to learn the language, for example. Was I suddenly a language savant?

That would be hilarious, like making the world's biggest pacifist the best sniper in history. Which, when I thought about it, was the plot of the movie Sergeant York, based on a true story.

So if I had 20s in my coaching profile, why wasn't I a good coach?

I shrugged. Maybe I was. Maybe the 20s - if they even existed - only kicked in after I got my first coaching badges. It's not like I had a massive sample size of time spent coaching to base my conclusions on - I had always worked with a real coach to make sure players improved. Maybe I would do some experiments when I got back to Chester. Probably I wouldn't, since I didn't enjoy coaching just as I didn't enjoy learning languages.

"Max," said Angel, showing me her phone. I realised she wasn't texting but going through the photos she had taken on her unexpected trip. Not rudely ignoring me, but relishing the experience. "The training session I watched. They're so fast! So technical." She moved to a new photo, which turned out to be a video. "This is you taking free kicks. Is this your first ever goal against Torben Ulrich? Everyone's made up."

"No, I scored a few but that was the first in the Pirlo style. Having a busted arm sort of helped, I think, because it made me focus on just the contact with my toes."

"Your three toes. It's so weird, that. Here's lunch. Handball training! That was mad. The interview with Mr. Fruity. I've got loads from the interview. He's really good. Did you see he posted the Terminator bit on TikTok?"

"No."

"Here," she said, tapping away.

She brought up a TikTok extract from the hour-long Mr. Fruity interview. Most of our chat had been silly and fun but he had asked one serious question.

"Max," I heard him say. I leaned closer. "What you did in Budapest was unreal but you haven't really spoken about your motivations or your beliefs or your goals. Is there something you'd like to say?"

It was my opportunity to speak my mind, at last, and if I had done so it would have been a disaster. Instead, I got an intense look on my face and as the camera slowly zoomed in on me, I said, "My name is Max Best and I'm the player-manager of Chester Football Club. We have a good men's team and an unbelievable women's team.

"My players know that I love movies. What I've never told them is that my favourite movie is Terminator 2. It's about a powerful character with great abs and good German language skills who goes around helping people while saying cool one-liners. That's me.

"If you're good at football, whoever you are, there's a place for you in my club. It's a place that's fun, the football's top, the work is interesting. It's a place that's vivid and alive and colourful."

By now I was being super charismatic, super intense. I had tried to look through the lens right into the souls of the listeners.

"I suppose what I'm trying to say is - and for once I won't do the Arnie voice - Come with me if you want to live."

Angel took her phone back and played the last five seconds again. "That gives me chills." She stared at the screen for a while before resuming her journey down memory lane. "Ah, look, remember that?"

"I don't think I'll forget that one," I said.

It was a picture of the Allianz Arena taken before my final match against Mainz. The bubbles on the stadium's bubble-wrap exterior were lit up to make it look like a giant rainbow.

Angel swiped and showed me the next one. I realised she was going to show me about a hundred photos, which would normally have been tedious, but the timing was perfect. One quick look back on my time in Germany before it was over. She was watching herself going down the corridor towards the home team's dressing room. "The posters of all the players. The idiots you binned off are still up. Didn't you ask for them to be taken down?"

"Nah," I said, as Angel walked past Rui Santos and Diogo. "It’s not my house. Plus Bastian will bring them back into the fold."

"Should he?"

"Er, maybe. I've had an easy run, right, which is why I could get away with what I did. If I was playing Juventus, Leverkusen, and Atletico Madrid I would want Diogo in the team and I wouldn't have used Willi and Till."

"What's a flat track bully?"

I rocked back and laughed loud. "Are you rinsing me?"

She did a nervous giggle. "Honestly, no. Did I by accident? It's just something someone said."

"Who?"

"Can't remember," she lied.

"Did you ever play cricket?"

"No."

"They throw the ball, right, and it lands on the ground and bounces. The ground can be, like, dry and cracked so the ball can spit off at mad angles and whatnot. The guy with the stick is trying to get a good hit of the ball but on a bad pitch the bloody thing doesn't go where he thinks it's going to go. That's really hard, then, yeah? Imagine you're trying to shoot but the ball bobbles up just as you strike it. But instead of being cracked and uneven, the ground can be perfectly flat. That's a flat track and it's much easier to hit the ball because the bounce is predictable. There are players who are amazing on those flat tracks. The guy flogs the bowlers all over the place, hitting fours and sixes, acting like the king of the world."

