13.

Tuesday, 8 December

Budapest, Hungary. A dark evening, ice cold, perfect conditions for a heist at an embassy. On a big European night, this stadium was a sort of embassy; all the big shots turned up well-dressed and keen to obey. Hungary's best team hosting the German rekordmeister? Yeah, the big shots were here. Greasy politicians, rich businessmen, reps from multinationals, and the top guys from UEFA, ever keen for an invite to a superyacht. Democracy? Never really cared for it. Human rights? Mate, how big's your yacht?

I didn't concern myself with any of that. Corruption? Mafia states? Shady backroom deals? Who cared? I would do what a large chunk of the population kept screaming at me to do; I would stick to the football.

"All right," I said, "shut the fuck up."

The dressing room was packed. The eleven starters, twelve subs, Hoggy, Diane Berger, physios galore, and after their stunt in the vampire interview, zero analysts. Oh, and a crucial member of the team - Briggy.

"My favourite movie is Maxxion Impossible." I got virtually no response. "Okay, fine. Cut that. My favourite movie is Mission: Impossible. It's about a diverse team of highly-trained experts who go to a government-controlled building in central Europe with the goal of making the world a better place. One of the main characters is an intelligent English person - with flexible morals - called Max. The heroes are led by a handsome star who provokes the same reaction in all who see him: oh, look how young he is."

"Boss," said Adam Adebayo. "I know where this is going. You're going to do a rug pull and reveal that I'm the handsome star."

"Ah, no," I said. "I'm Ethan Hunt. I'm the mastermind and I do all my own stunts. Also, there's at least one scene in all my movies where I sprint really hard and it looks cool. You barely top 5 miles per hour, mate."

He smiled. His languid style made him look slow, but he wasn't. "So who am I, then?"

"You're the hot French girl," I said.

"Who am I?" said Didier Cartier.

"You're also the hot French girl. I'm recasting you at half-time." I wobbled my head. "Actually, that's not true. It just sounded cool. Hey," I said, brightening. "Saying cool things that don't necessarily make sense fits the theme. Well done, Max. Okay, as it happens, Adam and Didier are both on the bench."

"Who am I?" said Dumitru Demetrescu, the Romanian defender.

I laughed. "Fuck me, we're past that part!" I pinched my nose in mock exasperation, but inspiration struck. "You're one of the guys from the original TV series."

"Because I am old?"

"Yes."

Razak Olympio, the fast defender, said, "Am I in this movie?"

I pointed to the tactics board. "I'm about to tell you. I'm about to tell everyone. Can I get on with it?"

Briggy chimed in. "You're the one slowing things down with your tortured analogies."

"There's no torture in the Mission Impossible movies," I said. "Um... Apart from the third one. And the fifth. Does filming in Birmingham city centre count as torture?" I adjusted the tactics board and nudged the magnets into a straighter line. "Okay, the ones of you who are starting know that you're starting." I noted that Diane Berger was surprised. "That's right, Diane. I do accept that it's a little bit easier to prepare if you know in advance, and this is such a massive game I wanted to get that last one percent out of everyone. I told the five subs who are most likely to get on the pitch who they are, too, so Razak, soz, but with the maximum possible respect I hope you don't get your cameo because that means something went wrong." He looked slightly sad - he wasn't the only one - but he inhaled and nodded. I continued, "The good news is that I was able to inform sixteen players about their roles with nothing getting out onto social media. Three weeks into my reign, there are no leaks. Danny, say this."

I handed him a flash card. He looked around at his mates before reading out what I had written. "You mean to say this whole operation... was a mole hunt?"

"Fuck me," I said, taking the card from him. "And you ask why I don't let you take free kicks?" I leaned closer. "You have to work on your delivery."

"Ooh!" cried half the room. Danny shook his head while the others teased him.

"Good," I said, as I went to a little table and pretended to scratch out some notes on a to-do list. "Establish theme, done. Tease world-class player into heightened state of readiness, done. Oh!" I said, standing and holding up a second piece of card. "There's one more line available. Danny, want to go again?"

He shook his head while his nearest mates nudged him. "I'll do it," said Razak. "If it's the only way to get some screen time."

"Love the attitude," I said. "Here."

He read the text and tried to hand it back. "Nah," he said. "I'm not saying that."

I stepped away from him and raised my voice. "Everyone heard him volunteer, right? That's a line from the franchise. A classic line!"

"Come on, Raz!"

"Come on, lad!"

After a barrage of banter, teasing, and encouragement, Razak slumped, but came up. He inhaled, laughed, and took a couple of seconds to set himself. "Next time I get to seduce the rich guy."

It took a while for the laughter to die down. I noted that even Diane Berger was amused.

"Ah," I said. "That's quality, that. One line, nail it, kill the room, mic drop, walk off." I clapped my hands. "All right, onto the scene where we describe the mission. First, we talk about the bad guys."

"First," said Zoran, "you give us choice of to do the mission or not." He seemed pleased with himself and turned to his neighbour. "I have seen this."

