January Window

  I’d even managed to convince myself that the League Cup was worth the candle; if we beat West Ham we’d be in the final and now that the match was less than an hour away the idea of my first trophy as manager of City was looking much more persuasive. Hadn’t the League Cup win cemented José Mourinho’s reputation in his debut season as manager at Chelsea, in 2005?

  Of course none of this meant I was any less inclined to play a stronger side against the Hammers; I was sticking to my young guns, come what may, with only five of our regular first team players in the side: Ayrton Taylor, Kenny Traynor, Ken Okri, Gary Ferguson and Xavier Pepe. Three of our back four – Ken, Gary and Xavier – were first team regulars, of course, and I was trusting that they would steady the rest, none of whom – with the exception of Kenny and Ayrton – was older than twenty-two. I wasn’t and never had been a believer in what Alan Hansen had famously said, that you don’t win anything with kids.

  Our second youngest player, Daryl Hemingway, who we’d bought in the summer from West Ham’s Academy of Football for £2.5 million, was just seventeen. I’d watched Daryl play when he was still at Hainault Road and thought him as promising a midfielder as I’d seen in a long time; he reminded me a lot of Cesc Fabregas. He wanted to show his old club the mistake they had made getting rid of him. Daryl was playing alongside our youngest, the sixteen-year-old Zénobe Schuermans, from Belgium, and Iñárritu, the twenty-year-old Mexican that João Zarco had bought from Estudiantes Tecos, in Guadalajara.

  Iñárritu’s was an interesting story. The young Mexican had fled his country after police rescued him from a kidnapping ring tied to the local Gulf Cartel, which had abducted him. Iñárritu had narrowly escaped death when members of the drug cartel filmed him on their phones being dangled outside the window of his apartment building – the ninety-metre-high Plaza building in Cuauhtémoc – in the hope of making his father, who was a wealthy banker with BBVA Bancomer, pay a ten-million-dollar ransom. The kidnappers had actually dropped him – accidentally – and Iñárritu had only survived because he had fallen into a window-cleaning cart a couple of floors below. The Mexican was keen to play although, following a broken leg against Stoke City who were always good at breaking legs, he was still getting himself back up to first team fitness.

  Playing 4-3-3 requires enormous stamina from your midfielders, but given our three had a combined age of just fifty-three, I figured they could probably run around all night without much of a problem. Even Iñárritu. I had no real worries about him, either. Iñárritu had been fond of Zarco and wept openly when the news of his death was announced; I knew that if anyone was going to play his heart out in memory of the Portuguese it was the young Mexican.

  Of the three up front, Jimmy Ribbans on the wing was returning from a groin strain. There are plenty of players who are right-footed – too many, if I’m honest – but Jimmy was naturally left-footed, which was odd as he was actually right-handed. They say left-footers are a dying breed but they’re often very good technically, and the importance of having a great left-footer in your team cannot be overstated; most teams will try hard to hang onto a good one. Messi is a lefty and so are Ryan Giggs, Patrice Evra and Robin Van Persie. But Jimmy had a good right foot, too, and we usually played him on the right side, which made his sweet left foot even more unpredictable. As a defender I always found natural lefties more difficult to deal with and perhaps the best of these was Giggsy.

  On the left wing was Soltani Boumediene, a twenty-four-year-old from Israel who was almost as good with his left as he was with his right: nicknamed the Comedian, for obvious reasons – he was indeed a bit of a joker – Soltani had previously played for Haifa and had been Israel’s most prominent Arab footballer before joining Portsmouth, from whom City had bought him during the garage sale that followed Pompey’s relegation from the Premier League in 2010.

  Ayrton Taylor was, of course, our centre forward. The newspapers said he’d lost his mojo and had no chance of playing for England again, but although it was five weeks since Ayrton had scored a goal – at least a goal that was not disallowed – I knew that he was keen to show that the sports writers were mistaken. I was confident that his disciplinary problems were behind him. I suspected that these were mostly the result of the relentless ribbing he’d endured at the hands of his team mates following an incident in a London nightclub when two girls had spiked his drink with Rohypnol and, back at his flat, had photographed him on their iPhones in a state of disarray; they subsequently sold their story and the pictures to a Sunday newspaper. It was, they famously remarked, like taking candy from a baby. Footballers are a merciless lot and for several weeks afterwards Ayrton had found his shearling coat pockets filled with packets of Haribos and lollipops. If anyone was going to score a goal for us I felt it was Ayrton Taylor, despite William Hill, Bet 365 and Ladbrokes giving odds of 4-1 against him scoring at all.

