.

Football glossary: Goal. The only method of scoring in association football. Goals are scored when the ball passes the goal line between the posts and under the crossbar.

***

After the pleasant discovery that Pascal existed and recognised my genius, I drove to Chester, where the good news kept coming. Spectrum had valiantly declared himself fit to work, so I supervised him while he coached the 12s and 14s. He very deliberately didn't include any match-like scenarios that could provoke conflict between us. I couldn't decide if it was cowardly or smart, so I settled on 'diplomatic'. A fragile peace had broken out.

Then there was my usual evening at Goals. I'd decided that its sheer convenience trumped all other considerations and I planned to keep going until I started seeing the same teams and players again. At that point, I'd have to branch out. As if to prove my luck had turned, I finally found a couple of players. A seventeen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old playing with their older relatives. Both had sub-30 PA, but I got their contact details in case I didn't find any better ones for my January Sales matches.

I stayed until the place closed, and that was healthy in terms of XP. More or less four solid hours of grinding, for 203 XP (plus 22 towards my debt). Then I parked in a side street and walked to the stadium. I let myself in with my special key and badge, which was astonishingly satisfying, and settled into my makeshift bed of two mattresses on top of one another.

It was fine - almost cosy - until I had to go to the toilet. That's when I realised how fucking cold an unheated English football stadium is in a winter's night. Wow. Back in bed, I called Emma so she could laugh at my stupidity. She asked if she could spend the night with me once so that we could bang in the penalty area at 2am.

"Sure," I said, getting frisky at the thought, even though my teeth were chattering and my blood had retreated to my spleen or wherever in a desperate attempt to keep me alive. "But remember that football has its own vocabulary. Banging in defence is called Nobbing your Stiles. I'll be nobbing you for five, possibly six minutes."

"Can I nob you back?"

"We'd have to turn around so you could Crouch my Peter."

"Or you could Phil my Jones."

"Jesus Christ. How do you know about Phil Jones? He hasn't played for four years. Ugh. I'll see you on Saturday. It'll be a bit football heavy. Soz. I'll try to romance it up a bit before and after."

"And during?"

I laughed. "Sure. During the before and during the after. But not during the during."

***

After buying a toothbrush and making myself presentable, I did manager things.

I drove to the training ground to watch some of the first team training session. Partly to show my face, but mostly to keep tracking the daily changes in CA and attributes. So far, it seemed they didn't change much on a weekly basis. Slow inclines or declines through the season - that made sense. The player with the most green was Raffi, which was logical since he had the biggest gap between his CA and PA. Ian Evans already trusted him enough to put him on the bench for every match, and Raffi was responding by working hard in training. Soaking up the instructions and coaching, and progressing quickly. Roar!

I suspected his early exposure to the professional game was really helping him out. He'd had a long time to think about standards and expectations, and now that he had another chance he was really going for it. Someone like Ziggy would progress slower. I planned to go and check on him, and ideally James and maybe even Kisi if I could fit them all into one day in Manchester. Maybe I'd also be able to go to the care home and get Anna addicted to Merge Mansion so she'd stop pestering me about Soccer Supremo. I think I preferred her when she only talked about gurus and meridians. Elderly Polish women shouldn't be fretting about high defensive lines, I was pretty sure about that.

After spending some time in the office helping Inga with random tasks - it only seemed fair since I kept adding to her workload - it was big boy time.

My induction day.

I'd put a twist on the concept. The purpose of my induction day was to introduce the old, established workers to my new way of doing things. To set expectations. To teach them the Max Best Way.

First, I met the coaches. There was Vimsy - the most senior coach. Basically Ian Evans's assistant manager. If Evans was sent off in a match, Vimsy would take over. I liked him and I think he liked me, more or less, but he was also firmly in Camp Evans and had absolutely definitely been one of the guys who called me Maxy No-Thumbs. Which I only mention to show how much it didn't bother me and didn't prey on my mind every time I saw him.

Angles was the goalkeeping coach. I'd have to be careful with him, because he seemed quite insecure. Too many shots had squirmed through his hands over the years. One of them had broken his spirit.