"You accepted this mission when you signed your contract, mate. Ten million Euros a week, isn't it? I heard that every Friday there's a little spike in inflation in Germany and they traced it back to you."

Dumitru said, "We are not paid weekly and it would make more sense to discuss inflation in terms of the wider Eurozone."

I held my hands up. "I am no longer allowing interruptions. Briggy, punch the next person who speaks." She smiled; I realised my mistake. "Unless it's me."

I took some slow steps around the area.

"Pestis FC, Hungarian champions, getting better year-on-year. Hungary's glorious leader loves football and wants his nation to get back to the top of the tree, so if you're a politician who wants to get ahead, you chuck some money into your local team. Fuckface himself is funnelling public funds into our opponents today. That's right - we're playing a nation state!" I got very little response. So far in my career, I had only come up against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Bayern regularly competed against gulf state sportswashing projects: Newcastle, Paris Saint Germain, and Man City. "I've just realised that you guys are way more used to this than I am." I shrugged. "Pestis have some decent players and they're well-organised and have good team work. They're normally about the level of Werder Bremen." By my calculations, the home team's average CA would usually have been around 125, but the manager had mixed things up for our visit.

"Their head coach is Lee Kennedy, Ireland's top goalscorer. You know the guy. Always looks like he's constipated. Puts the toil in toilet. I'll tell you now that I'm going to sneak out to do my media things and sneak back in here until the match has actually kicked off because I consider this hostile territory and don't want anyone trying to shake my hand. Don't want my grandkids finding photos of me and saying granddad your hair looks as good today as it did then but why are you friends with one of history's greatest monsters? I don't want to make a big deal out of snubbing handshakes, right, because that'll be a distraction from the football, which is all that matters today. But yeah, Kennedy in particular is an amoral prick who will take any job no matter how disgusting the guy signing the paycheques is. I very much despise him. Fortunately, he's a shit manager." I took a swig of water. "Unfortunately, he's got a tactics guy." Kennedy's assistant had Tactics 14. Not amazing, but enough to organise the team and respond to my changes.

"Kennedy and his dude like 4-3-3 and their attacking structures are amazingly one-note." I popped the lid off a marker and drew a couple of circles and lines on the defensive portion of our tactics board. "Their plan is to get the ball wide, cross to the far post, and the winger on the opposite side finishes. Simple. Effective. The winger on one side is tall, the other one is fast."

I put the lid back on and tapped the marker against my lips.

"Okay, here I need to outline a key part of today's mission. It's not just about winning. We need to win the right way. Part of that means we don't let them get a goal. Not one goal, not one moment of joy or hope. Okay? The main aim for the first half is to make sure we shut down this side-to-side attack. Our formation will make it hard for them to get these moves going, and we'll be able to score, too."

I banged the marker against my lips some more. I had an idea about how the ideal first half would go, but I wasn't sure about saying it to the players. We had a good thing going but we didn't know each other very well. Adam Adebayo was really interested, though, and he always seemed to respond well when I opened up.

"Fuck it, I'll tell you what I'm really thinking for once. If you get chances, take your chances. We won't have 15 shots this half so go ahead and be lethal because if you're in a position to shoot, most likely you'll be coming off at half-time or early in the second. But in my dream scenario, we enjoy the atmosphere for a while. It's noisy here, right? As players, we want this. We want these experiences. And I quite like the idea that they spend twenty minutes chanting, singing, hyping themselves up. You know," I added, "before we start fucking dismantling them."

Adam said, "In your interview you said we'd be going big. How big?"

I shook my head. "That's for half time." I pointed down. "This is the first half. No goals against. Fire at will but if we don't score in the first twenty or thirty minutes I'm absolutely chill with that. Dream scenario, we don't score more than three. I don't want people leaving the stadium too early. I don't want people in Germany turning the second half on and thinking oh it's over." I got quiet. "I want them to watch."

Adam threw his hands to his head. "Oh my God, what are you planning? The suspense is killing me!"

A buzz of chat started up. The energy threatened to go wild.

"Second half is just football, mate. Just football. Guys, quiet down. Listen. Focus. They will come at us hard and if they get a couple of quick goals we are fucked. Get your heads back in the room." I waited for eyes to lock back onto me. "Hoggy's going to be watching the warm ups like a hawk. Till, too. They will know if you're not up for this. This is the Champions League, guys. This is serious. We will win if you follow the plan but the plan now is the first half, right? I don't want to hear another peep about the second half."

I paused, checking the vibe.

"Okay, top. That's it. That's the mood right there. Fun with a focus.

"So we're going to start with a Max Best classic. 4-1-4-1. Keeping our wide players in conservative positions will shut down the oppo's best move. We'll attack up the middle, which will force them to stay somewhat narrow. That will slow down their counters, in most cases, because they will want to move the ball wide but they'll have to get their players into position first. We should be able to get back into our shape before there's too much danger.