  Odds like that were too good to miss, even for me, especially as I still had ten grand of Zarco’s bung left in my bag.

  ‘You want to be careful, boss,’ Maurice said when I told him what I was planning to do with the money. ‘This isn’t a five-pound Yankee. If Sportradar or the FA finds out you’ve got ten bags of sand on with a bookie then they’ll have your guts for fucking garters.’

  He was right – what I was doing was expressly forbidden by the FA’s betting rules but we’d done it before, of course. Everyone in football was betting on games, week in week out, and provided you never did anything as bent as betting against your own team there was, in my opinion, nothing wrong with this. It’s no different to what boys in the City do all the time.

  ‘I take it you want me to use our mate Dostoyevsky,’ he said.

  Dostoyevsky was what we called a professional punter whom we’d met in the nick. For five per cent of a bet he’d put a house to let for anyone, on anything.

  ‘Of course. For the usual commission. Besides, if I win, the money isn’t for me. It’s for the Kenward Trust. An anonymous donation. Seems appropriate somehow, don’t you think? That some old cons should profit from a dodgy bet?’

  Maurice laughed indulgently. ‘That sense of humour of yours, boss. One day it’s going to get you in trouble.’

  ‘I’m an old con myself, Maurice. What do you expect?’

  ‘On the other hand maybe you should mention it in the team talk before the match. They might play a bit harder if they know you’ve got ten k on Ayrton Taylor.’

  ‘This is Zarco’s night, Maurice, not mine. It might be me giving the team talk but it’s him they’re going to be playing for. They won’t be in any doubt about that, I promise you. The minute they walk into that dressing room they’ll know exactly what this match means. Not just to me, but to anyone who supports this football club. Anyone who fucks up tonight is going to have to explain himself to Zarco, not me. You see, he’s going to be there, Maurice. Zarco’s going to be with us all in that dressing room.’

  43

  Zarco might have been dead but I was certain that the Portuguese’s memory could still inspire the City team to victory. And not just his memory. I didn’t blame him, but Maurice probably thought I was crazy, or, even worse, that I was going religious on him – that I was going to tell him that Zarco’s spirit would actually be present in the dressing room. Of course I didn’t believe this any more than he did; however, I did want the players to think something like that, which was why, before any of the players arrived in the dressing room – while Manny Rosenberg was still laying out the kit – I went in there with a hammer and some nails and hung Zarco’s portrait on the wall. I’d brought it with me from Manresa Road especially for this purpose.

  Manny was a tall, thin man with thick, white hair and heavy black glasses; he looked like Michael Caine’s older brother. Sounded like him, too.

  He was about to lay the black armbands on each shirt when I stopped him.

  ‘I’ll give those out tonight if you don’t mind, Manny,’ I said.

  ‘As you wish.’ He handed them over
.

  ‘I want to make this feel personal,’ I explained.

  ‘I take it that picture’s not permanent,’ he said, with one eye on the portrait. ‘I wouldn’t want to leave anything as nice as that in here. You know what these sods are like. Balls getting kicked around. Boots thrown. So-called practical jokes.’

  ‘No, it’s just for tonight.’

  ‘Wise.’

  Manny nodded and gave it a longish appraisal. ‘Who did that, then?’

  ‘An artist called Jonathan Yeo.’

  ‘I know. He’s the Tory politician’s son. I read about him in the paper. That’s a good portrait, that is. Lad’s got talent. Not easy to capture with a brush, a man like João Zarco and what made him tick, but he’s done it very well, so he has. Soft twinkly brown eyes, big broad nose, sulky mouth, with just a hint of a sneer. Face like an African tribal mask, when you think about it. Hard as fucking wood but full of mischief, too. There was always so much going on behind the eyes, you know? Like now. I mean you can look at this painting and tell exactly what’s in Zarco’s mind.’