Magnus Evergreen was there. I kept thinking of him as a physio because he spent most of his time doing medical things, but he was actually a coach. Floating above him was his player profile with that bizarre negative PA. And of course his coaching stats were all question marks. I really needed to unlock the real numbers by the end of the season. For all I knew, I had some super coaches here. Maybe Spectrum was the best coach in Europe and I shouldn't be so flippant about firing him.

Spectrum was present, trying to occupy as little space as possible and very much hoping I wouldn't start doing trust exercises and demanding he 'tell us something about him' and all that corporate shit. Actually, it wasn't that. His vibe was more 'how did I end up in the front row of this comedy club please don't interact with me'.

Terry, the coach of the Chester Knights, was there. He was part-time and, sadly, the Knights were the lowest on my list of priorities. I knew Terry was doing well with those kids. When it came to the Knights, I would only need to check with him from time to time and make sure we had succession plans and whatnot.

That was the coaching staff. I hadn't invited the guys available as backups. Volunteers, retired guys. Dudes who could pick a team, do substitutions, yell at referees. It was enough to know that if I fired everyone in the room, the club would get by for a couple of weeks.

I told the five guys my coaching goals for the club - bringing in players to develop, selling them for a profit. Shepherding youth players from their starting age into the first team.

There's no point in retreading old ground - you can probably guess most of what I said. But I told them something I hadn't told many people, and that was what happened on my first morning at Darlington. I explained that I was busting a gut trying to find talented players and any incident that led to those players leaving the club at the earliest opportunity, like I had done, was unforgivable and unacceptable. And that it wasn't just the cavemen who I blamed, but the culture of the club that tolerated their antics. The honesty and emotion of the anecdote sold the point. Vimsy was stunned, Terry was close to tears, and even Spectrum was nodding.

I followed it with a sketch of a kind of Max Best utopia which combined fun and games with serious, methodical progress and winning football.

To finish, I invented a hypothetical player called Pascal Bochum and described him as the greatest challenge they'd ever face. (I hadn't decided if I wanted the real Pascal or not - I'd know better on Saturday.) I made the coaches come up with a plan for how to train this imaginary player. We didn't get very far until Spectrum, correctly, turned the topic to the kinds of formations Bochum could play in. Once they'd decided on a few options, the rest of the coaches felt more comfortable discussing a possible training plan for the player.

While that was happening, I found myself staring hard at Spectrum. He was smart. Analytical. I liked the way he thought. I liked the way he coached. Sacking him would be such a waste of talent. It pissed me off that I'd almost certainly have to do it.

***

After the coaches, I did a similar thing with the medical team. That was Physio Dean, Livia, and Magnus again, though his role here was informal.

I went through some scenarios and let them talk it out. Dean did 9  5% of the talking and 100% of the deciding. Annoying, but not my main concern right now. Something to watch out for, if he kept his job long enough for it to matter.

The scenarios were these:

We've got a big game on Saturday against our relegation rivals. Defeat is not an option. Player A has just recovered from a hamstring injury. The manager really wants to use him. What do you do?

minutes into the match, Player B clashes heads in a duel. You do a concussion check and he passes but he seems wobbly. You know the manager will be desperate for the player to keep playing. The player is saying he's fine. Do you let Player B stay on the pitch?

Player C is fatigued. He has played every minute of every game this season. You're worried about his ACL but C wants to play in a big game against his former club, as does his manager. What is your recommendation?

After consulting with himself, Dean announced his answers. He'd let Player A play. He'd let Player B play. He'd let Player C - get this - play.

"Interesting," I said. I held up fingers one at a time until I was showing three. "So... you're fired, you're fired, you're fired."

The temperature around his chair dropped to zero degrees Kelvin. "Excuse me?" said Dean.

