***

I had gotten up super early to head to the airport and had expended a lot of energy already, but the day had just started. After training came a meeting disguised as lunch. I wanted to be left alone to work through the player profiles in more detail, but the triumvirate wanted to introduce me to some of the key people at the club.

One of these was Diane Berger, who was confusingly called the 'team manager'. I couldn't quite work out what that entailed, but part of it was coaxing players to do sponsor events and part of it was overseeing our preparations for away matches. On game days she wore a headset and liased between the physios and the head coach. She was also a conduit between the head coach and the players, helping to smooth out wrinkles. The players trusted her to the extent she was the only non-player who was in their WhatsApp group.

There was also the head of Marketing, who couldn't work out if I was the content generator of her dreams or the harbinger of sponsorship doomsday, plus another couple of former players who worked in mysterious roles. I couldn't decide if I liked the way former players were kept around but it was certainly good for keeping football at the heart of the club's activities. I could imagine that at every meeting there would be a voice saying 'but the players will hate this' or 'have you thought how the fans will react?'

I started out in good form, hosing everyone with my charm. I turned questions about me into raves about the players I had just seen. My bubbly mood lasted until Briggy showed me her phone. Bild had a headline which she translated for me. 'Mad Dog Starts with a Bite.' They had a photo of me kicking Stefan out of training alongside an entire article about it, with quotes from 'sources'.

"Why am I a mad dog?" I asked.

"Don't know," said Briggy.

The marketing woman had seen us and brought up the same article on her phone. She skimmed it and had already swiped to their other stories. "They're calling you Max Beisst."

Briggy said, "Max Bites."

For a full minute, I steamed up. Got pissed. Not at the nickname - I didn't have the language chops to know if it was funny or what - but at the leak. I cooled off by going internal, reminding myself that it was always going to be this way. The fact it had already started just brought my task into focus. I had to achieve my goals while navigating my leaky ship through mole-infested waters. Every player was a suspect. Every coach was a suspect. Everyone at this table was a suspect. Paul Braun could have been plotting against the other members of the triumvirate in order to take sole control of the club. If that were the case, this folly of Dieter's was a perfect opportunity.

Then again, I thought, as I pushed the food around on my plate, the triumvirate had made it pretty clear that their goal was to get Bastian to undergo his surgery as early as possible. The stupid prick wanted to put it off until next summer at great risk to his life. Paul Braun hadn't been lying about his wish to see his employee 'avoid the drop', to use a footballing term. Maybe Braun was combining a genuinely good intention with a dastardly plot, but I didn't think so. Still, the upshot was I had to be careful around absolutely everyone. Potentially even Briggy. Potentially even Dieter. I had read enough Agatha Christie to distrust alibis and to assume hidden motives.

Shit, I'd read enough Agatha Christie to suspect myself.

I didn't speak much for the rest of the lunch. Mostly I batted away suggestions from the marketing person. "Sounds great. Sounds like something Basti would love to do. Wish I had time but I wouldn't want to lose focus on the football."

Before I left, Diane Berger asked me to let her know Friday's line up by Wednesday at the latest. "Wednesday might be tight," I said. "Plus I want them to train hard on Thursday."

"Bastian gives me the team in plenty of time."

"Cool," I said. I could have named a solid team there and then but I wanted to scribble possible lineups, make numbers dance, play with my new toys.

Toys!

I went right back to being in a great mood. Despite all the shit that would come with this mission, I would get to play with some of the very best toys in the whole fucking world.

Paul Braun was putting his jacket on. "What is our new manager smiling at?"

I looked up at him. "Just wondering what my old P.E. teacher would make of all this. He didn't pick me for the school team; now I'm manager of Bayern Munich."

Paul's twenty-sided dice rolled and landed on 'upbeat'. "There is a saying here: There are two types of people. Those who can't do it and those who can. I have a saying: fuck that guy." He was very pleased with himself. "Servus, Max."

"Servus."

***

After the lunch meeting came the injuries report. I was really excited for this; I was going to get a really amazing peek under the curtain. How did megaclubs actually run things? What reports did they have? What astonishing, breakthrough technologies?

The astonishing, breakthrough technology was PowerPoint.

Basti's assistant coaches and four physios gathered and gave an update about the injuries the players had, how their rehabs were going, and what new issues had arisen over the international break. It was all led by the senior guy, whose voice was the only one I heard for minutes at a time. You might think I like the sound of my own voice but even on my epic rants I let other people speak from time to time, if only to remind people what lesser speakers sounded like.