Angel nodded. "He's a flat track bully. So what, he's not that good?"

"Well, most people aren't even good when the conditions are right, so I'd say a flat track bully is above average but when the going gets rough he doesn't look so handy. The phrase is meant as a criticism of the guy's personality but now that I'm on the other side of it I think it's really more of a technical issue. There's something in your makeup as a player that stops you taking that last step. As for it showing a lack of character, why wouldn't you enjoy the days when your style is actually working well? Your friend who called me a flat track bully is basically saying, yeah he can dance around being cocky when he's beating up weak teams in perfect conditions but he wouldn't be so cocky against Liverpool at Anfield, would he?"

"Of course you would." She swiped. "Oh, ha! The dressing room. I can't believe you let me in."

"Bayern let every fucker in there. When I turned up the first day there were more people in the dressing room than in the away end. It's fucking mental. Anyway, I thought you being there might lift the mood."

"Aww, that's sweet. They were very friendly."

"Were they?" I said, doing my version of rolling my eyes. "The horny young men were friendly to Carlisle's finest? Give me that phone." She handed it over. There was a shot of Angel doing a selfie with about eight hundred million pounds of talent trying to look handsome behind her. I zoomed in on Adam Adebayo. "Who was the most friendly?"

"Adam," she said. I handed her phone back and when she saw what I'd done, she covered her mouth as she snorted. "What do you think, are we a good match?"

"I like him a lot," I said. "He's really interesting. He's got something about him. I sort of got the impression you were getting on well with Danny Flash." Danny was a player I had managed in my failed stint at Grimsby Town. He was from a famous boxing family and since that sport was all about self-promotion, Angel loved talking to Danny's family about how they boosted their profiles and made sure their fights sold out and did well on pay-per-view.

"I haven't spoken to him in a bit. He pissed me off."

"Oh, soz. Wait, do I need to beat him up again?"

"No. He was joking that he hoped you did better at Bayern than you did at Grimsby. He was just running his mouth but I didn't like it." She sighed. "He's not smart. Not like you, Mr. 100%."

"Spoilers for people who don't know the Mainz result," I said.

Angel laughed. "You're so strange." She kept swiping. "Dressing room, dressing room. Oh this was when Adam told me about a post he'd dropped on Insta. Did you see it?"

"No."

"It was clips of him failing as a player starting from when he was a teenager. Missing penalties, being injured, being subbed off in the rain. It was set to a James Blunt song and the caption was 'days like these...' And then it was him scoring in the Allianz and the crowd going mad, and the caption changed to 'lead to nights like this.' I just thought he was so brave being vulnerable like that in front of the whole world. He's so hot."

"Right," I said, flat. Adam had stolen my concept and repackaged it as his own and women were swooning over it. The fuck?

"Then we went up to the player's suite with PE."

"PE?"

"Princess Emma."

"Oh. Not sure I like PE."

Emma had appeared. "Excuse me?"

"I think your subjects should have the decency to give you your full name."

"My only subject," said Emma, regally, "is you. You grabbed my AirPod case."

"Oh," I said, fishing in my pocket. We swapped cases.

Angel said, "You should put stickers on so you know whose is whose."

"Nah," I said. "This way gives us something to talk about."

Angel sighed. "I want a relationship like this. Ems, can I be a bridesmaid?"

"No," I said. "You're too attractive. We want uggos so that Emma pops."

Emma dipped her head so she could give me a superior look. "I'm going to pop."

"Okay," I said. "So your bridesmaids can be Gemma, Brooke, Angel, Ruth, and Livia."

"Er," said Emma, her eyes moving to the right while she imagined the wedding photos. "Maybe we'll go with uggos, yeah." Angel wasn't sure if we were being serious which was absolutely crazy to me. To Angel, Emma said, "I've got my bridesmaids but you can come castle hunting with us if you want."

"Seriously?"

"Course."

Angel eyed me. "Have you got castle money?"

"Not yet," I said. "But her dad's paying for the wedding."

Angel showed Emma the next photo. "Remember this?"

Emma smiled. "Yeah."