"The manager currently has 19   first team players," I said. "Plus eighteen eighteen-year-olds who'd run a thousand miles for him given half a chance. There is absolutely no scenario where one particular player MUST play one particular game. The manager might want to grind my players to dust, but my medical team isn't going to let him. Those players don't belong to him. They belong to Chester Football Club. This is me explicitly ordering you not to risk aggravating or causing an injury under any circumstances. I want access to all your data and records. I will investigate any long-term injury. If I think you're risking people's long-term health to get three points against Bradford Park Avenue, you'll be lucky to escape with just a sacking. Any questions?"

There weren't, mostly because Dean was frozen solid.

"One more thing. I want the atmosphere in the medical areas to be upbeat and positive at all times. Warm. Remember when I came in with my cracked skull and all that? The mood was fucking weird. It was off-putting. There's a word you don't want to hear when the future of the club depends on attracting new talent. I bring the Cheshire Messi here and he doesn't like the vibe? No. No way you're surviving that. Let me spell it out crystal clear: everyone who walks into this stadium is a potential star. Everyone gets VIP treatment."

This all came out a bit more direct than I'd been planning, but I blame Dean's smug face. He was a bit too full of himself. The guy was incredibly replaceable, and most physios didn't have a Napoleon complex.

"If I could give you one overriding goal... a sort of guiding principle... I think it would go something like: Everyone who works here leaves healthier than they arrive." I nodded. It was flawed and impossible, but was satisfyingly aspirational.

Before I left, I tried to see what kind of scrunchie Livia was wearing. It seemed the same as normal. Not for the first time, I worried about Henri.

***

Spectrum was still in a mood - the meeting had made things worse, if I was any judge - but he took training. He was exasperated by the rando players who'd turned up, but I was delighted.

My hunch that our players would have some talented friends had paid off. Of the five under 16s who'd been brought along, three were good.

One was a PA 35 striker, and we had a PA 23 right back. But the standout was a PA 66 centre-back called Vivek. I watched him struggle through the hour. He was superficially useless - he didn't know what to do or where to be. As the session wound up, I took him and his mate aside and asked what the deal was.

Long story short, it was a stereotypical Indian family. Dad wanted him to be a doctor, mother didn't approve of violent sports. Such a cliche. Hence he'd barely played any footy, but he quite liked it.

I smiled my way through the story. "Right. I'm supposed to go and learn about Indian culture and slowly win your mum's trust? Yeah, no chance. The days when I had that kind of time are ho-verrr." I bit my nail for a minute, then laughed. "Vivek, who's the best at manipulating your mum?"

"My sister."

"Amazing. There's the solution. Outsource the storytelling. Can you bring her to training on Monday?"

"I can try."

"You, mate, are going to play for Chester Football Club. All right? You've got this weekend to daydream about it. Starting Monday you're going to learn football from scratch. It's going to be hard work."

"Play for Chester? Are you sure?"

"Course he's sure," said his mate. "That's Max fucking Best you're talking to. Youngest Director of Football in the world. And he owes me a hundo," he added.

I grinned. "I do."

As I walked off, I heard the mate say, "I told you you was mint."

***

The 18s were less diligent. Only two guys were brought. I suspected it wasn't cool to bring a mate to training, or at least the level of cool was uncertain. So I made a big fuss over the newcomers, including showing them my free kick technique. The young players were always asking me to bust out some moves, so this was a way of overtly rewarding the behaviour I wanted. The reactions to the cannonballs, I have to say, were gratifying.

I expected a bumper turnout on Monday.

Once I'd satisfied myself that I'd done all I could, I drove back to Darlington expecting a quiet night in.

Emma called and invited herself over.

Yeah, quiet night in.

***

My alarm went off. "No," I complained. "Just ten more houuurs."

"What are you doing?" said Emma. She'd woken up long before me, and was lying there in the little spoon position playing Clash of Spams, the Monty Python-themed mobile strategy game.

"Hitting snooze."

"That," she said, "is not the snooze button."

"Oh? Soz."

"Very sincere." She patted my hand. "It's your turn to make breakfast. You need energy for that game you told me about. What are we doing after that?"

It took me a second to remember what day it was. Saturday. The schedule clicked into place. "Remember ages ago I promised to take you to St James' Park? Well, today's the day!"