While the delivery was tedious, it was genuinely interesting to see how specific and detailed the reports got. It was assumed that everyone at the table understood the terminology. My mind started to drift as I thought about sending Chester's coaches on physiotherapy courses. Would that be a good investment? Almost certainly, even if it was just to help them process this kind of meeting.

That said, while I acknowledged that this was high-level stuff, advanced stuff, was it really necessary? The manager didn't need to hear things in such detail. They could have summarised thirty minutes into three. Player X is out for three weeks. Player Y can start training tomorrow but with no contact.

I suppose most managers only had one set of players to think about. With all the clubs in the Max Best Universe, I had loads. Give me short meetings, give me the overview.

When they finished, I said, "Are there any players you think are hiding injuries?"

Riley and Vlado looked at each other like I was insane. Moses said, "No. What do you mean?"

I thought about how I wanted to play this. I didn't especially care if players at Bayern Munich were hiding things from their medical team. Long-term I wanted them to fail, to put it bluntly. But if the curse was telling me that Fabian Fromm had an ankle injury I wasn't going to use him in a match, was I? It would be unethical. The issue in the case of Fromm was that he was absolutely fantastic. CA 179, able to play multiple positions, and while his Influence wasn't really high, he led by example. If his ankle could heal in two weeks, he would be an amazing help in the second half of my Munich adventure.

"Tell me Fabian Fromm's injury history."

"Fabian?" said the head physio, amazed. "He is resilient. Doesn't miss games. Never injured."

Another physio said, "There was a season he played every minute of every game. He's that type."

Hearing macho shit like that from the physios was alarming. This was another room of people I couldn't gel with. "Well of course a player who never gets injured can't have an injury. How stupid of me."

Riley said, "What makes you think he has an issue?"

"Hmm." I checked the time and saw I had a text from Ems. "We can come back to this. Is that the end?" I said.

"That's the end," said the head physio.

I stayed in place.

Emma: How's it going?

Me: It's as bad as Grimsby but the annual turnover isn't six million, it's six HUNDRED million. I kicked out a kid and in a minute I'm going to bin off the captain of Germany.

Emma: No! That's not a progression fantasy. Do someone medium-sized! Kid, medium, captain of Germany.

Me: Good point. I'll sack a goalie. You know what? I'll do it tomorrow. I'm overstimulated. There's too much to look at.

Emma: Are there any hot babes?

Me: Yeah, loads. In Chester. Does the house still reek of fish?

Emma: Course not. On an unrelated note, where is the key to the kitchen window?

Moses said, "Max."

I looked up. The physios had left but the three coaches hadn't moved. "Servus?"

"We've got the opposition analysis next. We'll do it today with the coaches and the analysts. We'll tweak it according to, you know, the head coach's ideas, and then tomorrow we'll go over it again with the players."

Oppo analysis at a megaclub! This was also incredibly exciting. In its own way, something I was anticipating as much as working with elite players. Anticipating but also dreading. What if it showed how out of my depth I was? "Why do I get the feeling that

meeting doesn't take place in this postcode?"

Moses laughed and his vibe made me feel like everything would be all right. "It's not that far. Come, Max!"

The four of us walked down a corridor with Riley whispering to Vlado, while Moses talked up a storm next to me. I was so paranoid by that point I wondered if he was doing it to mask what the others were saying. "Mate," I said, stopping him. I frowned. "Did you just say you played for Manchester United?"

"Yes," said Moses. "In the academy. I didn't make it."

"Listen, my head is a jumble. There's too much to take in but I'd love to talk about that properly. Can you please tell me that again, maybe after the match in Italy?"

"I understand, Max. I am always happy to talk about the lost days of my misspent youth! Ahahaha! I regret to say I broke many a Mancunian heart, and one or two in the midlands."

"You regret that, do you?" I scoffed. "Listen, stop saying interesting things for a few days. That's an order."

He mimed zipping his lips before laughing again. It started in his torso, rumbled up through his ribs, and made its way out of his wobbly head. I couldn't help but laugh, too.

I slapped him on the back, delighted with my new friend.

Yeah, he was definitely the mole.

***

The oppo analysis was yet another supremely detailed session. Slide after slide of stats, heat maps, passing diagrams. Clips that showed Elversberg's build-up play, the tendencies of the players. It wasn't much different to what I'd already seen in my time as a manager. The difference was the scale and the depth. Chester could produce a paddling pool of insight; these guys did the North Sea.

There was an iPad army who could call up stats about anyone and anything.

I sat at the side, not interrupting, trying to stay afloat. I wasn't only trying to process the info but was wondering how useful any of it was. It was so complicated, so abstract.