I leaned forward to turn the screen towards me. It was a very attractive woman, well-dressed. She had a very sour expression. "She looks familiar."

"That's Henno Wald's wife. She dissed you on socials and she was the only one in that section who was frosty with Emma. When I turned up, Emma clued me in and I dunked on Henno like I didn't know who anyone was. Like, which is the midfielder Max binned off? Was that him there passing the ball out of play instead of giving it to the winger? Why's he back in the team? They were doing better without him. You know, just giving her some of her own medicine."

I shook my head. "We don't need to blast everyone all the time, do we?"

Emma made a noise. "You're allowed, why aren't we? Anyway, she deserved it. I'm going to do a power nap. Bye."

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Angel put her phone in the middle of the table. "There's you on the touchline. Then Emma told me to record the next bit. This was mental. Why are you so mental?"

She turned her phone upside down so I could see better. I watched as, before kick off, a camera dude came close and put me on the big screen. The crowd cheered and when I touched my zip and pulled it down they got louder. When I pulled the zip back to the top, they booed, so I went lower and they cheered again. With a sudden flourish, I unzipped the hoodie and threw it high into the air revealing... another black hoodie underneath. "Just unveiling the Max-branded 26/27 Christmas edition manager hoodie. What's the problem?" Angel mumbled something under her breath and returned to swiping. "Oh, go back," I said.

"This one?"

It was a photo of Fabian Fromm looking absolutely wretched next to his gorgeous wife. He had torn his MCL the day before the match. Nowhere near as bad as an ACL but still, he was looking at four months out. He would probably be back for the end of the season but the injury had soured the mood all around the club and trashed all the improvements in Morale I had generated. "Grim," I said.

"You tried to tell them," said Angel.

I swallowed. "She came to the training ground. His wife. Heard the news and rushed to be with him. She's really nice but I didn't know what to say. I felt she was blaming me."

"That makes no sense. You're the only one who tried to stop it."

I swiped the picture away. "The worst thing is I don't know how I could handle it better in future. Trick him into going into the scanner or something. I could say, hey Fabian, I'm afraid of these things but I think I've wrecked my ankle. Could you go in first and show me that it's okay? That's lame, isn't it?"

"So lame. So, what, you're thinking you'd go back to Munich?"

"No, just thinking in general. I'll go to Saltney for a few weeks at the start of next season but they're my players and I can do what I want with them. If Malmö will lend me loads of money but in return I have to manage them for two weeks to sort them out... Or I could imagine needing to step in as Wales manager at short notice. Those players know me, sort of, but they aren't going to listen on day one."

"They will know to avoid the curse of Max."

"The curse?" I said, carefully.

"Defy Max Best, your knee pops. Hey, Max."

"What?"

"My favourite movie is The Mummy. It's about a guy who wraps himself up in bandages - " she tapped my cast - "and everyone who vexes him has a horrible accident." She was very pleased with herself, and with good reason. "Oh, I meant to ask Briggy. What does this mean?"

The next photo showed the jam-packed ultras end in the Allianz Arena. They were holding up a banner that stretched almost from corner flag to corner flag. "Yeah, basically it says, Mr. 100% is 100% right. Kick racists out of UEFA.

"

Angel stared at it for a while. "Should I do this?"

"You mean, like, political things?" She nodded. I said, "No. You should stay neutral, build your profile, make fuck-you money, then you can find that one thing that you really care about and do one targeted intervention. Marcus Rashford used his profile to make sure hungry kids got school lunches. I've used my political capital to promote rainbows. If I do another stunt next week it will bomb and I'll ruin this one, too. You've got to be really calculated. Restrained."

"What's fuck-you money?"

"It's where you've got enough in the bank that if your boss asks you to work the weekend you can say fuck you."

"My boss always asks me to work the weekend."

I smiled. "Yeah, he sounds like an arsehole. I bet he's got great hair, though. Be careful to tell him that because as far as I know, you don't have fuck-you money."

"How much is that, do you think?"

I looked up. "For me I'd say two million. That's, like, live in a house in Manchester, potter around the garden, read books. Not jetting around all the time, no yachts, but no need to work again. I reckon ten mill for a really good life."

"Castle money."

"Exactly."

"How long will that take you?"

