Hand of God

  I looked at Prometheus who was busy changing his pillar-box red Puma evoPOWER boots for a pair that looked like they’d been made from an old tabloid newspaper: Why Always Puma? said the red headline on the side of the boot.

  ‘Are you finished pissing around with those fucking boots?’

  At last I’d caught his eye.

  ‘Everyone in football makes mistakes,’ I said. ‘It’s that kind of game. If nobody made those mistakes the game would be as boring as England’s group for Euro 2016. And there’s nothing more boring than that. What I don’t ever want to see is anyone else in this team thinking that they have the right to apportion blame. Especially when they’re not without fault themselves. Finding fault, chewing ears off, arse-kicking and handing out bollockings – that’s my fucking job. Or Gary’s when the match is in actual progress. And if I ever see it happening in this team again I will bite the guilty party on the arse like a fucking hyena. I like my job and I don’t need anyone’s help to say what needs to be said. Clear?’

  ‘Why you pickin’ on me, man?’ asked Prometheus. ‘I didn’t do nuthin’. All I said to the cap here was that those big, hairy, white Scotsman’s knees of his was goin’ to lose us the game if he wasn’t bloody careful. It was like, a joke, y’know?’

  It was no wonder Fergie threw boots around the dressing room; at that particular moment I wanted to take that ridiculous boot out of his hand and ram it down his throat. Gary was muttering, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ while Bekim was shaking his head, silently. Others just turned away as if they didn’t want to see what was going to happen next.

  I smiled. ‘It was like a joke, yes, except that it wasn’t fucking funny. You don’t make jokes to your colleagues when they just scored an own goal for the simple reason that they might be feeling a little sensitive. It’s never funny when someone scores an own goal, unless it’s the other team that scores it. I shouldn’t have to spell this out for you, sonny – and don’t ever interrupt me again or I’ll tell Gary to shove one of his big, hairy, white Scotsman’s knees into your small, hairless, black Nigerian balls. That is if you’ve got any balls. Understood?’

  Prometheus said nothing which seemed to indicate that he’d got the message. I rocked back on my heels for a moment and glanced around the dressing room. There was no one else I felt deserved any particular criticism; Leicester had ridden their luck, and that was all there was to it.

  ‘It’s a fact,’ I said, ‘that on the first weekend of the football season, newly promoted clubs often do well. They fancy their chances against one of the big boys. And why not, when they finished the season with – what did they get in the Championship – eighty-six points? They deserve to be in the Premiership and if they can’t give us a good game today, when they’re all fit and rested because only a couple of them saw any international duty, they never will. I guarantee if you play this same team at the end of the season you’ll walk all over them. So, don’t be surprised if their tails are up today. But keep your shape, and keep the ball; pass it around. Toblerone football, like we practised in training. Let them lose themselves in the magic triangles. If necessary, make them so fucking impatient to get on and win the game that they come to you. That’s when you open them up.’

  It ought to have worked out that way, too. But it didn’t. We lost 3–1, following a brace of goals from Jamie Vardy and David Nugent who looked as potent a strike partnership in a newly promoted side as I’d seen in a long time. At 4.40 p.m. Leicester went top, on goal difference.

  London City was third from bottom.

  13

  PA (Performance Analysis) software is so useful. I often wonder what managers used to do without a tablet; edited footage of a game’s key events on an iPad are an essential tool for any manager and I like to view these with just two or three players on the coach home because I don’t always want to do it in front of the whole team. In my experience a player who makes a mistake doesn’t need to see it endlessly replayed on a screen in front of his mates to know that he fucked up. I know from experience how humiliating that can be. But this time I sent the pictures from my iPad up to the TV screens on the coach so that everyone could listen in to what I had to say. Sometimes a little humiliation is good for the soul.

  ‘Let me have your attention here,’ I said into the microphone as our coach drove away from the King Power Stadium. ‘Shut the fuck up, okay? What are you talking about? How good they were? How quick that guy Vardy was? How good their goalkeeper was? How like his daddy he is? Fuck you. That isn’t why we lost today.