It got better when they showed a twenty-minute clip of Elversberg's last match. Everyone in the room commented on certain moments and that was a lot of fun. I wondered why we didn't just start here but it clicked that it was good to throw some stats into the mix before watching to help us know what to look for.

There were two moments that stood out to me but when I turned my head, no-one thought much of them. I had to accept the possibility that I was the most amateur person in the room and that I was stupid for looking at such trivial shit.

My overall impression was that the session was good, but too lengthy. In Chester I had asked Spectrum not to overload us with stats but to only come with key insights. That could be as simple as what teams did on corners or where a player was likely to direct a penalty. That might have been too basic for Bastian, and being drenched in stats might have helped him think about the match.

My only real contribution was one question. "Which English team are Elversberg most comparable to in skill level?"

That generated a buzz of excitement from the data guys. They nerded out for a solid four minutes; if I had a beanbag or a hammock I would have had a lovely snooze.

There was a brilliantly bitter dispute (in German, which made it surreal) about whether the answer was Millwall or Watford. If the players were at each others' throats, why should the backroom staff be any different? "Guys," I said, softly, when I couldn't listen to them for another minute. "In Soccer Supremo terms that's the difference between CA 122 and CA 123. One point out of 200. What you're saying is that Elversberg are slightly better than Chester."

That provoked another brief argument - in German - following which one guy said, "Our models show Chester much lower than that!"

I experienced a surge of annoyance that I got control of. "Top tip, lads. Don't accidentally let slip to your new boss that your models are shit." There was a fairly horrified silence and I realised that they were as uncertain about their own skills as I was about mine. "Bayern Munich have about CA 170 in the latest version of the game. Elversberg are about 50 points below. We would compete for the Premier League title, they would get relegated with the lowest ever points total. Is that a fair summary, yes or no?"

One guy stuck his head above the parapet. "Yes."

"Lads, I'm a simple person. Can you analyse Bologna in these terms? What's their Soccer Supremo number and what English team do they compare to? I'm scared of their sudden formation changes. They're unbelievably organic. Players move all over the place. It would be next-level if you could tell me what triggers the changes. When their centre-backs push forward, there are insane counter-attacking opportunities. Can you find me clips of rival teams taking advantage? I want to show that kind of thing to the players. Even better, we'd show them and set up those scenarios in training. I know time's short so forget Elversberg and get stuck into this."

Riley said, "What do you mean by set up those scenarios?"

"Like, Bologna have a genius little midfielder but he's very left-footed. He's very press-resistant but that's a weakness because his teammates don't expect him to lose the ball and they take more positional risks. If we can set up that scenario, one where we swamp him and make him cough up the ball with his mates out of position, we're laughing."

"We're a little short on left-footed geniuses," said Riley.

"I can do it," I said, without thinking. "I can mimic any player." I pulled on my bottom lip. "Don't want to give the lads the chance to hack at my ankles. Do want to beat Bologna. Tricky." I got up; I'd been sitting around for way too long. I'd go to the hotel and get settled, use their gym, see how hungry I was, maybe smash Playdar and see if there were any undiscovered talents in the area. I pointed to the big screen. "See what you can find. Servus, guys."

"Wait," said Riley. "We have to talk about the training plan for the week."

"You're in charge of that," I said. With a crocodile smile, I added, "I trust you!"

***

Tuesday, November 17

The Mandarin Oriental, the five-star hotel Bayern were paying for, turned out to be just as nice as the website boasted. It was so nice I ate, went for a little stroll around the old town, then went back early and gave Briggy the night off so she could go clubbing or whatever.

On the morning's drive to Säbener Strasse she confessed that she had stayed in her hotel room. "I was a little more tired than I realised and it was amazing to channel surf and hear so much German. Home is where the TV is most terrible. What's your plan for today?"

"I'm going to get to know two of the key players by means of dropping them."

"I don't know what that means," she said, as she eased us through traffic. "But I'm guessing your approach will be completely conventional and the players will love it."

"Definitely."

"Should I be the person talking you out of this?" She glanced at me and saw I was smiling. "I suppose I'll read about it in Bild. At least they explain what you're thinking."

***

It wasn't possible to do things in the logical order Emma suggested, so as the lads gathered for the start of training, I asked Fabian Fromm to come with me.

He wasn't the tallest player but he was a serial winner, a top-level competitor who would probably finish his career with more than ten league titles to his name. He had short blonde hair and part of his mystique was that he rarely smiled and didn't even like talking. He did his talking on the pitch.

I took him into the medical block - I might have appeared more alpha if Briggy hadn't been leading the way - and we sat in a treatment room. I did one clever thing - I suggested he take the treatment table, while I sat on the sort of chair non-injured people used and Briggy blended into the far corner.