"Er, depends," I said. "I'm not sure what will happen with Soccer Supremo. They paid me Chester money but then I became the Bayern manager. But then I pissed off a nation and some fucking weirdos are saying they're done with the game. But then I did that little bit on Beat Ritter's Instagram where he played Soccer Supremo and whenever he made a decision he turned his phone to look at me and I showed approval or distaste."

"That was so funny!"

"That whole sponsorship could go either way. Like, they could pay me loads more… or cancel it. Hard to say. If I can’t get money externally, a lot will depend on which European tournament Saltney get into. A few lucky bounces in a few games and I'll have eight digits in three years."

"What, really?"

"There's loads of money in football, Angel."

"Men's football," she said.

"The women's side is growing. You'll do well and you're already on perfume money. I'll take care of you."

She smiled as she tapped her phone and swiped and brought up the YouTube video Mr. Fruity had posted. The thumbnail was actually outrageous - it showed me in full rainbow warrior pose with Angel doing a 'shocked face' emoji as she looked at my abs. I had scrubbed through the video and at no point did Angel make that face, so Mr. Fruity must have asked her to pose for it specially. "Ninety thousand views, Max! Gerd says it's doing much better than his usual content."

"Who the fuck is Gerd?"

"Mr. Fruity! You didn't think that was his real name, did you?"

"I thought his full name was Mr. Fruity Notes. You stayed in touch, did you?"

"He had a lot of fun. He doesn't know anything about football and I don't know much about perfumes so we're going to be in each other's squad."

"You could invite him to the Paris Perfume Show."

Angel gave me a long stare. "I'm trying to work out if that's a real thing. How could it be? On the other hand, why wouldn't there be something like that? Okay, I give up. Is it real or not?"

I leaned back. "Ask Bert."

"Gerd."

"Yeah."

"Max," she said, rubbing her hands. "You did this big thing that blew up and you had everyone in the world talking about you and you could have done anything with that but you used it to give me a leg up. I just wanted to say that I really appreciate it and I've had a great time over here."

"Hey, look," I said. "One of the guys who became part of the story works in fragrances, right? If it had been, I don't know, a guy who wrote insane Christmas plays, I would have called Henri. But my thing with you has always been: get good at football and good things will follow. Have you got any photos from the match? Did you enjoy it?"

"The atmosphere was unreal. It's so massive! 75,000 people in one space, all watching the same thing, watching you strutting around like you own the place."

"I didn't strut."

"I took a video of you strutting. What's it like managing a club like that?"

"It's epic until kick off and then it's just like Sunday League in Moss Side with a slightly higher calibre of player."

"Slightly? What about Adam Adebayo?"

“He wouldn’t get in a Sunday League team. They’d call him lazy.” I was joking but I wondered for how many amateur teams it would be true. A shockingly high percentage, I reckoned. "I'm on my way home and the scale of everything's gonna be dialled down by a factor of ten. Tomorrow you're playing Stourbridge. That's in the Midlands somewhere. When the ref blows the whistle for kick off, that pitch will be my entire world and I'll start to forget all this."

I looked around the lounge. It reminded me of a space in Bayern’s training ground but couldn't put a finger on which one.

"I feel like I'm forgetting it already; I didn't take as many photos as you. I know that on day one I was super nervous, wondering if I could even do it. I mean, this is the Bundesliga. The coaches are so interesting. This is where new tactics are born, you might think. But now I'm a bit like, yeah, well, good luck trying your new moves on me. If you react fast enough you can reduce damage and exploit opportunities here just like in the National League North. It probably sounds mental to you but it's a relief that I can actually do this job. And those early days when I was floating around on a cloud of bliss saying am I really here? They're vanishing in my memory and I know one day soon I'll be thinking, was that all a dream?"

"Were you even nervous against Mainz?"

"No. Pick the team, 4-2-3-1, all strong except for Willi, who's talented. Start Henno, give minutes to Drissa, give minutes to Stefan Clown."

"Who?"

"That's what I call him. He helped me with my thing in Hungary. I promised him a debut and I like to overdeliver. Yeah, look, the Fabian Fromm injury cast a dark cloud over the day but we were all professional. Including me, weirdly. Paul and Dieter wanted me to stay and do the job even when I was mentally checked out, so I had to be present, make good decisions, but without any passion. First half goal, second half goal. No new injuries. Leave the squad in a good place, healthy, rotated, and with a few promising players to add to the mix. I don't know Bastian very well but I imagine he'll be quite pleased, overall."