"They've done their homework and they know I like to throw my big guns on at the end. In turn, they have kept some of their better players on the bench. It's sort of clever but not really. They're betting that their reserves will be able to defend against Till, Beat, and the goal machine that is Jost Benn. I mean, good luck with that, but we've got Claude Sonko starting." I laughed. "In a footballing sense, I should feel sorry for them. I don't."

I started sliding magnets into a 4-1-4-1 formation.

"Okay, so the lineups. Torben in goal. Captain." I would trigger the Triple Captain perk, giving us three times his Influence. It was only 13, which wasn't amazing, but he was solid, stable, and professional. For what I needed today, that was better than a wild or moody guy with a higher number.

"Defence is Willi, Pak Young, Edgar, Dumi.

"DM is Petar.

"Left mid is Cheb. Then it's Beat, Jost, and Claude.

"Striker's Till."

That eleven had an average CA of 150.2. We would beat a CA 125 team five or six times out of ten. We wouldn't stay at 150, though. Heh.

I touched the magnets on the left. "Okay, this side is Willi and Cheb. First half, guys, it's about that clean sheet. No goals against, yes? Willi, make sure your oppo doesn't sneak up on you when the ball's on the other flank. Defend your post, mate! Torben, Cheb, and Pak - talk to Willi. You're allowed to scream at him if he even blinks at the wrong time. Willi, are you getting this?"

He looked suitably serious. "Yes, Max."

"Cheb, if your mate's in the shit..."

Cheb nodded. "Get him out of it."

"Bingo. On the right," I said, "Dumi and Claude. First ten, fifteen minutes, Claude, think defensive. You know we're going to fuck them up later, right, and you'd rather be having that kinda fun, but your team needs you. You with me?"

"Yes, Max. I can defend."

I smiled. "You might not need to do loads of that, tbh, but when you do, you do. Dumi, you've got the tall winger. I don't see him winning many headers against you but don't take chances. Use your experience to stop him even making those far post runs. Accidental collisions and all that. Tell Claude what you need from him. Claude, Dumi's your boss for twenty minutes, all right?"

The German winger winced. "If I say on Instagram that I want to move to Real Madrid, can I get out of it?" That got some laughs, but after lapping up the acclaim, Claude's expression hardened. "Dumi's in charge." He reached out to fist bump the Romanian.

"You work together, nothing's coming through. When we're all in the game, all set, we start getting more adventurous. Dumi releases Claude to get forward. Claude's gonna fuck some shit up today, I can feel it."

I touched the magnets of the centre backs and DM.

"Pak Young and Edgar, you should have a pretty simple time of it. Concentration, talking to each other. Look for danger on the wing, like if Claude has gone into the final third maybe we step four metres to the right, squash together on that side of the pitch. Petar can drop into the centre back slot if, for example, Edgar needs to shift close to Dumi.

"Petar, in general you're going to be mopping up headers, doing some interceptions, the usual DM stuff."

I touched the central midfielders. "Jost and Beat, play smart. Don't fly into tackles and get the crowd pumped up. Be surgical. Disrupt passing lanes, be a nuisance, force them backwards, and when we get the ball you're always an option. Make triangles, move into space, and you're both allowed to get into the penalty box. You'll support Till, and when Claude goes that will give us four in our attacks, won't it?"

I didn't expect Jost and Beat to cause too much havoc, but midfielders arriving late into the box were always a handful, and two of them were, ah, two handfuls.

I admired my plan. "Yeah, this is cool. Okay, as always, I've built in some flexibility. From this base, Claude could go up top, Jost would slip right, bosh, solid 4-4-2. Or Cheb could go to right back in a 5-3-2. Or Edgar can go into midfield and we do three at the back. We could even tuck Willi into the left side of central defence and ohmygodohmygod," I moved the magnets around and beamed. "3-4-2-1! With Beat and Claude behind Till!" I'm not sure what I was expecting. A standing ovation, maybe. I didn't get one. "Okay, you guys think that's pretty normal. I thought it was cool."

"I think it's cool," said Briggy, loyally.

I sighed. I had finally saved up enough XP to buy a new formation. 3-4-2-1 was locked and loaded!

XP balance: 422

It was mad chance that I had 422 XP left, because the final default formation in the perk shop was 4-2-2-2, which would set me back 5,000 XP. Once I had that one, I would be able to expand my powers and move towards a post-formation world.

"Subs will be Kumba, Adam, Danny, Didier, and Zoran, unless we get an injury in a position one of those five can't cover. Hoggy, please keep the other subs somewhat warm, just in case, and to muddy the waters for the oppo tactics guy. Unused subs, concentrate as if you might be needed because you might be! And anything interesting you note, tell me. Be involved, but don't get involved with the oppo. There is zero reason for us to give them energy and motivation. If they try to create drama, remember who your manager is." As I said that, I realised it could be ambiguous. "Er, me. I mean me. I'm the best at drama. Let me deal with it."

