Pre-Season

“Football’s not a matter of life and death. It’s much more important than that.” Bill Shankly.

.

I locked my front door and waved at the surveillance camera across the road. It had been installed when the police suspected a former tenant of selling Class B drugs. I guess they were right, because there were a couple of bullet holes in the brickwork. I lived there now, and I didn't deal, but the camera stayed, as did the holes.

I set off with a click of my earbuds, trying to unpause a podcast: Softly Spoken Soccer. The play button was stuck. It took three tries to get it to obey me. Flea market crap.

Don’t worry if you don’t follow all the jargon that follows. The incomprehensibility is the point.

Podcaster 1: "What Zinchenko offers is more than just a flat 3 or a wing back. He can invert, he's quality in the half-spaces. I'd feel fine with him as a 6, he's so press-resistant, or even as a left 8."

Podcaster 2: "That's right. He has good comps with half the team. He's going to be the technical leader, mark my words."

: "His pass maps show his range and verticality on the ball and his heat maps show his workrate. He's a pressing machine. Last season we had our fingers crossed that Tierney wouldn't get injured. But Zinchenko beats him on almost all metrics."

: "Tierney can't invert."

I clicked pause, shaking my head. I understood most of what they were saying. I'd been kicking balls before I could even toddle and I'd watched thousands of games. But in the last couple of years the level of technical analysis had gone wild. Even normal fans were talking about abstract topics like xG (expected goals), bickering about whether Big Chances Created was really a better 'metric' than assists, and were Whatsapping spidergraphs of a transfer target's 'defensive actions'.

It was all a bit much.

I wouldn't say the data and the analysis was sucking all the fun out of the game, but it was a long way from the stories I grew up on. Arsenal once signed a player called John Jensen because he scored a wondergoal to win Euro 92. He then played 99 times for Arsenal, scoring exactly once. Not quite the free-scoring midfielder they'd seen on TV. Or take the case of Ali Dia - a player no better than you or I - who played half an hour of Premier League football after pranking his way into the Southampton team. These stories wouldn't happen today - the spidergraph would show that John Jensen was no goal threat, and that Ali Dia had literally zero to offer.

So yeah, football seemed to be getting a bit like a giant database where every data point for every player was known.

And don't get me started on tactics. I'd watch a match and then hear people talk about incredible tactical tweaks that the coaches had made. Um, excuse me? When was that? I just couldn't see it! Sometimes I'd pause a match and see that both sets of players were in very precise formations. But I couldn't do anything with that info. I mean, sometimes the worst teams looked exactly the same in the freeze-frames as the best teams.

I didn't get it!

But what was I supposed to do instead? Become a politics fan? Join a book club? There are no book clubs in my part of Manchester. It's what's known locally as 'rough'.

Talking of which...

***

I was passing through this little park. Sometimes I avoided it because it was always full of teen thugs, but recently I'd been trying to make myself go there. Why should I be afraid? I mean, I was afraid, but I wanted to be less afraid. Know what I mean?

And anyway, the teenagers mostly played football or basketball or listened to their shitty music. I felt their eyes on me, sometimes, wondering if it'd be fun to mug me. Or was that just in my imagination?

Maybe not, because today something was different. The kids had put down some jumpers and bags to make goalposts, and they were sort of milling around like there was a game going on. But there wasn't a game going on, and that was bad news for the poor, innocent fish-out-of-water guy who just happened to enter their park at the wrong time.

Strange thing was, the fish out of water wasn't me.

There was a very tall, very thin man pushing a bike. He was wearing a black suit, his socks were too long, he had a real old-fashioned hat on. And a few of the hoodlums were moving towards him. They blocked his path, and one took hold of the handlebars. This was going to get messy.

I caught up with them in a few strides.

"Jack!" I said, as though delighted to see my old friend. "What are you doing here? I thought you were on holiday."

The old man scanned me - his eyes were wrinkled but there was a quick mind in there - and grinned. "Sigmund!" he said. "Ah, well, the voyage was cancelled. How've you been?"

I took the handlebars from a slightly confused thug and started pushing. The thug offered no resistance. "Fine, fine. Remember you told me about that book? Foucault's Pendulum? Absolute piece of shit. Now, be serious. You didn't actually like that. You didn’t actually read it."

We were walking away, and the kids were letting us. Suddenly, a ball fell from a tree, followed by a kid. And the match resumed.

We kept talking shit until we left the park. "I'm going to ASDA," I said. "What about you?"

"That's a supermarket, is it? Yes, I can go there with you." I checked his hands to see if they were shaking. He seemed completely unaffected by the incident. Me? My heart was pumping. Veins full of adrenaline. Perhaps he wasn't as smart as I'd thought. Perhaps he was, in fact, too stupid to realise he had just been in danger. As I thought that, he looked at me with a very amused twinkle in his eye. "Thank you for helping me. That was very... kind of you."

I don't know why, but I felt a chill down my spine. Just for a second, it seemed like the oldster was disappointed. That he'd wanted to get beaten up! The moment passed; the whole notion was absurd. "Yeah, no problem. My real name's Max, by the way." I looked down at the bike I was pushing. It was extremely heavy. Weird shape. It took me a while to work out what was bothering me about it, but it boiled down to one thing - there were no plastic parts.