"I got a pic of Dieter and the other two giving you a Bayern scarf and, like, a hamper or something."

"Yeah it's all local sausages and stuff. That was a nice touch from them, but the best part was a few days before. I beat Paul Braun's nephew in the last match, right? And he took me aside one day and said, hey, do you think Toddy could manage Bayern one day? I went yeah, totally. Do it as soon as possible. Which he knew was me taking the piss because I want Bayern to have a shit manager. So he said, no, Max, please, I'd love your opinion. So I tried to find words that could mean two things. Like, Toddy Braun's time as FC B manager would be memorable. The idea of Toddy as the head coach here makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Toddy would break records. So, yeah, I was being all dickish about it, having a great time, when Paul says okay by the way, the medical team heard that one of the reasons you wanted to get an MRI scanner at Chester was to check your brain because you're worried about getting what your mum has. And yeah, anyway, they let me put my head in there and got a specialist to come and look at the results."

"Oh my God, that's so kind."

"Yeah. So to be nice I had to tell Paul his nephew is a few steps short of being good enough for this job, you know? But invite me to Bayern v Stuttgart next year and I'll tell you if anything's changed." I closed my eyes while I tried to remember Paul's vibe from that chat. "He likes a bit of drama because it keeps Bayern in the news and that's publicity that isn't going to a rival, but I gave him a hell of a lot more drama than he ever wanted. I think it ended okay. He said I know you had a few people in place to help you escape from Hungary. I said that's a cool name for a movie. He said pay attention you little shit. I shut my gob. He said, you must have had expenses. Add them to the rest, we’ll take care of it." I shook my head. "I rinsed them so hard and they asked for more. It's a different world, Angel. Oh, and that's when he suggested going to the handball."

"They told me it was because you mentioned it when you first came to Germany."

"Did I? I don't remember."

"You said you wanted to learn more about the club but you wouldn't have time."

"Yeah, well, I thought I'd be sacked after Hungary. Okay, I think I do remember saying that, yeah. Handball's a mad sport, isn't it?"

"You were flirting hard with that goalkeeper. I took some photos..." She swiped fast, trying to find them. I moved to stop her but she pulled her phone out of range.

I leaned back. "You're mixing flirting with recruitment. Did you see her agility?"

"I saw her turn you down so you turned up the charm."

I grinned. "I only wanted to get her on a football pitch. What did she have to lose?"

Angel scoffed. "Her innocence." She spotted something across the room and smiled. "Your motivations may be sus but you got everyone talking about her. She's going to be a legend on that team, isn't she? You treated her better than half the Bayern first team and they're all superstars. It was actually nice of you to make her feel special." Angel sighed. "It's the kind of thing Adam Adebayo would do."

Briggy rocked up, hard and serious. "Time to go, boss."

There was something off with the vibe. I looked from Briggy to Angel and back. "Oh, shit," I said. "This whole Adam thing... You've been winding me up."

Angel was trying to contain her laughter. "Briggy made me do it. It was Briggy's idea!"

"What the shit?" I demanded.

Briggy retained her professional pose and demeanour, but it wavered just for a second. "That's for making me go back to Chester. We're all square now."

"Careful or I'll tell Sandra Lane you were mean to me. She'll tell you off."

Briggy's lips curled up on one side. "That's something to look forward to."

Emma arrived slowly, staring into her phone. "Max, have you heard?"

"No."

"That Evaristo guy has gone to Juventus. Is that a hard J or...?"

"Soft. Yuventus. That's interesting. I told him it would be a bad career move. Why does no-one listen?"

I checked the Jobs screen. The Bologna position was listed as available. I was pretty sure I had one free pass to get any job in the world but I doubted I would ever use it. I planned to stay at Chester for the rest of my career.

It would be stupid not to consider my options, though. Would Bologna give me a job based on my career so far? They should, but that's not how Soccer Supremo worked; you had to build your reputation and it took time.

While I was there, I noticed that Pedro Porto at Manchester United was still 'very insecure'. United were drawing at home to a newly-promoted team. Despite having a profile full of 20s, his time was nearly up.