I went back to the table and my imaginary to-do list. I crossed things out as I spoke. "Bitch about Fuckface, done. Bitch about rival manager, done. Stress importance of not conceding a goal, done. Pretend to delegate responsibility for decision-making to experienced player, done. Go overboard on the tactical flexibility so that everyone knows how fucking smart I am, done. Warn everyone not to get involved with petty bullshit." I stood straight and let the pen drop. "Done. Well, someone in this room is world class, I tell you whut."

Hoggy, my assistant manager, said, "Max, one question about the theme, if you permit?"

I touched my ear as if waiting for clearance. "Green light. You're good to go."

He gestured vaguely. "The opposition are as strong as Werder Bremen, who we beat six-nil, and they are even more predictable than our Bundesliga rivals. We have five incredible players to come on. Why is this Mission: Impossible?"

I smiled. "No spoilers for half-time, Hoggy. All right, captain. Out you go."

Torben clapped and yelled in German and the guys responded and made their way out onto the pitch. One of the subs didn't follow. Stefan Clown was in a cheap black hoodie and the same thin black tracksuit bottoms as me. "Max," he said. "To clarify, do you want me to warm up or not?"

I turned my full focus to him. He was an unlikely new addition to the heist team, but his role was so simple even he could do it. "No, bro. Have you got... the items?"

He took out a black medical mask and put it on, followed by a pair of sunglasses.

I did the same and put my arm around his shoulder. I checked us in a mirror; virtually identical.

"Briggy," I said, voice muffled slightly by the mask. "Can you tell us apart?"

"Yes," she said. She pointed at me. "Even in those clothes, you're much more buff."

I slapped Stefan on the shoulder. "I told you to hit the weights!"

He rubbed the spot and shook his head. "This had better be worth it."

"Next time I'm in charge of a Bayern Munich match," I said, solemnly. "You'll get your debut. I'll build your reputation."

Stefan inhaled and let out his breath. "I'm gonna miss being disreputable."

I rested my hand on his shoulder and said, "Don't worry. I'll always think of you that way."

***

Decoy Max went out to the side of the pitch, got some eyes on him, and turned right back round.

Next time, both of us went out. He turned left, I turned right.

I did my TV interview by the side of the pitch, refused to take the sunglasses or mask off, said nothing of interest, then darted back to the dressing room where I stayed and listened as the atmosphere got bigger and bigger. Someone had a laptop open to a YouTube channel, where Hans Reiz was streaming live. It was all in rapid-fire German, with acronyms and slang; I couldn't quite follow what was going on.

Diane Berger came back to the dressing room to get something. When she saw me twirling the mask around, she said, "What was the point of that?"

"It's Mission: Impossible. A medical face mask is the closest I could get to a real IMF face mask. You don't know IMF? Impossible Mission Force. They can scan your face and print it out so someone can WEAR it! God, I'd love to go to some fascist event dressed as one of their heroes and say, guys, I don't actually believe anything I tell you. Okay, cool, bye! Then in the green room I'd rip my mask off and remove my voice changer. So cool. I'm doing a version of that. I've been out there setting up Chekhov's weird mask and at full-time, Stefan's going to go out and do the interviews dressed like me, but he'll rip off his sunglasses and go, ha!"

"No he won't."

"Okay, fine. You can be the one to tell him. He's been working on a Manchester accent for days."

Diane wasn't sure how serious I was being. Not very, she guessed. "I know what you're planning."

"What am I planning?"

"You're going to ask the players to wear rainbow armbands as a protest against the homophobic and discriminatory laws in this country."

"Nope. The last initiative came from the players, if you remember."

"Aha!" she said. "So you have asked a player to suggest it."

"Nope." I went back to staring at the laptop feed. Hans was wandering in and out of shot, sometimes responding to a comment, but mostly he was on his phone while the people in the chat rooms talked to each other. "What is this?"

Diane looked over. "Hans Reiz is doing a live watchalong on YouTube and Twitch. He has invited some celebrity friends and they are going to - what's the word? - roast you. He thinks you are pro-dictator. I know better. And I know why you had to mislead him. It was to make sure you got to this point. If you had said anything against the state, you might have been removed from your post or asked to sit this one out. By pretending to be keen to meet the leader, you made sure you would get to carry out your stunt." I gave her a sharp look. "Yes," she said. "Stunt. I was listening closely. Not many were. You will ask the players to wear rainbow armbands at half time."

I laughed. "What's the right's obsession with rainbows? They're gonna happen no matter how hard you ban gays." A bigger laugh erupted from my soul. "These fucks are trying to make rainbows illegal." I looked up at the ceiling, unable to believe the timeline I lived in. "Relax, Diane. At half time, everyone will leave this room exactly as they entered it."

She paced forward, clicking her fingers. "That's a trap. A verbal trap! You'll give them the armbands before they come into the room, or after."

I once more turned away from the screen to look at her, this time with a large amount of pity. Quietly, persuasively, I said, "I don’t want the players to wear armbands. Admitting that rainbows exist could cause the end of this country and many others like it, Diane. I would never force the players to comment on the interplay between sunlight and water droplets. My job is to arrange the players into a pattern that passes the eye test. By the way, I've been working on a mnemonic to help me remember the player names. Want to hear it? It goes Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. You've never heard it?"