  ‘What’s in his mind, Manny? Tell me. I’m interested.’

  ‘Easy. He’s thinking if these overpaid cunts don’t win this fucking match tonight out of respect for my memory I’m going to haunt the bastards forever. I’ll sit in their fucking Ferraris and their ridiculous Lamborghinis and scare the cunts off the road and into a ditch. And they’ll deserve it, too.’

  I grinned. ‘Maybe you should do the team talk, Manny.’

  ‘Nah. They’re so gullible they might actually believe me. Besides, you’ll know what to say, Mr Manson, sir.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Of course, I’d thought long and hard about what I was going to tell the players. Every word, every inflection of my voice would be important. I knew they would be looking for something extra from me tonight, a reminder of who and what they were playing for. And as I looked into Zarco’s eyes now I could hear the advice he had once given me about how a manager talks to his players. I was grateful to Manny for reminding me of what Zarco had said:

  ‘I’ve heard a lot of dressing-room team talks in my time, Scott. We both have. Most of them were a joke – David Brent in a tracksuit, a shop-steward on a soapbox, a travesty of what it means to manage players. You know why? Because most managers and coaches are stupid, ignorant men, who’ve had no real education and possess no imagination. Can you picture some of our own players becoming managers? Jesus Christ, they can’t even manage their pet dogs, let alone men. Their brains are in their feet. They haven’t got the words – at least not ones that don’t have four letters. I don’t know why but a lot of guys in football think they’ve got to behave like that marine drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Fuck this, fuck that, kicking lockers, punching the air. Ridiculous. Embarrassing. Futile. When I was a player and I heard this kind of thing I wanted to laugh, every time. This kind of talk is going to motivate me? I don’t think so. You shouting in my ear like I’m some guy in the army is going to make me score a goal? Not a chance. Half the time I think maybe the managers are shouting because they really don’t know what to say. They’re angry because they don’t have a solution to the problems they see on the pitch.

  ‘Sure, sometimes you have to be a bully, but motivating players is something else. To motivate men in sport is like motivating people in any other walk of life. You need two things. First thing is you need to understand people and you can only do that by listening to them; too many people talk but they don’t listen first. Listening is essential. Get to know your players; talk to them quietly and with respect; and treat them like individuals. Like human beings. Second thing you need is to have earned people’s respect. People respect experience, and mostly that means experience of life itself. Now I don’t know many men who have as much experience of life as you, Scott. After all that’s happened to you, I see a man who other men will always listen to. Sure, you played professional football for years, you’ve been where they are, but this is the very least you can expect of a manager. That he’s done the job himself. More important than any of this is that you’ve survived the worst things that life can throw at you and come out the other side. You’re a survivor. This makes you a man that other men will listen to. Even me.

  ‘But when you do speak, what will you say? Actually, speaking to players is simple; you have to say a lot but in as few words as possible, because they have very short attention spans. You have to make every word count. Simplicity is the most sophisticated motivational tool in the world. It takes real intelligence to know what not to say as well as what needs to be said. I’m not talking about doing it in a hundred and forty characters but frankly, men who can say what needs to be said in less than a thousand words are the best men in football.’

  A couple of hours before the game Simon Page arrived with the team from Hangman’s Wood; full of noise and jokes and excited to be playing a match they trooped into the dressing room but gradually fell silent when they saw me already sitting there below the portrait of Zarco. I was wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a black tie and I probably looked like a funeral director. At least I hoped I did.

  The lads changed into their kit and waited quietly for me to say something. For once nobody had his ears full of music or a PS Vita in his hands; I think if I’d even seen one of these stupid handheld game consoles I’d have thrown it into the bin. This was no time for games. But I wasn’t ready to say anything yet. I wanted my words still to be ringing in their ears like the noise of the crowd as they waited in the tunnel. Instead I handed each man his black armband, told him to wear it on his left arm and reminded him that there would be a minute’s silence on the pitch before the match.

  Just before the team went out onto the pitch with Simon to warm up, Viktor arrived in the dressing room with Bekim Develi. They’d just flown in to the nearby London City Airport on Viktor’s private jet. Silvertown Dock was the only ground in the country you could fly to and be in the stadium within twenty minutes. He was dressed for Russian cold in a long-haired beaver coat and Develi was wearing something similar; these two bearded men looked like the Brothers Karamazov.

