Who else could go? Christian, Dazza, Josh? They were all mint as people, top professionals, and right now we had a pretty sublime mix of talents. We weren't the best team in the league but we were playing as though we were. The spreadsheet contained projections about what the team could look like in a year, or in two years. I had a few players who could come with me all the way to the very top of the sport. I couldn't sell them. I wouldn't.
It was my job to make hard decisions, to keep my football club propelling forward. If I could create a market for Lee Contreras, life would get a whole lot easier.
The timer beeped. I stopped it, locked the broom cupboard behind me, and wandered along a corridor, deep in thought.
***
I emerged from the tunnel to an electric crackle of claps. Fans were on their feet, filming me, holding up match programmes for me to sign, displaying crappy little cardboard messages like 'Max can I have your babies?' I smiled and waved. "Why, thank you very much. Thank you."
"Good luck, Max," said a jolly policeman. I gave him a fist bump.
A weirdo teenager ran to the end of his row and yelled, "You've got to invert the full back!"
"Absolutely," I shouted back. "One question, though. What's a full back?"
He rocked back, frustrated, laughing.
The home team's base was to the right. The Deva stadium, our fortress, was unusual in that there wasn't a single dugout for the manager and his staff, but two separate shelters per team, each with transparent walls and a roof. I didn't feel like sitting so I went to the technical area and pottered around.
How could I make Lee Contreras look so good that other teams would want to buy him?
"Max," said a voice from beside me.
"Argh!" I said, moving away.
"Come on," complained Sandra Lane, my co-manager. She was a brilliant coach who I'd stolen away from Manchester City with the promise of letting her manage games in men's football. She was already the record-holder in multiple categories, and now that I'd promoted her to co-manager she would get even more entries on her Wikipedia page. She was pale, was speaking funny, and had a tissue poking out from her sleeve. "I've got a runny nose is all."
"Sandra, I would have sent you home if I'd seen you like this. Can you step away, please? No, I'm serious."
"Max," she complained.
"Would you please go to the second dugout? That can be the quarantine zone for now. Did you know the word quarantine comes from the Italian word for forty-five minutes because that's how long a half is?"
"That's not what it means."
"You need soup," I mused. "What soup are you in the mood for?"
"I don't want to talk about soup. I want to talk about our formation."
"Yeah, go ahead. There are loads of tactics podcasts out there." She didn't laugh; I did. "Oh, you meant with me? Save your sore throat. Crawley are the weakest team in the league so there are no changes needed. Steady as she goes! If anything mad happens, I'm in the groove. I'm feeling all-powerful. If this was a movie it'd be a nice, gentle introductory scene where the superhero swats away some bad guys to demonstrate his powers. Oh my God, you know what it is? I'm Professor X from the X-Men. I'm going to stand here and be a floating megabrain and control everything that's happening on the pitch with my MIND! You can be thingy, ah, Magneto. You spend the first forty-five minutes of the story in a perspex prison."
Sandra sighed. "What are Magneto's powers?"
"Er... quips. Withering one-liners."
"Pass."
"He spends loads of time with a dangerous redhead."
"Okay, I'll be Magneto." She dabbed her nose. "Goddammit, I hate being sick. You should have an assistant, though. Colin's on the pitch. I'll call Peter, will I?"
Peter Bauer was a player-coach who wasn't quite ready for the rough and tumble of ninety minutes of action so I was easing him into life in England. A friend of his was over from Munich and they were watching from a sky box. He would come down and help if needed. "Nah, it's fine. Anyway, I don't want my coaches to copy what I'm going to do today. It's not the sort of lesson Peter should be learning."
"What are you planning?"
"Um... Nothing outrageous. Oh, let's play a game! You'll try to work out what tactics I'm doing and why!" I jogged to the second dugout and told the people there to scarper. One was Physio Dean, currently the club's most important medical professional. "Dean, Sandra's poorly. This dugout's her plague ship. I need 50 ccs of the most healing soup, stat. What's good for colds? Oxtail? Leek and potato?"
"Ginger and carrot," suggested Livia, another physio.
I clicked my fingers. "Amazing. You know what? I'll have some of that, too. Sounds nice."
"I'm on it," said Livia, and she rushed away.
"She does look ill," said Dean.
"Thanks," said Sandra, sourly.
"Whatever it is, it escalated quickly. We should send her home, Max."
I pretended like I couldn't believe my ears. "This is a crucial match for our season! I need her!"
Sandra shook her head. "He wants me to talk to the media after the match so he doesn't have to."
"Fucking hell, Max," said Dean.
"Don't get all high and mighty," I said. "Use your doctor voice and order her to go home. Go on, see what happens."
Dean gave my co-manager a nervous look. While Sandra was utterly kind and good, like most people in the industry she switched when the first whistle blew. She was a fierce, fierce competitor with a strong will to win. "Sandra Lane," said Dean, sternly. "Go home."
"Yes, okay," she said, as she sat in her dugout.
Dean licked his lips. "Good. Um... when will you go?"
She checked her watch. "In about an hour."
Dean's voice wavered. "Okay, but..."
"You're blocking my view of the pitch, Dean. Would you step aside? Thank you so much."