"No," she said, warily.

"How about Run Over Your Granny Because It's Violent? What you do is you take the first letter of every word. R is for Ritter. Beat Ritter. You with me? O is for Olympio. Razak Olympio. Y is for Young. G is for Gourlay, or Gutić, depending on which formation we're doing. Where am I up to? Richard of York..."

"That's enough," said Diane. "So at no point during the match will the players wear anything colourful, anything political? T-shirts? Embroidered boots?"

I sighed. "I don't know what the players are planning. If they are wearing t-shirts with slogans on, I'll be disappointed."

"Why?"

"Because you can never read what they say. The fonts are always shit and the broadcasters always cut away. It's pointless. Not worth the fine." I tried to concentrate on what Hans Reiz was saying. My German had improved a decent amount, but not all that much, truth be told. I was in a German-speaking environment, sure, but I existed in an English bubble inside it. The general sentiment on Hans's stream seemed to be negative. People were tuning in to see me fall flat on my face, was the vibe I got. I glanced at Diane; she seemed nervous. "You're worried I’ll make Bayern lose or something like that? Do rude gestures towards the VIP boxes?" I shook my head. "I promise to uphold the values of the mission statement, Diane. Bayern’s and UEFA’s," I added, trying and failing to keep a mischievous grin from colonising one side of my mouth. To distract my face, I slid my sunglasses back down. I'm so cool sometimes.

Diane looked from me to Hans, then appeared to give up. She picked up what she had come to get and spent thirty seconds checking stuff on her phone. "You're blowing up on social media. People are wondering what's going on with the stupid disguise you did. The main suggestion is that you're doing a crazy art installation. A famous German singer is claiming that you are Banksy. I'll send you a link if you want."

"Nah, I'm good."

"This one's really funny," she insisted, tapping on her screen. "You have time to watch it, instead of Hans. His stream hasn't even started, really."

I gave her a thin smile. "I forgot my phone. It's back at the hotel."

"Oh," she said. She frowned before getting a burst of energy. "We're not going back to the hotel. I will call them and organise for them to search your room." She checked her watch. "If they find it fast, we could get it here by half time."

I took the sunglasses off and gave her a level look. "You're really good at your job."

She gave me an utterly fake smile. "But my job shouldn't exist."

"You're really good at it, anyway. I'm happy to have met you. Can I give you some feedback on your performance?"

Her eyebrows knitted together a little. "Yes."

I pointed at her with the sunglasses. "You should laugh at my jokes more. I'm really funny."

She looked down and by the time she looked up, I had folded my shades up and tucked one arm into the neck of my hoodie. "Max," she said. "Please remind me what your room number was."

"Not this hotel," I said.

"Pardon me?"

"My phone's in Munich. It's not in this country."

Diane Berger gave me a long, hard stare. Finally, she said, "If this is Mission: Impossible, who am I? A fool who doesn't even know she's being tricked?"

I gave her my toothiest Tom Cruise smile. "Diane, you're no fool; you know you're being tricked."

***

I rested on the bench until I heard the mumbled sounds that came with a big match - the stadium announcer calling out the teams, the Champions League music, the final preparations.

I decided that I would trigger Seal It Up early in the match. That was a perk that gave our defenders fifteen minutes of better Positioning. I often used it near the ends of matches when we were marauding, but tonight I would use it to make absolutely sure the Hungarians didn't get an early goal. I smashed Bench Boost and Triple Captain on my way along the tunnel, and skipped to the right. The All Hail the God-Emperor Arena was new and while it had all the originality of a straight-to-Netflix movie, it had a large technical area I could roam around in.

Just when I thought I was in the clear, Lee fucking Kennedy bounced over, across the no-man's land that separated our zones, all the way into my domain. "Max Best!" he cried, in a friendly Irish voice. His hand was coming at me like the battering ram of a pirate ship. "Where've you been?"

"Avoiding you," I said, covering my mouth. I did my best to keep my face relaxed so the cameras wouldn't be able to make a big deal of this scene.

Kennedy's energy dimmed and his hand, slowly, went down to his side. "Have we met?"

"When you were linked with this job, I sent you an email. It explained the ways in which the arrival of a famous Irish player would legitimise the evil project here and would accelerate cruelty and suffering of all kinds. You replied with the short phrase: Fuck you, I want the money."

"That never happened," he snarled, already at a 7.5 out of 10 on the anger scale, which I thought was funny. Making him angry would lead him to make mistakes, and while he wasn't the guy doing the actual villainy around here, he was the only baddie I would actually get to talk to.

"Maybe it went into your spam folder along with the ones from Amnesty International and Stonewall. Look, bro, it's like this. You're not the mission today, you're a side quest. It's a simple one, really. It's a side quest simply called Get This Prick Fired." I shrugged. "Soz but I need the experience points. You can go now. Into the bin with you."