"Sigmund suits you better."

"Those kids are going to be calling me Sigmund all the time now. It's no way to reward me!"

He shot me another look. A hungry one? "You were much closer with your guess. I'm Nick." We shook hands. "Do you like soccer, Max?"

"Yep."

"I saw the way you changed when that ball appeared. You reminded me of a dog. You just wanted to run and catch it."

I laughed. "I suppose. I do have a weird fantasy every time I walk past a game like that, that they'll shout 'hey, do you want to play?' and I go 'who, me?' and then slip into midfield and sort of get all Barenboim."

"Barenboim is a famous soccer player?"

"No, he's a conductor."

"Ah! I see. Yes, I see. Would you like to be a famous player, then? Or a famous conductor?"

I considered that. The shop was just ahead. About three minutes walk. Here was this old man I'd never see again. Why shouldn't I tell him what was really on my mind? "Not a conductor, no. And I don't need to be famous. Player? Maybe. Probably not. I'm not that good, not even close, and I'm not that competitive. I want to win but not like those elite guys. But you know what I've been thinking recently? These top managers like Guardiola and Klopp. They just see football in a totally different way to me. Like literally - we're watching two different things. It's kind of amazing. I think I'd like to be able to see the game the way they do."

As if responding to the same signal, we stopped walking at the exact same second. He gave me another odd look, then a crooked smile took over his lips. "That's very self-aware of you. Very interesting. I've never heard that before. It's a long time since I heard anything like that." His intensity was starting to creep me out, but we started walking again and I had to balance the bike, so I didn't have time to dwell on it. Nick lowered his head while thinking, then said, "Would you sell your soul to be a top football manager?"

I laughed. This guy was nuts. "No. What? It's just weird that I've got this hobby and spend so much time on it and I'm really not making any progress. I’m falling behind, in fact. But it doesn't matter. It's not important."

He nodded. "I think my use of language has created a little gap between us. I'm not from this country, you know." I wouldn't have guessed. He had zero accent. Maybe he was one of those Polish plumbers who'd come over. "I think what I'm trying to say is..." He took out an absolutely beautiful pocket watch and stared at it. He adjusted the crown, smiled, then dipped it back into his jacket, chain and all. "I have it. Would you wish to see football the way those people see it?"

"Sure," I said.

"Say it in a complete sentence."

More than happy to help a foreigner improve his English. "I wish I could see football like a top manager sees it."

"Good. Now ring the bell three times." The guy was bonkers! But we were mere steps from the entrance now. I reached over and rang the bell. Bring! Bring! Bring! "Superb," he said. "Yes, that's most excellent." He chuckled. It didn't sound right, coming from that face. But his face now was different to when I first met him. Wasn't it? More angular? Fewer liver spots? Whatever it was, he was handsome. Devilishly handsome. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. "You are purchasing some needful things, are you? Would you mind buying some headache tablets?"

He took the bike from me. I frowned. "You're going to wait here? I mean, I won't be that long, but..."

"Take as long as you want. Voila." He handed me a hundred pound note. I didn't think we had those anymore, but on closer inspection it was Scottish. Who knows what they get up to north of the border?

"Oh," I said. I could already imagine the stress of trying to use this at the checkout. But whatever. I took it and went inside.

The paracetamol was less than a pound, so I bought it with my own money, along with some toilet roll, a Pot Noodle, milk, and milk chocolate hobnobs. When I went out to give him his tablets and his weird money, the guy had vanished.

ASDA has a security guard. You know, because of all the thugs. He told me the old man had ridden away as soon as I'd gone inside. Fucking mad old coot!

***

***

I made my way home through the park. I didn't even think about going around, which is what I normally would have done. I didn't want to see those kids for a few days. I wanted them to forget we'd ever interacted.

But I was feeling a bit odd. Not sick or anything, just weird. Like my nerves were too long for my skin. My hands felt swollen and heavy. My throat was dry. Nothing serious. Just weird. Just a bit off.

Fortunately, the game was in full flow so the lads wouldn't have any need to harass me. I kept my head down as I went past. But then a movement 20 yards away caught my eye - a guy doing a dribble past his opponent. I couldn't help but look at it.

I threw my hands in front of my face and pushed myself backwards. I stumbled, and kept stumbling until my foot caught on a tree root. The kids laughed their heads off, but I remained still.

My breaths were coming thick and fast. I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again. When I looked at the tree, everything was normal. There was nothing wrong with my eyes. I turned, gingerly, to my left and saw a bin. All good. But when I lifted my head up and looked at the kids, it was still there.

Numbers.

I looked away - just a normal day in red-brick Manchester. I looked back at the kids.

Numbers.

Take the one nearest to me - still laughing, by the way. He was wearing a Man City kit, which marked him out as a grade A idiot of the highest order. But when I let my eyes settle on him, numbers appeared above his head. They were laid out like a database, though many of the cells were empty.

Steven McGough