"Servus," I said, even though I'd already said it outside.

"I am missing training, Max."

One thing about Bayern that I should have liked but didn't - they used the informal 'du' instead of the formal 'sie'. That culture extended to the use of first names and diminutives. Bastian was Basti, I was Max, and the captain of Germany was Fabi. "That's right, Fabi. You are missing training. For how long, is the question. Let's talk about your ankle."

"My ankle is perfect."

"Yeah? I noticed you wincing a few times when you kicked through the ball." His English was top but with gaps in his vocabulary. "Wincing. Like... big stab of pain."

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"There is no pain. I say there is no pain, the medical team are satisfied."

That electrified me. "Oh, so they asked about it?"

He realised he had made a mistake. "The medical team are satisfied with my output."

I leaned back and looked up at the ceiling.

The curse rated Fabian's recent form as 6-7-6-8-6. Those were not the match ratings of one of the best midfielders in the world.

His Condition was rated at 91%. It had been 90% yesterday. The healthy players in the squad were all on 100%.

Oh, and the Injuries tab said he had a sprain that would heal in 1-2 weeks. Of course, if he kept playing and training at the highest intensity, it would never heal, and there was the risk that whatever was wrong would go from being something minor to something major.

"All right, you want to do it like that, I can do it like that. Here's what I see. It's incredibly fucking obvious that your ankle isn't right and for some reason the medical department isn't interested in looking too closely into it. Maybe you think they're doing you a favour but from my point of view they're sabotaging your long-term health. You play every minute of every Bayern game and you have done for years. You play every minute for Germany, including the Euros and the World Cup. You used to have one summer off every two years, but thanks to FIFA, that's gone. Now you have to play every minute of every game in the vitally important Club World Cup, so you don't even get summers off. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to tear your ACL and it's going to be a bad one. A really bad one. You're going to be out for a year. You're 32 so the risk is that you'll never make it back to these levels. You can do what you want, Basti can do what he wants, but this isn't how I live my life. You're not playing on Friday and you're not getting on a plane to Italy. You can take that as the first week in your rehab and, in a perfect world, I'd be able to use you in a couple of weeks. This is the one time in my life I'll be able to say I had the captain of Germany in my team but no-one, and I mean no-one, will ever be able to say I broke a player just to add a line to my CV."

He had barely twitched the entire time I spoke. "What means CV?"

"Do you call it a Resume?"

Briggy said, "Lebenslauf."

He understood that but I restated it anyway. "I'm not here to add lines to my Wikipedia page." I changed to a newsreader-style voice. "In November, 2026, Max Best ignored a blatant injury to star player Fabian Fromm, whose cruciate ligament ruptured soon after and never quite healed. Fromm lived the rest of his life in agonising pain, blaming Max Best and cursing his name. A statue of Best was erected in Fromm's hometown for locals to spit on."

Fabian could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Spitting on a statue? He stuck to what he knew. "I play every match. When you write the team sheet, my name is on it."

I stood up. "This might be hard for you to believe is real but I'm the manager of Bayern Munich. You're one of my players. You're injured. It's my job to look after you and I don't give a shit if you want me to or not. You've got two choices now. You can go to one of the physios and tell them exactly where it hurts and what game it happened in, or you can go home and call Bild and tell them what a shit I am."

Fabi let out a long stream of German.

Briggy translated. "He says if anyone talks to Bild, it will be you because he fucking hates them."

I nodded. "Sure. There are three people in this world who know about this. Let's count the minutes until it 'leaks'." I put air quotes around the word. "Servus, mate."

I left the room and went down to training, mostly to make sure the guys I had kicked out didn't try to sneak back in. I had Briggy on Bild-watch. Nothing came up by the time the goalies finished their session. When it did, I asked Bayern's number one to come and walk with me.

***

"Servus, dude."

"Servus, Max."

Torben Ulrich was the best goalie I'd ever spoken to, I was pretty sure. He was CA 170, agile, very good with his feet. Most teams in the world would be ecstatic to have him - Chester, for example - but he was following in the footsteps of an all-time legend. He had been understudy to a player who had literally redefined how the position was played. Torben was the goalie equivalent of Peter Bauer - living in shadows and no matter how good you were, you always seemed less than.

"Listen, mate," I said, as we strolled around the edge of one of the pitches. "I've been pissing everyone off since I got here."

"And now you're going to piss me off," he said, with a grim expression.