I mimed dropping some trash into a container. He wasn't a fan of that. "You're gonna fucking get it," he hissed.

"Nah," I said, yawning as I stretched. "I'm gonna waste you."

You know I hate repeating myself, but I sensed it would be funny to do the same bin-drop mime.

It was funny.

I laughed really hard.

***

The roar of the home fans as the match got underway was epic. My blood was pumping freely and I bounced along the edge of my technical area letting the atmosphere seep into me. Soak it all up... while it lasts.

To the left, some kind of singing section. Massive flags, a sea of green and white, guys whooping and clapping in sync. To the right, a pocket of ultras, then some normos, then the Bayern fans. There were at least a thousand; UEFA's rules said at least 5% of the seats had to be given to the away fans and the stadium held 22,000.

The ultras had brought some flares and had set them off - red, of course, the cheap bastards - and the wannabes in the stand opposite took that as a signal to do the same.

The freezing cold temperatures made a great contrast to the hellish fires. The noise was discordant and manic, overlapping, ever-changing, never familiar.

Behind me, the premium section, where wealthier members of society could watch while treating themselves to champagne and a buffet. Next to them, partially blocking the views of the hundred-pound-a-match hospitality areas, the media section. Rows and rows of white desks for journalists to work from. Thanks to the magnitude of the occasion plus my stirring, the area was massively oversubscribed.

Then the VIP areas. The glorious leader, Europe's strongest strong man, he who must be obeyed. He was football mad, watching up to six matches a day.

"Watch this," I growled. I crouched and checked what everyone was doing. Most players were still on 6 out of 10, the default rating. Condition scores were 99%. My players had high Morale. Lee Kennedy was still fuming from my unexpected onslaught.

Heists, like the ones in Mission: Impossible movies, rely on expertise. Precision. Luck might come into it but above all, you needed to be good at your job. I had the better team and the powers of the curse, but Kennedy had home advantage. The febrile atmosphere could be the ace up his sleeve. I knew from my brief career that a passionate manager who connected with the crowd could do actual magic.

I looked down at my legs, at the cheap fabric of the thin tracksuit bottoms. Yeah. Daddy has his work pants on.

Let’s do this.

I walked down the line, pointed, and made my first tweaks.

The home side were building down their left. Claude Sonko took a few steps to the right... and that shut down the move.

I got goosebumps. I ran along the touchline towards the Bayern fans, roared, and punched the air. "Come the fuck on!"

Their response was so massive it shut up the singing section for a good ten seconds.

I felt my eyes blazing. It was too early to go this hard. Far too early.

My abs tensed, I formed fists, and I shouted so loud I had to strain my neck muscles to keep my head attached. "SEAL IT UUUUUUP!"

***

3'

Pestis enjoying a good spell of possession.

They move the ball patiently. Now it speeds up.

It's with number 7. He dribbles past Alloula.

Tillmann delays the 7. Alloula is back in position.

7 tries to trick his way past Tillmann but the defender kicks the ball out for a throw-in.

Tillmann and Alloula exchange a high five.

5'

Ritter loses the ball.

The home team surge up the pitch. They target the right side again.

Ritter is out of position. Tillmann and Alloula are outnumbered. They can't stop the cross.

Here it comes...

Good header from Demetrescu!

He spotted the danger.

Sonko clears the ball to halfway.

Ulrich is shouting at Ritter. He isn't the only one!

7'

A long pass from Pak Young is too high for Rehder.

The home team's captain thumps the header towards midfield.

Gutić heads the ball away.

It bounces over the halfway line and is collected by Rehder.

This is a good chance for Bayern to build an attack.

But Rehder shoots from distance!

It crosses the goal line... near the corner flag.

His manager can't believe it. What a waste!

Rehder holds his hands up in apology.

With ten minutes gone, I felt like we had got our stupid, nervous mistakes out of the way. It was normal that we wouldn't play fantasy football from the get-go. Willi and Cheb were almost complete noobs. Petar and Beat had some minutes in their legs but they were only 22 and 21, respectively. Till Rehder had minutes in his legs - and decades in his head - but this was his Champions League debut.

He was also the same level as my strikers at Chester and I wouldn't expect them to give me 10 out of 10 against experienced continental-class defenders.

As big as this match was and as much as every little incident was winding me up, I had to try to stay rational and patient. Some toiling was inevitable but we were on target.

Pak Young moved the ball right to Edgar, who passed it to Dumi. He zipped it to Claude Sonko who dropped his shoulder, made the defender react, then dribbled into the space the defender had just been occupying.

Claude dangled his foot on the ball, rolled it around, and passed back to Dumi. The defender he had fooled gave him a whack in the back of his calf, which got me riled up. I ran in that direction, yelling, but I realised most of my dugout had rushed off the bench to join in the complaints.

Danger.

We couldn't let this turn into a fiery, tempestuous affair. I got everyone back in their seats and told them if they did that again they would watch the rest of the match from the dressing room.

By the time I'd sorted them out, the game had been delayed for almost two minutes. Two minutes in which Seal It Up had been active, counting down, and doing absolutely nothing.