  ‘Over there, to the west of the King Power Stadium, is the River Soar. And I’m now pointing right for all those of you who don’t seem to know your right from your left, or your arse from your elbow. It used to be said that after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the victorious Tudor side threw the body of King Richard III into that shitty-looking river. Although obviously that can’t be true as they recently found his skeleton underneath a car park in the centre of Leicester. I guess the poor bastard lost his ticket and couldn’t get out. Either way I’m sure a lot of you now know what old Richard must have felt like. I know I do. It’s no fun losing in fucking Leicester city.

  ‘Everything happens for a reason and sometimes the reason isn’t always immediately bleeding obvious because small actions can have large consequences. It’s what scientists call chaos theory. Or what lawyers and philosophers call causality or causation. Historians do this shit too: the cause of the First World War isn’t just that the Archduke Ferdinand got himself shot in Sarajevo; that was only the straw that broke the camel’s back. You see? When you play professional football you get a fucking education. Something some of you are clearly in need of. I’m here to help. That’s right, guys. You want to know stuff: come to me.

  ‘Being a football manager is a bit like what those other guys do; it’s even a bit like being a detective – if what we’re doing here on the coach is looking at the already stinking corpse of that match, in search of an explanation for why we lost. Because it’s never as obvious as you think. Let me show you why we lost. We can forget about the own goal. Like I said before, that was just unlucky. So, instead, we’ll take a closer look at the first goal they scored; James Vardy’s goal. The guy’s always full of running and when he plays he takes a lot of the pressure off Nugent. Gary found Vardy a handful today; so did all of our back four. Vardy’s a striker but to me he looks more natural on the left, where the goal came from. Frankly, he was playing out of position, which is why you found it hard to mark him. It was a good goal and he struck it well, but he scored because none of you thought he had the room to shoot. We know different now. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the longer you stand off a striker like that the more tempo he builds, and the more tempo he builds the more chance he has of scoring. Don’t try to match him turn for turn. You won’t, because he’s thinking faster than your body can move. There’s nothing faster than the speed of thought. So, keep your eye on the ball and commit to the tackle and, if necessary, a trip to an orthopaedic surgeon.

  ‘But if we reverse the action and go and look at what happens a whole minute or two before he scores Kenny rolls the ball out to Gary, who passes to Kwame, who can’t think of anything else to do with it but square it John – only there’s just not enough pace on the ball for that to happen safely, which means John is stretching for it, and his pass to Zénobe isn’t going to get there in a month of Sky Super Sundays. Nugent intercepts the ball and chips to Vardy, who turns one way, and then the other, and then again, with everyone standing off him like he’s got the fucking plague, until the moment when you all think he hasn’t got room for a shot, and you relax a little; only it turns out he has got just enough room, and he scores.

  ‘Looked at again, before Vardy even had a sniff of the ball, what I’m saying is this: Kenny, before you rolled that ball out, did you not see that Prometheus had acres of space in midfield? You’ve got better eyesight than a Comanche Indian; you’re also one of the most accurate kickers
in the game; you could easily have reached him, so why did you roll out? Rolling out like that only works when their striker has got concrete in his boots; this one was like a fucking whippet today. No, wait, let me finish.

  ‘And, Kwame, this isn’t pass the parcel we’re playing here. When you’re making a pass you have to think what the other guy is going to do with the ball when he gets it. That’s fine if you’re trying to create space, but here you don’t know what to do with the space you already have.

  ‘And John, you’re not expecting the ball – that much is obvious – but why not? Every one of you, at every moment of the game, should be expecting the ball. A – E – T – F – B. Always expect the fucking ball. But here, because neither of you is thinking on the ball, you’re just trying to get rid of it, so the pass to poor Zénobe is nothing short of fucking desperate.