She wriggled round to face me. "We're going to see Newcastle United? Why didn't you tell me before? I'll let my dad know. We can meet him before the match and he can take us to the right pub."

"Whoa!" I said. "Slow down. Do me one tiny favour, please? Don't tell anyone. You'll see why."

Her face hardened. "Is this about Christmas dinner?"

She thought I didn't want to see her dad because of certain views he had expressed. I grinned. "I promise it isn't. Ems. Babes. Look at me. It's not that. I pwomise."

She cracked. "Oh, well, if you pwomise." She threw her phone onto the duvet. "Fine. I'll trust you. Now feed me."

***

I picked up Pascal at exactly 9  :30. He got in the back and when he saw Emma, forgot to close the door.

"Mate," I suggested.

"Sorry," he said, closing the door and belting up.

"This is Emma. My name," I said, "is Cliff Baps."

"Daps," said Emma.

"Right, right. Cliff Daps. And you are Joe." I'd asked Chester's club secretary to sign up for a match through the Footy Addicts app. I owed him six pounds.

"I am Joe?" said Pascal.

"Very good! Very believable. Let's do a quick role play. Hi, what's your name?"

"I am Joe."

"Wunderbar! All right, Joe. Begin your pre-match rituals. The meditation. The visualisation. Have you got any mantras?"

"Mantras? No. What like?"

"I sometimes look at myself in the mirror and whisper: Remember you are mortal. Remember you are mortal. It helps to keep me humble."

"Joe," said Emma. "Max is joking. It's not that serious. You're going to play football with some amateurs. I complained on your behalf but Max promises me that he's not pulling your pudding and this is something he genuinely believes is good for you even though you're a professional."

"Oh," said Pascal, as he processed this. "Of course I will do whatever it takes."

I shook my head. "This was the fastest way to get a match."

"Max, you run a football club. You could have found all kinds of solutions."

I got a bit spiky. "I chose this way." Emma had been slightly sceptical of my methods with the young players ever since the Broughton match. She trusted that my heart was in the right place but worried I'd put people in embarrassing positions, such as playing with a bunch of random amateurs.

We pulled into the car park without a further word.

***

At quarter to ten, Pascal started a very lengthy, very serious warm up routine that involved lots of stretching. I wondered if I was being fair to him. I thought so. I didn't like being challenged, but Emma had a point. I had a tendency to act first and rationalise it later. Which was exactly what had happened with this hastily-arranged trial. Which is why I'd snapped. I'd fess up later and apologise.

At ten to, almost all the players had turned up. It was a bumper turnout. Loads of subs for both teams. I summoned Pascal.

"All right, Joe, listen up. This is pick-up football." We looked around at the other players. Some were playing short passes to each other. Some were taking amusingly inaccurate shots. Imagine all the body shapes you've ever seen and populate an all-weather football pitch with three of each. Voila. The scene is set. "Hopefully we'll get put on the same team. I asked the organiser and he said it should be poss. Have you ever heard of pick-up football?"

"No."

"It's random people using the same app. A social experiment. They've all turned up hoping for a fun game. General rules - no bickering, complaining, cheating, no hard tackles. Special extra rule just for you - no pressing."

"No pressing?" Running at people trying to force them into making mistakes was his superpower - it was the first thing he'd mentioned in his scouting report.

"Yep."

"Why?"

"Are you going to ask why every time I give you an instruction? Is that my life now?"

"No."

"Muy bien! Tell you what, bonus point if you can work out why for yourself. Right. You interrupted me. Where was I? Er... the rules. Okay. Your mission is to impress me while following the rules and culture of pick-up football. Is the task clear?"

He frowned. "The task is clear."

I smiled. This was actually tremendous fun, as I knew it would be. "Top. Let's go meet our teammates."

***

Our team had 17 players, which meant we'd have to sub on and off fairly often. The subs would happen every five minutes. There was some disappointment that people wouldn't get to play a full ninety, but these were guys with 1 stamina. By the end of the match they'd be glad of the breaks.