Fuck sake.

I seethed on the touchline for a while, then jerked the Game Speed slider all the way to the left and the Gamesmanship slider to the right. We would spend five to ten minutes slowing everything down. Take our time on goal kicks and throw-ins. Look for cheap free kicks that we would dally over. Feign injury. Not how I wanted to live my life, but it would cool the temperature all the way down.

***

Time passed.

***

With twenty minutes gone, I had nicely sunk into the task. All the little tweaks I was making had put me into a trance-like state of technocracy, which was ideal, but key moments were getting me fired up and I was reacting on the touchline as though these were my Chester boys. The Bayern bros, in turn, were responding to me.

Dumi signalled that Claude could take more positional risks.

That simple gesture triggered a lot of complicated impulses. I couldn't quite work out what I was feeling, but it was in the direction of complete and utter belief in my team, pride at what I had accomplished, a tinge of dread. It was too early. The guys were a Lamborghini - when they got going they would go like the devil, but I didn't want this match over in the first half. It would be all too easy to crash the heist.

Till Rehder rushed back fifteen yards to get goalside of a Pestis dude. A simple, selfless act that bought time for Jost and Beat to reorganise. It wasn't Till's job to do that. It was his calling.

Ignore it, Max! Ignore it! Stick to the plan.

I made the mistake of glancing to the right at the Bayern fans. They hadn't noticed anything special. No-one in the commentary team would be singling Till out for praise. Lee Kennedy might have noticed - he had been a top Premier League striker in his day - and he would have spotted that his attack had broken down.

I watched as Till took three quick steps to his right. Getting into position to help Cheb. It wasn't needed so he wandered back to his spot between the two centre backs.

"Ah, fuck," I said. Till would never play in the Champions League again. Shit, he'd probably never even play for Bayern again. Was I just gonna make him shuffle and slide the whole half?

I got into the front of the Lambo, clicked my seatbelt into place, adjusted the rear view mirror, and started the engine.

***

The Home of Hans Reiz: Champions League Watch Party

Hans initially invited a few friends to attend his livestreamed watchalong, but the numbers kept growing until it became a large house party with a webcam filming the sofas. Those who sat down appeared to have forgotten the purpose of the party and were deliciously indiscreet about their fellow celebrities. Word that an unedited, unfiltered, better version of Big Brother was taking place quickly spread around German social media and many tuned in.

Everyone spoke German, but foreign viewers were able to follow with AI translations.

The main characters in the relevant scenes were Hans himself; Magda (host of a reality show for drag queens); Mr. Fruity (an influencer who reviewed perfumes on his channel 'PotsDAMN That Smells Good'); and Frank Funkel (the former head coach of Hans's local team, FC Cologne).

Hans (Parking himself in front of his laptop with a large glass of red wine): Okay, let's see what people are saying.

Magda: If no-one noticed my shoes I'm going to scream.

Mr. Fruity: Football is rather boring, Hans. No offence intended, Frank.

Hans: To be fair, he told us to watch the second half. Oh, there goes the chat. A thousand people asking to see your shoes. No, don't move the camera. It's such a lot of fiddling about. There's a way to mute the word shoe, I think. Ah, here's a good question. Who smells the best at the party? Haha!

Mr. Fruity: Find who asked that and block them. An obvious troll!

Magda [Yelping]: Oh! Something happened!

Mr. Fruity: A goal! A goal was scored.

Magda: But by whom?

Mr. Fruity: How should I know? Which team is Cologne?

Frank [Leaning forward on the sofa, eyebrows furrowed]: That's Till Rehder.

Mr. Fruity: Why is he crying?

Frank: Because he just scored in the Champions League.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Hans: What... He's running to Max Best. Best is telling him to run away...

Frank: To the Bayern fans.

Hans: Till's not interested. Oof! That was a beefy squeeze.

Magda: It means a lot, Frank, does it? To score a goal?

Frank: For Till, yes. This is the peak of his career. He is 33 and he would have stopped even dreaming about such a moment. This must be incredibly bizarre for him.

Magda: He's making Max cry.

Mr. Fruity: They're both in bits.

Hans: So are you.

Mr. Fruity: I'm a sympathetic crier, okay? I have very powerful mirror neurons!

Hans: Here's the replay of the goal. Uh... Bayern in their defensive third, the Romanian player chips to Claude Sonko. He - oh, wow! - and he's away. Cuts inside onto his left foot. That's his trademark. Instead of shooting, plays a short diagonal through ball - beautiful - Rehder takes a touch, into the bottom-right. That's deadly. Really nice goal.

Magda: What's wrong, Frank?

Frank: What? Oh, nothing. I was... It felt to me as though Bayern were getting pushed back, playing defensively, wasting time, then suddenly they accelerated. Like... yes, it was really like someone pressed the fast forward button on a VHS.

Mr. Fruity: VHS, is that football jargon?

Frank: Oh my God.