I shrugged. "Depends on your perspective, doesn't it? Look, I was given this job because I bring something to the table, right? But I'm like Pedro Porto. I only know one way to do things - my way. I can't pretend to be Bastian. He was happy to let you play in every single game ever. But I've seen you yesterday and today and I've got to say, the gap between you and Kaspar really worries me." Torben Ulrich was 170/170. Kaspar Benn, his backup, was 140/165.

"The gap?"

"Yeah. I know you don't give a crap about what I do at my tiny little club in England but I know what works and what works is to give your backup goalie some game time so that he can close the gap so that if there's an emergency the manager isn't absolutely fucked. If you break your finger sometime soon I'm deep in the shit, aren't I? I want to give Kaspar a match so that he can get his levels up. He won't get anywhere near yours - you're fucking mint - but even one match could give him a good boost. So let's look at the schedule. Champions League? Forget it. I need you in both of those. The Pokal? I don't understand German culture enough to decide which competitions to bin off. We're going to win that match. Bremen, Stuttgart, Mainz? Nah, I need you for those. So that leaves the two bottom teams, which are the two first league games. Are you with me?"

"Yes."

"The way it works when you're a backup, as I think you can probably remember, is you get a game and you have the potential to improve for a few weeks. What that means is that time is money. What that means is that my preference is for Kaspar to get minutes this Friday. He'll get a boost, he'll train better, and if you're injured or suspended for the later games I won't be quite as fucked."

I stopped and turned towards him. He continued looking ahead for a minute. "I worked very, very hard to be the number one."

"You're number one, that's clear." I smirked while raising an eyebrow. "It's not your job to worry about who's number two. It's mine."

He continued to stare. "You drop me for the first match, the media will destroy me."

"They'll destroy me. Look, every time Kasper hits a dodgy kick or does something stupid, the camera will cut to you on the bench. It'll be like, hey, why didn't this English twat pick one of the world's best goalies? Jesus Christ, these people are so tedious. Fuck me I'm frustrated and it hasn't even happened yet!" I sighed. "Look, mate, with the greatest possible respect this isn't Torben Ulrich FC. I have to act in the best interests of the football club. You don't have to like it but I would ask you to believe it's what I think is best." I let those words bounce around his head for a while. "On a personal note, I'm really excited to have you in my team because with you behind a solid defence I will be able to let the forwards run wild. Heh. If I lose on Friday I'll absolutely one hundred percent get fired. It's a risk and maybe I'll never get the chance to work with you but all I've got in this world are my principles." That didn't sound right. "All I've got in this world are my principles, two Goal of the Season trophies, and a haircut that has its own social media accounts. But let's focus on the principles for now. I need to know my backup goalie can do a job, do you know what I mean? Take five seconds to see the situation from my point of view."

He took a lot longer than five seconds, which is rude if you think about it, but then he turned and offered me a handshake. "You are the trainer. You must decide. I am happy you told me."

Absolutely amazing. My first positive interaction with an elite player. "Top. Listen, it's up to you but there isn't a single person in the world who knows about this. There seems to be a culture of leaking everything to the press but it's not going to help Basti relax, is it? If you could keep it to yourself, that would be mint."

He tilted his head. "No-one knows about this? Not even your girlfriend?"

"No. She doesn't understand how the inside info she posts on Instagram really does help the other team. When I complain she smiles and says, but Max, you're the best! You'll win anyway! I mean, she's right, but..."

Torben laughed. "So you don't tell her the plans? Don't tell her the eleven?"

I looked down at the pristine grass before looking back the way we had come. "I just tell her this one's easy, this one's medium, this one's hard."

It was Torben's turn to look sheepish. "The chat shared some photos of you and her. She's a real-life Goldilocks."

I put on a voice like a large bear. "Who's been standing in MY goal?"

He shook his head as he looked to the sky. "I will play on Tuesday?"

"I fucking hope so, mate, because Bologna might be the most interesting team in Europe right now. Be ready to come off the bench on Friday night but you go ahead and start studying Bologna's recent matches. You won't believe what you see."

***

I had a wander around the pitches, relieved beyond measure that one interaction with a player hadn't immediately turned sour. I refreshed the sports page on Bild every five minutes, wondering which of my latest brainwaves would make the news next, but there was no reporting about Fabian Fromm or Torben Ulrich.

I had come up with what I thought was a pretty decent concept for Friday night's match. Bear in mind that a top five team would expect to beat Millwall or Watford ninety-plus times out of a hundred, so what I was really doing was thinking ahead to the biggest boss battle of my career so far, Tuesday's encounter with Bologna.

To counter Evaristo's tactical flexibility, I needed tactical flexibility. Yes, I could change formations at the speed of thought, but that was pretty brute force. I could mix in some finesse by buying a couple of perks.