I wasn't concerned with those guys - once I'd checked there were no rare talents in the throng, I turned my focus to Pascal. Like me, he would start the match as a sub.

The first five minutes were a chaotic mess of misplaced passes and people trying to work out what to do in their unfamiliar positions. Our captain signalled that Pascal should go on. He made a beeline for the left wing, where I'd told him to go. The rest of the midfield shuffled along to accommodate him.

I watched him for the next ten minutes.

"What's funny?" said Emma.

"It's not funny, really. It's just the humour of contrasts. Everyone's trying to enjoy themselves except Joe. He is lost. He doesn't know how to get involved in the game. I told him he can't press."

"Press. There's that word again. What is it?"

"You see the way the other team is passing the ball around? Normally, Joe would chase after them like a dog chasing a stick."

"Okay. And you told him not to because that's stupid."

"It has to be coordinated to really work. But that's not why I told him not to today."

"So why?" I didn't reply. "Cliff! Tell me."

"No. Because you'll tell Joe. Because you're a big softy."

"So what's funny, exactly? This is his big break, right? And you're being weird. I don't like it when you're like this. Pascal's a straight-shooter, you said. You can't expect him to thrive in a Max Best world. Let him do normal things. Prove himself in a normal way."

"Babes," I said, with a slightly pleading tone. "He wants to join the Max Best world. He wants that." I put my hands on my hips and took in the scene. Football stripped of all its warts. "Can you feel that?" I said, eyes shining. I sucked in the cool morning air and breathed it skywards. Maybe it'd become part of a cloud. "He's a special player."

"Really?"

"I mean special like unique. If I find a striker, someone like Ziggy, I can train him up and sell him on in maybe two years. This kid, he's so unusual, it'll take five years. I've had marriages that lasted less than five years." I waited for the question to come; it didn't. She knew I was joking. "If I'm going to spend five years with someone, I think I need to like them. Do you know what I mean?"

"Of course I do." She sighed and came closer, gave me a hug. "So, do you like him?"

"Based on this, no. He's disconnected. He hates everything about what's happening. It's like he's had the fun cast out of him by a priest. Would you want to be on his team?"

"Yes."

"You're on Team Joe already! You're such a sucker."

"You've never complained before," she said, with that little smirk. She watched as Pascal once again failed to control a pass that was blasted in his general direction. "Is he too small?"

"No, but it makes things harder. That pass wasn't all that bad, really. I could have controlled it. You're asking the rest of the team to be a bit better. More precise passes. What I'd say," I said, carefully, "is that as we rose through the divisions and played with better players and against better players, he'd start to shine. But it'd be tough for him."

"Would be? So you've decided."

"No," I said. "There's an easy way to peek into the future. See how he looks when playing with great players. Legendary players."

Emma didn't get it. "What way is that?"

The match organiser looked down at a little clipboard he was carrying. "Cliff, you're in."

I went to the touchline, looked back at Emma and smirked. "Legendary players, babes. Cliff Daps to the rescue."

***

Pascal had made this no-stakes amateur match look like torture. Without pressing his opponents, he couldn't get the ball - no-one had the technical skills to pass the ball to him, except by accident. When he did get it, he'd make some quirky, unexpected run and try to combine with a teammate. It always ended in failure.

His shoulders slumped, his eyelids drooped, and yet he kept trying. Pascal Bochum never gives up. Pascal Bochum never gives up.

Based on what I'd seen, the patterns of play, where the ball spent the most time, I put myself in the DM slot. That would let me maximise my involvement while still letting me get forward.

My first intervention was a header - I rose like a majestic salmon, yelling 'Cliff Baps!' - and laughed internally as Pascal's eyes widened. The ball had travelled twenty yards right to his foot. Right to his right foot, even. He took a touch away from the defender and saw me coming. He tapped the ball in my direction and sprinted infield. I touched it back into his path and rushed to take up his left-mid slot. He spun back towards me and played a simple pass to my feet, which I instantly tapped back to him. I sprinted down the line and heard the ball being struck. I knew where it would go - in front of me - so I looked around for support.