One name was missing from the 'insecure' list: TJ. Crawley Town's results had improved just enough, and TJ had started putting the hours in again. Not just at the training ground, but in the community. And Crawley Town was the most likely destination for Lee Contreras, who I had pitched to TJ back on Briggy's first day of work.

It was all pleasingly circular.

"Life's a ball," I declared, "and I kick it."

***

We landed in Manchester and were met by a couple of people from Chester FC, including Pascal, who had complained of a very slight knock so hadn't gone down to Portsmouth with the rest of the team. The curse hadn't shown anything but it wasn't completely foolproof and Pascal knew his body well.

I followed the Chester guys out of the airport and suddenly found myself looking at Sealbiscuit, the electric team bus. Seeing him made me stupidly happy. I patted his side like he was a horse. "But how?"

"Portsmouth is slightly out of his range," said Pascal. "Or close enough it's not worth risking it."

I nodded. "Bayern always travel the night before and stay in a hotel. I suppose we'll start doing that next season."

"What else did you learn?"

"Some small things," I said. "The biggest is maybe that our conditioning work is good but far behind what's possible. I showed the Brig some of their stuff and I think even he was surprised. We can defo squeeze a few percent more out of players. It'll just cost five or ten million." I eyed Pascal. If he chose to leave and I sold Lee Contreras and Josh Owens, I would be able to get Chester's training ground to a decent level and destroy the training cap. I wouldn't have money to replace them so if I wanted new first-teamers I would have to sell a fourth player and hope to find some bargains. First things first, though. "Have you made up your mind?"

He said, "Can I tell you at the end of the journey?"

My eyebrows shot up. Was my joint-best player, one of five players on CA 109, still deciding? "Sure."

***

Sealbiscuit glided into Chester past the billboard the club owned - which featured me 'returning' to the Deva stadium with a big smug grin, an empty wheat beer glass, lipstick kisses all over my face, and a speech bubble saying, "What did I miss?"

I smiled and got my phone out. Full-time down on the south coast. Portsmouth 1 Chester 1, a really good away draw at maybe the most talented team in League One. That made three draws in a row but we were still 4 points clear at the top of the table, we were hard to beat, and while our training gains were slow, they were happening. The average CA of our starting eleven was 104.8, which meant we were already the 8th best team in the division. When I returned to the team we would go on another long winning streak. When I wasn’t scouring Scandinavia for talent, that is.

As we parked at Bumpers Bank, our training ground, Pascal grabbed me and said, excited, "It's time to tell you my decision. I have decided to get into cliffhangers."

"Oh, cool. You say 'I am going to' and then you pause, finish the sentence, but when you write your memoirs you'll be able to stretch that one sentence over two books."

"That's exactly my plan. I'm going to," he said, not realising that my memoirs would be famous for their complete lack of cliffhangers, "follow my dream in the Bundesliga. Seeing you there made me really want to be part of it. And it's the top division. Yes, Bochum could get relegated but I will have had six months in tier one and you said it yourself - it will take two-and-a-half-years before Chester get to the Prem." He grinned. "You can always buy me back."

That wouldn't happen, but there was no reason to ruin the mood. "I wouldn't be able to afford you. You'll have to let your contract run down."

"Come," he said, and he rushed ahead.

For the first time I wondered why we had come here. There was a match happening on the 3G pitch to my left but they were all CA 1 randos. Nothing special. Now that I was back home I really wanted to get home. "What's going on?" I said. "I'm not in the mood for a surprise party or whatever."

"Almost everyone's on the south coast. It would be a shit party, wouldn't it? Come on, Max!"

He was rushing but I was slowing down. I pointed. "The shit is this?"

There was a hole in the ground where the reception cabin had been. I got a sneaking suspicion I knew what was happening. All the cabins around the new shower block had been moved. Everywhere I looked there were yellow diggers and random bits of construction kit. "We've started!" said Pascal, throwing his arms wide. He pointed to my right. "Reception plus meeting rooms plus the analyst's room and the media centre." He pointed to my left. "Massive restaurant plus roof terrace. Medical block plus manager's office."

"We don't have the money," I said.

"I talked to MD and Brooke. I said if you green light construction right away I'll go to Bochum. That surely covers the first payment for all of this, I said. Max will make more deals in the January window but you have to start now otherwise I'll stay and see out the season."