The starting point would be to name a flexible team.

There were 25 names in Bayern's squad, according to the curse. Davies was injured, and I had ruled out Ulrich for the first match. Fromm was out until he admitted he was injured, the prick. The second-choice right back was out.

If we started with my favourite formation, the old faithful, never-let-you-down 4-1-4-1, with Kaspar in goal, the Portuguese guy called Rui Santos at left back, and Jost Benn at right midfield, we would be able to switch to 3-4-3 without making any subs. Rui Santos could move to left midfield and Jost would give me defensive solidity on the right. With the same lineup, I would be able to switch to 4-4-2, and even do a half-decent 4-2-4.

I had been excited to field a team with a CA of 172. Taking out some of the stars and replacing them with weaker players who could fill multiple roles, plus changing to the backup goalie would 'only' bring our average CA down to 166. It was still exciting! And surely it had to be enough to get a win against the last-placed team in the Bundesliga?

Course it would, and when we had a comfortable lead, I would try the most insane idea that had popped into my head in three years. Something I would describe to precisely no-one, because they would tell Dieter, Paul, and Karl what I was planning and I would be sacked instantly.

In my imagination, I could hear Paul Braun's voice clear as a bell. "You want to do WHAT? This isn't working, Max. Servus, mate. Servus."

I stayed out of trouble for the rest of the afternoon, used the club's gym, and made Briggy take me to some five-a-side pitches in the evening. I only got 1 XP per minute but it was the best I could do. I suffered through the godawful matches, just like in the old days, until I had added 100 XP.

Briggy wasn't happy to stand around bored to death but as I told her, "This isn't Briggy FC."

XP balance: 9,255

***

Wednesday, November 18

I watched training again, not commenting, not interfering.

I was starting to have a feel for the players beyond their raw numbers. Their profiles had been in my head for three days now. The only details I didn't understand were the personal things. How much did it matter that player X didn't like player Y? I wouldn't tolerate it at Chester but this wasn't Chester. Would their antipathy actually show up on the pitch? The guy who wanted to move to Real Madrid - would it make him play better to attract a bid, or worse because his head was turned?

The highlights for me were the training matches. The ball moved crazily fast and so did the players. If someone took a bad touch, a defender would appear instantly. There was no room for error but there was so much attacking quality that goals were scored on a regular basis. Watching the sessions brought up all the feelings: this was exciting, this was intimidating, these were my new toys.

"Oh!" I gasped, as Adam Adebayo glided through two defenders and chipped a perfect cross that the hundred-million-Euro striker headed into the goal.

"That's five today," said Briggy.

"Five what?"

"Five gasps. I'm texting Peter."

In the outside world there was a media frenzy going on. The German press were discovering my back story and were going to town with it. Half a dozen former Bayern players were being quoted in articles and appearing on YouTube channels saying I was the real deal, a rising star, while half a dozen others were taking the opposite view. One said something provocative that another responded to and so the wheel of content turned.

I noted with interest that the Fabian Fromm and Torben Ulrich stories still hadn't leaked, though Briggy told me that Ulrich had posted a gym session on Instagram along with about twenty hashtags.

Briggy was confused that I wasn't doing anything. "You watch training and then you spend the day avoiding Diane Berger."

"I'm not avoiding Diane Berger," I pouted. "I am simply being where she is not."

"But what's your job? What is your actual job?"

"I pick the team," I laughed. "It's not as easy as it looks. What I'm doing now is also very difficult. I'm projecting the illusion of hyper-competence through means of stillness. The players are trying to impress me, but like a hot girl in a bar I am studiously ignoring them. Thus they dance harder, improve their pickup lines, master close-up magic. You could say that I am practising masterly inactivity."

She scratched her scalp with the fingers of both hands. "Seriously, though, if you don't say or do anything why do we need to be here? It's going to rain tomorrow. I don't want to stand out here in the rain. I don't like rain, Max."

"Soz but I can't do anything else. I have virtually zero capital with this group, right? I'm not the full-time manager so until we win a match I'm just some dude. If we win one, I get, what would you call it? Interference Points. No, that sounds awful. Cut that. Change Points. If I earn Change Points I can spend them changing the drills, mixing up the players, solving some of their problems. But why would I? I don't care about any of this shit, do I? There's a guy who wants to move to Spain, six guys who want to go to the Premier League and get stupid wages. I could not give a flying fuck. So I'll just stand here until Friday."

She groaned. "Fine. Tell me something interesting about the players, then. What have you learned?"

