He smiled but gently pushed me away; I was very close to him. "A heist?"
I got up and paced around as best as I could. The space was suddenly too small. "Come on," I said, grabbing the bottle and holding the door open. They followed me into the corridor and I locked the door behind us. "My laptop," I explained. I led the way along the walkway, where players were leaning against walls, looking at things on their phones. Guys from both Chester and Crawley stopped slouching when they saw me striding past. "It's not exactly a heist. It's more like a ts...iehuh."
"What?" said Briggy, rushing to keep up with me.
I strode ahead onto the grass. The floodlights were on and a late-evening mist was in the air. The Deva stadium was low, only a single level, except for the majestic construct to my right. Two tiers plus sky boxes, five million pounds in cold hard cash and a million more in grants, the McNally was the crowning glory of phase one of my project. I stopped my pacing earlier than TJ expected; he nearly hit me with the glass. "Don't spill that or the groundsman will turn feral. And I don't want to think there's glass on the pitch. Ugh, that's horrible. What an image."
"What's a tsiehuh?" said Briggy.
"I was trying to say heist backwards. It's an inverse heist, okay? In a normal heist, you break into a bank and take something. You, ah, sail in on a rainbow and take the pot of gold. What I'm going to do is use the rainbow and leave a treasure." I did a happy little leprechaun jig.
TJ and Briggy smiled at each other; it was the only response. TJ said, "I can't begin to imagine what that would look like."
"I'm going to a megaclub, mate. Just for a few weeks. One reason," I said, lowering my voice, "is that I remembered a conversation I had when I was struggling to convince players to come here. You'd come if the manager was Klopp or Guardiola, wouldn't you?"
"I've heard of Klopp," said Briggy.
"Exactly. If I can make myself as famous as those guys, it'll help me to get more players. That's one more reason to do it. Not everything has to be a slow grind. If I can take a couple of well-chosen shortcuts, why not?"
"And the money will be nice," said Briggy.
"No," I said, looking up at the sponsor's boxes in the new McNally. Emma was in there, was she? She loved her new role as the Princess of Chester. The Deva's diva. For now, the sponsors loved their events being gatecrashed. Emma usually brought famous former players with her, or her beautiful friends. "No, there's no money," I murmured. "I'm doing it for minimum wage."
"What?" snapped Briggy. "That makes no sense. You could charge anything."
"I know. I'm charging ten Euros an hour. I won't go easy on the expenses, but I'm not in it for money. This is a passion project." I gripped the bottle and took another swig. "Ha! Briggy, keep that away from me. Passion, Timo. Adventure! Excitement. Briggy, you heard that big stand during the match? It's fucking loud, isn't it? Next I want to do that one." I pointed to the opposite side of the pitch.
"The away end?" said TJ, surprised.
"Yes! Four thousand of our hard core fans to the right. Four thousand die-hard away fans to the left. The players in the middle, being battered by the noise, being elevated by the passion. This is what it's all about." I raised my hands as though I was trying to summon a fireball. "This club is getting on for a hundred and fifty years old but we've got the product of the future. There's no app or VR headset that will ever give you a fraction of the emotion you will get here. This is where you find community and friendship and bone-shattering noise. I can achieve most of what I want right here." I tapped my lips and some of the mad energy left me. "But that's going to take time. Two and a half years to get to the Prem. It could be four years before we're in Europe. Five, six before we're in the big finals pissing on everyone's chips."
TJ said, "Max is talking about going from tier six to the Prem in record time and somehow the idea disappoints him."
"Do we want to piss on chips?" wondered Briggy.
"Max hates the big clubs," said TJ. "They're ruining football. Hoarding all the wealth, all the players. The sport is eating itself but it seems no-one cares. So long as the gravy train is moving, there is no appetite to change."
"So he thinks he's Robin Hood?"
I barely heard. I was looking up at the floodlights. The ones on the new stand were far brighter than the older ones. "I don't know if you've noticed but the world is going to shit. In every sector in every country it's going to shit. I keep waiting for someone to do something about it. No-one does anything. No-one does anything, ever, so I'm going to do one thing. One specific thing in one specific place. It will stop me from ever again getting a job at a big club but it will be so spectacular it will be worth it."