  The dressing room always stiffened when Viktor appeared; he was essentially a shy man and in spite of his lavish generosity he lacked the common touch. Maybe it was the fact that he was Ukrainian or maybe it was because he was sometimes embarrassed to be quite as rich as he was, but sometimes Viktor expressed himself a little awkwardly.

  ‘I just came down to wish you luck tonight,’ he said, ‘and to introduce you to Bekim Develi, who I think you will all agree is certainly the best midfielder in Europe. Now that the objections to Bekim’s coming to this club have been thrown out of the window, he’s joining us from Dynamo St Petersburg, where as many of you will know he was on loan from Paris Saint-Germain.’

  I wasn’t sure what Viktor meant by this remark. After all he wasn’t to know that I had discovered – more or less – the way in which Zarco had really been killed. Was it possible that he was unconsciously referencing the manner of Zarco’s death? A Freudian slip, or something like it? A tasteless joke, even? Surely not. It wasn’t long before Viktor’s words started to feel like a piece of grit in my shoe.

  ‘At a press conference tomorrow,’ continued Viktor, ‘Bekim will be introduced to the world as our last and, with due respect to Kenny Traynor, our most important January signing. Before then I’m sure you’ll all want to make him feel very welcome at London City, just as I’m sure you’re going to beat West Ham tonight.’

  Viktor certainly saw his gift to me hanging on the wall of the dressing room, but he didn’t mention Zarco at all; perhaps he was leaving that to me. But it surprised me a little, as did the fact that Viktor was wearing Zarco’s lucky scarf, the one I’d looked for in suite 123.

  Bekim Develi shook hands with everyone as they went outside to warm up. He was a tall man – well over six foot – powerfully built and handsome, too, with a square shovel of a red beard and fortunately not ne
arly as fat as had been rumoured; but he smelled strongly of cigarettes and I hoped he wasn’t a smoker. I shook his hand and handed him a black armband.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I’m surprised you have to ask. Didn’t Viktor tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  Just as I was about to say something rude to our new star signing Viktor came over and started speaking to Develi in Russian. Although I don’t know the language, it was quite clear to me that Zarco’s death was news to the footballer, which left me in little doubt that in spite of having shared a private jet from St Petersburg to London, the two men simply hadn’t discussed it. I was astonished by this.

  ‘That’s Zarco’s lucky scarf,’ I said as I handed Viktor a black armband.

  ‘Is it?’ he asked nonchalantly.

  ‘It’s from Savile Rogue,’ I said, pointing out the JGZ written on the logo, just in case anyone nicked it. ‘They make cashmere football scarves.’

  ‘Cashmere, eh? I wondered why I liked it so much.’

  ‘Perhaps, if he’d been wearing it, then he might still be alive,’ I said pointedly. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘He left it in the executive dining room on Saturday,’ said Viktor. ‘I took it with me when I went to look for him. I thought someone ought to wear it tonight. Just in case we need any luck. Do we? Need any luck tonight?’

  ‘Of course we do,’ I said. ‘Because if we lose, luck, or the lack of it, will be the best way of explaining why the other side won.’

  44

  ‘When I came out of prison one of the first things I did was to go on holiday to Nîmes in France – and while I was there I went to see a bullfight in the Roman amphitheatre they have in the city. I loved every bloody minute of it. And not just me. I’ve never seen a stadium so packed, the people so overwhelmed, so blinded with sunny tears and emotion. I told someone here about it – some twat from the BBC – and they were very disapproving, the way people are about bullfighting; they said, “That’s not a sport.” And I said, “You’re right, it’s not a sport, it’s not something you watch or enjoy, like a game of fucking tennis; no, it’s something you feel in every fibre of your body because you know that at any moment, the matador could easily slip or make a mistake and then there would be a black Miura fighting bull putting all its half-ton weight into the stiletto tip of one lethal horn as it bears down on that man’s thigh. Of course that’s not a fucking sport,” I said, “it’s so much more than just a sport. It’s life in the moment, because the future is promised to no one.”