  ‘Remember what I said before the match, what I say before every match: creative thinking on the ball means knowing what you’re going to do with it before you even get it. And that means reading the other players around you like they’re chess pieces, seeing the space around them and what they can do with it better than they can. R – T – P and F – T – S. Read the players and find the space.’

  I waited another second before springing my surprise.

  ‘But here’s the real reason why we fucked up and Jamie Vardy scored. And for this we go right back to when Kenny rolls out to Kwame. A second before, he looks up and sees Prometheus in all that space and he’s clearly going to punt that ball up to him. He’s found the player in space. But then he changes his mind. Why? Because with his Comanche Indian eyesight he reads the player and sees that Prometheus has his back to him; when I freeze the action and move the picture you can see it for yourself; there’s Prometheus. See? There’s the back of his head, and it’s pointed at Kenny for how many seconds – let’s see now. Jesus Christ, it’s ten seconds.

  ‘A – E – T – F – B. Always expect the fucking ball. Always expect the fucking ball. But, Prometheus, you’re watching – I don’t know what the fuck you’re watching for ten seconds – but it isn’t the fucking ball. So what, asks Kenny, would be the point of firing the ball up the pitch to him? He’s enjoying the sunshine. Thinking about his pet hyena. That’s why Kenny rolls out. Because he doesn’t have a choice. And that, gentlemen, is the true story of Jamie Vardy’s fucking goal.’

  Prometheus stood up in his seat, arms flapping like an angry penguin. His face was quivering so much that one of the diamond studs in his ears was flashing like a little flashlight.

  ‘It’s my fault that he scored?’ said Prometheus. ‘I was miles away from that geezer when he scored.’

  ‘Maybe you weren’t listening to what I was saying. Maybe there’s something wrong with your ears as well as the muscles in your neck.’

  ‘Why is it always me who fucks up in this team?’

  ‘You tell me, sonny.’

  Prometheus shook his head.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ he bleated.

  ‘You’re right. It’s not fair to the men on this team that you should let them down so badly. I don’t know what else to call it when you’re not even looking to see where the ball is going. A – E – T – F – B. Always expect the fucking ball. But maybe you’re different, kid. Maybe you’re the one person on this planet who has developed eyes in the back of your head. Maybe you can watch the ball while seeming to look the other way. That’s a good trick although I can’t see how that helps your team mates. Because that’s what this game is all about.’

  Prometheus sat down heavily and punched the seat in front of him which, fortunately, was unoccupied.

  It’s a two-hour drive from Leicester City to east London. I waited until we were halfway down the M11, just north of Harlow, before I left my seat and went and sat down beside him. There was a strong smell of aftershave and liniment. On his iPad Air a game of Angry Birds was in progress. He was wearing in-ear Monster Beats and the bright red cables that trailed from them looked like blood streaming out of his skull and down his neck. Certainly the big bass punch seemed loud enough to have made anyone’s ears bleed.

  Seeing me he sighed, plucked the in-ear buds from his lugs like a weary adolescent and waited silently for the one-on-one bollocking he assumed was coming.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘life is full of conflict. That’s what keeps it interesting. People have bust-ups all the time and because football is a high-intensity game, the bust-ups are pretty intense, too. When I was playing at Arsenal I remember our team captain, Patrick Vieira – big guy – taking me by the scruff of the neck and telling me that if I didn’t shape up he was going to sort me out. He meant it, too. He was from Senegal and in Senegal you don’t make that kind of threat unless you mean it. Frankly, he was the best player in his position I ever met. I mean, he had so much talent – much more than I ever had. But I was scared of him, too, so I did sort myself out. It was just what I needed at that time. Someone like him, who was prepared to talk to me like my big brother and point out my defects.

  ‘But the important thing in life is that we learn from our mistakes and get on with each other afterwards. That’s what a team is all about. It’s like a big family, all brothers. Lots of testosterone and lots of fighting. Only we fight and then we forgive each other’s errors and mistakes. Because we’re brothers.