I smiled. "You dangled a million pounds in front of MD. No way is he going to turn it down."

"As I understand it, your war chest plus my sale gives you 1.6 million and the estimated cost for these buildings is 2.3 million. You need seven hundred thousand pounds, which is nothing really. I don't know what other deals you have lined up but we're top of the league and huge exposure is on the horizon. . I asked MD if he would be more embarrassed about asking the bank for a loan or having these cabins shown on national television. Brooke mumbled worldwide television. MD turned a bit pale and said he agreed with me but there is a long time until January. What if you get injured? Then we're in a big hole - literally. I agreed not to play for the rest of the year so as not to endanger the deal... and the finances of the club."

He sensed I wasn't completely delighted to hear all this.

"What's the matter? This is my big Max Best moment. My Christmas present to you! I cooked up a scam like you would do. I say that I can't play because I have a slight injury and no-one suspects a thing, the way no-one knew what you were up to in Budapest. I told Brooke, though. She was an ally - she got the builders to move fast. The groundwork now, the steel in the spring, finished by the summer."

I tried to smile. "It's top. It's brilliant. Good scam, perfect surprise. I love it. It's just... it won't be the same without you."

He laughed. "I thought about it! Listen. Henri left. I'm leaving. Who remains from our love triangle? Luisa! Nobody predicted that!"

I had a strange feeling then, that part of Pascal's completely logical decision was a very illogical desire to stop working alongside the woman he once - or still - had a massive crush on. "That is pretty mad, yeah," I said, carefully.

"I'm going to tell the women my decision tomorrow after the match. The documentary crew will be there. We told the players it was because of all the interest around your return but really it's for the big, teary-eyed reveal."

I finally found a smile. Pascal was getting to be as cynical and manipulative as me; maybe it was good he was leaving so I wouldn't turn him even further towards the dark side. "It'll be an amazing episode. Dynamite TV. Hey," I said, giving him a friendly slap on the arm. "Let's go out on a high. Big win, fearless football. Pascal Bochum, manager; Max Best, assistant manager."

His eyes widened. "Friday you're strutting around the Allianz Arena in front of 75,000 people showing Germany how it's done. Sunday you're the assistant to a German intern in front of 75 people."

"Let the world try to make sense of that," I said.

"Impossible," said Pascal. "You're simply impossible."

***

Sunday, December 20

Stourbridge, Dudley, the West Midlands.

Pascal masterminded a 7-2 win against Stourbridge (CA 52) to ensure his six-month reign ended with the title Mr. 100%. Not bad for a beginner. I loved his final selection, a very German-feeling 3-4-3, packed with the best players in every position in order to somewhat self-indulgently pick Meredith Ann. The average CA was 73.5 and the average PA was 137. The ladies had talent for days and Pascal had shepherded them into the FA Cup 4th Round. What could we achieve from here?

While he was inside telling the women that he was leaving, I did a little tour of the War Memorial Athletic Ground, which was steeped in history but only had capacity for just over two thousand people. It was a far cry from the huge stadiums I had recently been working at.

My fingers twitched. Something was telling me I should take a photo of this place.

Why? That was more of an Angel thing. I didn't need to document every second of my life.

My fingers twitched some more.

I had been on the top and now this was a new base. Basecamp for my next climb, the next phase in my progression. Start here... go where?

I ambled around a little more. There were more journalists who came to watch Bayern's open training than had come to watch the mighty Chester Women. The thought gave me a pang of loss. Never again would I have players of such quality to carry out my plans. Never again would I manage in such an amazing stadium as the Allianz Arena.

I felt a tingle on the back of my neck

That wasn’t true, was it?

There was a stadium in England even bigger than the Allianz and a thousand times more famous. Chester FC had never been there in its long history, but I could get there this season with the men’s team. It would be a long shot but maybe the women could do it, too. It would take hard work. We would all have to grind. When had that ever stopped me?

That was it. That was the next goal.

I went to the middle of the pitch, hit record, and held the phone at arm’s length as I turned in a circle.

In a few months I would record the second half of the video. The two halves combined - set to a James Blunt song, perhaps - would show how we had progressed from here… to the centre circle at Wembley Stadium.