"Erm," I said. There were so many angles. So many problems. "That little guy? He's Rui Santos. He grew up in France but he got called up to the Portuguese national team and when he got there they realised he didn't speak a word of Portuguese. Quite funny. He's good," I said, dubiously. Santos was 144/148. Not really Bayern quality but I didn't want to say things like that out loud too often. "He can play left back or left midfield, which is handy. He hasn't played for Portugal for a while and he's quite down about it." His Morale was 'okay'. "It's fascinating at this end of the scale. My Chester boys are almost all upwardly mobile, you know? Every day is better than yesterday. Their best years are ahead. Here we've got a load of dudes on the wrong side of 30 who are clinging on to what they've got. The captaincy, their place in the national team, their place in the first eleven. There's a lot of unhappiness about money. I don't think it's the money exactly, but the status. They're very driven by status."

"When have you heard that? You've barely spoken to anyone."

"I hide in the bathrooms."

She tutted because it was patently untrue. "There are lots of young players."

"Yes, young," I agreed. "Let's split everyone into three groups. 29 or over. Plenty of those. 22 or younger. Um... there are five of those in the first team squad right now. What about the ones in the middle? Guys approaching their prime? I think it's a sign of a healthy squad if you have a good chunk of your guys in this age group. Maybe I'm wrong about that but when I'm in the Prem I hope I've got more than five."

"Is that all they have?"

"Yeah, the two Asian defenders, Adam Adebayo and his clone, and the striker. The total cost of that group was like two hundred million pounds in transfer fees. They have to buy those players, right? What it means is the young players they bring through the youth system or sign from other clubs aren't staying here until they're 24. Something is broken in their pipeline. There are inefficiencies here, big ones, which give me hope I could compete with them."

Briggy waved at the long building that housed facilities Chester could only dream of. "You think you can compete with this? From your cabins?"

"Every day I come to Säbener Strasse I think that a little more strongly. Know what I mean? I've seen behind the curtain and it's just some dudes in tracksuits. We have dudes in Chester." I watched the latest drill for a while. It was a race, a sort of relay. The first leg started with a guy behind a line who had to dribble and let the ball run ahead of him while he took a traffic cone from one pole and moved it onto another. Then he had to pass the ball through an oversized croquet hoop to the next player. That guy had to flick the ball up and boop it over a small goal, where the final player in the relay headed it into the net.

It was a fun drill but I didn't much like it. To me, it was the kind of drill coaches did when they wanted to be popular. It didn't improve anything, didn't mean anything. Absolutely fine as a change from the norm or to let the lads build up some competitive energy and have some laughs, but there were far too many such drills happening at Säbener Strasse.

I opened my mouth to tell Briggy the coaches and coaching were better at Chester, but thought better of it. That couldn't be right, could it? What was I missing? If I survived Friday night we would be heading to Italy almost straight away. When I got back, I would have a serious look around this place. I'd look under every stone, pop into every office and find out what those people did.

"I think I'm done for the day. Find me some football to watch at lunchtime and you can have the evening off."

XP balance: 9,311

***

Thursday, November 19

Diane Berger: Max, I really need to know the team for tomorrow night.

Me: You'll be the first to know.

Paul Braun: Please inform Frau Berger of the team. She must communicate with the stakeholders.

Me: Just holding out for some injury news.

Paul Braun: There are no injury items to consider.

Me: I've got to do fifty interviews before the match tomorrow, right? I'll tell them the team directly. Save Diane the trouble.

Paul Braun: It is no trouble. It is her job.

Me: Okay, I'll get right on it.

***

Friday, November 20

I fell asleep amazingly well, but woke up suddenly at 5 a.m. feeling absolutely wretched. I didn't feel like myself. I had visions of mad, random slides from the opposition analysis. Words from the player profiles floated around, everywhere I looked.

What had I achieved in my week so far? I had pissed off three players, annoyed the backroom staff at a megaclub, and utterly failed to add enough experience points to buy both perks I felt I needed.

My only actual achievement was that no-one knew the team. It hadn't leaked because I hadn't told anyone. That hadn't stopped the usual suspects from publishing what was sure to be my line-up, but if nothing else at least I would be able to point out that they had lied through their teeth.

I cheered up over an amazing breakfast in super premium surroundings. Cheered all the way up!

I would have liked to stay in the hotel until a couple of hours before kick-off but this was Bayern Munich. In the morning, I was due to talk to the TV company and the world's press. The 'activation' training would follow, where I would need to fend off questions from all sides about which eleven I was going to pick. Then we’d head off to the stadium where I would give pre-match interviews, and at the last possible second I would give the referee the team sheet.