  ‘When we were back in Russia you said your mother never knew your father. You referred to yourself as a black bastard; I’m guessing that you actually believe that. I think that it’s your default position. You think you’re bad. Maybe you think you’ll be a better player if you’re even badder. But I’m here to tell you that this isn’t the best way. Not for a true professional. Now I’ve been lucky. My dad is still around. But Patrick wasn’t so lucky. His parents divorced when he was very young and Patrick never saw the guy again. But Patrick didn’t let it affect him. I tell you, I never met a guy with more discipline than Patrick. Hugely talented, like I said, but even more disciplined.

  ‘You’re one of the most naturally gifted young players I’ve ever seen. And I don’t think you’re nearly as bad as you seem to think you are. You can be a great player at any club you choose to go to. But talent isn’t enough. You’re going to need discipline to make the most of your talent, just like Patrick Vieira. Like we all do, frankly.’

  I nodded. ‘Here endeth the lesson.’

  ‘Thanks, boss.’

  I held out my hand.

  Prometheus grinned and shook it.

  ‘A – E – T – F – B,’ he said.

  I grinned back at him. ‘Always expect the fucking ball. Damn right.’

  14

  On the following Monday morning the team flew to Athens where the temperature was as high as when I’d been there. Tempers were even higher: the teachers were on strike; the courts were on strike; even the local doctors were on strike. Fortunately we’d brought our new quack from London. His name was Chapman O’Hara and he’d stepped up from the ranks of City’s growing medical department to take charge of the team’s health issues. We’d also brought Denis Abayev, the team nutritionist, and our travel manager, Peter Scriven, had hired a special team of local chefs who were all Panathinaikos fans and therefore bitter rivals of Olympiacos, because I certainly hadn’t forgotten what had happened to Hertha at their team hotel in Glyfada. The last thing I wanted close to a Champions League match was a team brought down with food poisoning.

  The hotel Astir Palace occupied a beautiful, pine-dotted peninsula in Vouliagmeni, the heart of the Athenian Riviera, about half an hour south of the city of Athens. Peter Scriven had chosen well: the only access was along a private road with a security barrier and constantly manned guardhouse which meant that any over-enthusiastic Olympiacos fans bent on driving by our hotel with car horns blaring couldn’t get near the place. The hotel itself had seen better days, perhaps. It lacked the class of the Grande Bretagne, not to mention the historic views; food was simple and the bar poorly stocked; and although numerous, t
he service staff were slow and indifferent. The facilities were, however, ideal for accommodating a bunch of grown-up adolescents: an individual bungalow for each player; a large and well-equipped Technogym; a nice swimming pool that overlooked the sea; several private beaches. There was even a five-a-side football pitch. In front of the hotel were a heliport and a small marina where Vik’s helicopter and yacht-tender were already in constant attendance of The Lady Ruslana which was anchored in the sea about a hundred metres offshore, and facing the hotel. It looked like a small pearly-white island.

  Naturally the team were all banned from heading into Athens or Glyfada to explore the city’s night life. And I’d slipped the guys manning the hotel security barrier some cash to make sure that not one female was allowed to come and visit any of the team. But before dinner I took Bekim Develi and Gary Ferguson into Piraeus where a press conference had been arranged in the media centre at the Karaiskakis Stadium. At first most of the difficult questions came from the English press which was not so surprising after the 3–1 defeat at Leicester; then the Greeks chipped in with their own agenda and the situation became a little more complicated when someone asked why Germany seemed to have it in for Greece.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why do the Germans hate us?’

  Choosing to ignore the behaviour of the Greek football fans towards the lads in Hertha FC, I said that I didn’t think it was true that Germans hated Greeks.

  ‘On the contrary,’ I added. ‘I have lots of German friends who love Greece.’

  ‘Then why are the Germans so hell-bent on crucifying us for a loan from the European Central bank? We’re on our knees already. But now they seem to want us to crawl on our bellies for the central bank’s loan package.’