But our move had been so simple and so bewitching that the amateurs had stopped to admire it. I was on my own. The goalkeeper didn't know what to do. I moved closer and hit a gentle shot towards the goal. But it hit the post!

I jogged back, ignoring Pascal, who had his head in his hands. I kept my face blank.

The other team put a good move together, playing a few passes to move up the pitch. I didn't want to spoil their move with an explosive sprint or tackle, so I waited until one of them played a square ball. I simply stepped forward and claimed it as my own, the way you might take a bill from the postman just as he's about to put it in your letterbox. I took three steps forward, made a show of passing to the right, then swept the ball left to Pascal. He instantly touched it back to me and sprinted - copying my move from a moment before. I chipped the ball over the defender's head, a pass so full of spin it could work for any PR company, and double-timed it all the way around the left of the pitch so that Pascal could play yet another simple pass. This time I was the one who played it forward, and the German dashed onto it. He paused, then cut the ball back, more or less into the path of my latest dart upfield. From the edge of the penalty area I opened my body and side-footed a slow shot past the feeble dive of the keeper. Amazing. But it hit the post!

"Nein!" yelled Pascal. I ignored him some more.

The goalie took a long kick, trying to keep it away from me. Unluckily for him, the ball curved near me anyway. The angles were wrong for a dominant header, so I had to show off a bit. No, really! I did!

While a striker competed with me, I angled my body towards the corner flag behind me to the left, took the ball on my chest, and let it drop towards my knee. From there it was the most natural thing to flick the ball diagonally right and up up up, over the striker's head. Have you ever seen a slow-motion clip of a dog trying to catch a frisbee but he's misjudged the flight? Anyway, there were gasps or whatever. No big deal. I took one step forward and clipped the ball over another defender to Bochum's feet. He played it back to me, along the ground. I passed it back to him, didn't move, and he wall passed it back to me. No frills, clean, nice and simple.

All these angled, line-breaking passes were starting to frazzle our opponents. Two were marking Bochum, and three were closing me down. As Bochum's pass came to me, I opened my body and played a long, left-footed, curving, luxuriant pass out to the right. All our recent play had been on our left so our dude on the other side was suddenly wide open. He was slow, though, so a defender caught up with him. My dude had enough sense to turn around and saw me at full pelt coming to help. He passed and I really let rip with a shot. Not full power, but not far off. It flew true and hit its mark - the crossbar.

Pascal yelled again. He couldn't believe this.

There was one more passage of play before half time. A long shot from the opposition broke down. I moved to the left-back position to get the ball from our goalie. I waited for opponents to come to me and prepared to chip the ball down the line. I went through the motion and two opponents moved that way. But Pascal had left his post and was now more central. I hit a diagonal pass to him and burst forward, slowing to receive his layoff. I turned to the right to pass that way, causing a midfielder to stick his leg out to block my attempt. One cheeky little nutmeg later, I was attacking and half the other team were already behind me. Pascal ran across me, drawing defenders that way. I rolled the ball diagonally the other way and chased it down. Then I slowed and flicked the ball up. It bounced, bounced, no defender could stop it, the goalie was stranded. But it hit the post!

Pascal didn't shout. I grinned.

That was half time.

I trudged towards Emma, deep in thought. The little fucker could play, holy shit. For all his bookworming and attempts to break football down into what Ian Evans would call 'wanky metrics', Pascal lived on instinct. He made great decisions, he was selfless, his feet were fast, his brain was faster. It wasn't quite like playing with Raffi because Raffi was so physical it opened up many more ways to combine. But the clever passes and combinations with Pascal were satisfying and wildly destructive. I started to conjure up fantasy formations. Aff on the left, with Raffi and Sam Topps in the middle. Me on the right. Pascal as a space invader, off-centre, the bridge between the midfield and Henri. Deadly. Coming at you from all angles with power, guile, craft, and imagination. It almost seemed cruel.

I stopped and looked back towards the goalposts. Five years, though. If I was going to lock myself into a five-year relationship with someone, I wanted to know a lot more about them.

I very seriously hoped Pascal had learned something from the first half.