One hour after that, all the waiting would pay off. This was going to be a hell of a day!

***

It was a nightmare.

The presser in the morning was absolutely packed - the world's media seemed to think what was happening was a lot more interesting than it was. At first I batted away the questions but then I remembered my heist and I tried to get a little more interesting. My beef with Gunti was already generating clicks and interest and that would only help my cause. I pivoted to being charming to everyone else and cocky towards him.

I filmed a ten-minute interview with the broadcaster that was pretty pointless. What could we possibly talk about? When they asked stupid questions I got a dreamy look on my face and talked about great Bayern players of the past.

The time might have passed anyway, but not as slowly.

The trouble really started at the morning's light training session. The three coaches and the senior players were furious that I was keeping the line up from them. Fabian Fromm was hanging around and he led a delegation to the triumvirate to try to get me to reveal what I was planning. That would have shown that Fromm wasn't in the squad and he would have been able to get political about it. Would have been able to force a 'him or me' confrontation that I couldn't have won.

When Paul Braun came out onto the pitch he said 'servus', reminding me that hello and goodbye were awfully close together. I realised I wasn't going to be able to avoid the discussion until the last minute. He asked to speak to me privately; we went up into his office. He sat; I stood by the window. The pitches below were emptying. How much simpler the sport would be without players!

"Mate," I said, taking the initiative. "There's a leak. Multiple moles. I'm not saying what my team is because I don't trust the players or the coaches. Bild will get the team at the same time as everyone else and that's how it will be as long as I'm here. I have spoken to a few players already to let them know where they stand."

Paul wasn't impressed. "All the players need to know so they can prepare themselves."

"Don't agree. They'll prepare themselves and then they'll know. Have they got somewhere better to be?"

"This isn't Chester, Max. We have routines and rhythms. Every percentage of advantage we can get is important."

"Agreed," I said. "Which is why I'm not telling the oppo my team five days in advance. Any slight inconvenience to your stakeholders, whoever they are, pales in comparison to the oppo manager knowing the team, the subs, and the entire tactical plan." I took a seat opposite him. "I've done my research and these leaks started in the 90s and became part of the culture. Basti might decide it's better to let the leakers run riot but I don't think it is better. I'll do it my way. Which reminds me. Neither Torben or Fabian are leaky. I'm not working to find the leak. There was one at Grimsby and I found who it was but it didn't help me. The solution is complete radio silence."

"When are you going to tell the players the plan?"

"Twenty minutes before kick off. Alone in the coach's room, without the coaches."

Paul scrunched his face up, which I thought was him being absolutely furious. The noise he emitted was something like a laugh, though. I worried about how much stress the guy was under. Appointing me had been good for Basti's heart but terrible for Paul's ulcers. He looked up and licked his lips. He went to the window and looked out for a minute before returning. "I'm sorry, Max, but I have to insist you tell me the plan. And the line-up, please."

I had no choice. Hello was about to morph into goodbye. I told him the plan and how it connected with Tuesday. "It's not the most exciting eleven but I've been playing with dinky cars and you've given me a Lamborghini. I want to go slow at first. Drive it around the car park before letting loose on the Autobahn."

When I'd finished, his vibe was different in some way I couldn't read. "You think Fabian is carrying an ankle injury?"

"I know he is."

Paul was quiet. "Follow me."

We trudged outside and I wondered what was the point where I'd crossed the line. Insisting on rotating goalies at a club where that didn't happen? Dropping the captain? Refusing to tell anyone the tactics? Maybe the plan had always been to let me blow myself up and sack me before the first match. Maybe that had been Paul's game all along.

The three coaches, Fabian Fromm, and a gaggle of other senior players were waiting for us. When Paul started talking, they had the vibe of a team with a chance to win a penalty shoot-out, arms locked, waiting to run around and celebrate. Paul put his arm around my shoulders. "We didn't hire Max for his personality. We didn't hire Max for his sense of normalcy. We hired him to pick teams and win matches. He has done one of those. Get out of his way while he does the other. Servus, gentlemen."

The rebel team's penalty taker missed. My team had won the shootout! As I watched Paul go back inside the training centre, I tried not to gloat. So many amazing one-liners popped into my head! How about, 'Boys, you got slapped pink. Bet I don't read about that in Bild.' Or I could have gone 'Don't worry, guys. I don't think anything less of you.' You know, with the implication being my opinion of them was already rock bottom. Or I could have clicked my tongue and said, 'If you come at the king you best not miss. You guys are history.'

Instead I said, "See you at the stadium, dudes. Servus means goodbye, yeah? Servus."