***

Till Rehder is bad at heists. There, I said it. Okay, so you score a goal. That's cool. Don't go blubbing all over me, drenching my cleanest hoodie with your German tears! I'm trying to concentrate here. Oh, and by the way, don't fucking squeeze me like you're trying to get the last bit of ketchup out of the bottle.

And yeah, don't make me cry! How many times do I have to tell you I'm a technocrat? I don't even work here!

Kissing the tattoo of your granddad who didn't get to see the highest moment of your career? Mate, come on. Kiss the tattoo but don't explain it to me in front of, like, twenty million viewers worldwide.

I wiped the last tear away, exhaled, and recentred myself.

One-nil.

Overall, the team was chugging along in third gear, parts of the engine wheezing and rattling, parts of the chassis straining, metal grinding against metal, while over on the right, Claude Sonko was purring. On the left, go-kart-style electric Minis. In the middle, rally cars. On the right, a Mercedes Project One. Nought to two hundred kilometres an hour in seven seconds flat.

I had moved Claude one zone forward so that he was playing like a true winger. To compensate, I used the Without Ball screens to nudge my defenders more to the right. We wouldn't be caught out down that flank, that was for sure. Anyway, Pestis weren't going to be doing much attacking down that side in the next ten minutes, because Claude's nine out of ten match rating - by two points the best player in the game - was drawing all the aggro onto him.

I spotted Lee Kennedy and his minion yelling at his players, reorganising them. Very much moving their numbers around to cover Claude.

I brought Claude back to the midfield line and advanced Cheb to the winger slot on the left. In theory, he would have loads of freedom there. While I was at it, I tweaked the positions of Beat and Jost so that their forward runs would fit better with attacks coming from the left.

As a cheeky afterthought, I experimented by telling Claude he couldn't make forward runs. The defenders weren't exactly marking him, but Kennedy had very clearly told his lads that watching Claude was their top priority. Yeah, good. Watch him. Admire him. Leave space for the others.

***

29'

Beat Ritter collects a pass and drives forward.

He drifts to the right, draws a challenge, and passes to Rehder.

The goalscorer takes a touch and lays it off for Jost Benn.

Benn to Ritter.

Ritter looks right and threatens to bring Sonko into the game.

Ritter switches to his left foot and pings the ball to Cheb Alloula.

Alloula is one-on-one with a defender.

Good play by the Pestis right back.

Alloula recovers the ball and finds Gutić.

Gutić chips the ball behind the right back. Alloula will get there first!

Alloula crosses low.

Shot!

Saved!

The rebound falls to Ritter.

He goes for the top corner.

But it's blocked!

Benn collects. He looks for an option.

Clever reversed-pass down the line for Ritter.

He thrashes the ball across goal...

But it's inches ahead of Alloula!

Fantastic play from the away team.

I switched the wide players again so that Claude would be the dangerman. I expected he would be crowded out, but that was okay. It would make Cheb's incursion seem like a one-off and when we tried it again, we might find the oppo equally unprepared. Claude did a couple of good moves that didn't lead to anything. Then...

31'

Ulrich takes the goal kick short.

Pak Young waits for pressure, then plays it to Edgar Wilde.

Wilde to Demetrescu.

The pass to Sonko isn't on, so the Romanian chooses the central option.

Petar Gutić takes over, and passes left to Tillmann.

He feeds Alloula.

The Algerian international finds Jost Benn.

Benn to Sonko.

The German winger is quickly closed down so he plays a safe pass back to Demetrescu.

He finds Gutić. His first-time pass breaks the lines!

Alloula dribbles into the box. Plays the ball to Rehder.

He pokes the ball down the line, but it's a poor pass. There is far too much weight on it.

Alloula slides to keep it in play. Does he manage?

He hooks it towards the penalty spot.

And the ball's in the back of the net!

Beat Ritter timed his run to perfection!

But will it count?

All eyes are on the referee...

***

Magda: So is it a goal or not?

Hans: We have to wait for the video assistant referee to decide if the ball crossed the line. If it did, it's a dead ball and you can't score a goal after that.

Mr. Fruity: A dead ball? I get those when I wear skinny jeans.

Magda: Oh, no goal. The ball's beyond the line.

Frank: That looks in to me. The angles can be deceptive but all of the ball must cross all of the line. You're looking at the middle. Work from the edge.

Magda: I could say something very funny in response to that but I'm not being paid, so...

Hans: You're being paid in wine. Why's Max Best hugging everyone? Bouncing around like that? I'd wait to get the confirmation.

Frank: He has a strong feeling it will count. And it's not just that. Every Bayern player touched the ball in that build-up. It's the perfect team goal. Mmm, Rehder's first touch and pass was poor but it was the right decision. Any manager would be proud of that goal, even if it's not a goal.

Mr. Fruity: Football is a lot more metaphysical than I remember from secondary school.

Frank: Look at that angle! The ball is still in play. It's clearly still in play. I wish they would show the whole move again. There was something I wanted to check.

Hans: This is it now, isn't it?

Frank: Pretty. Look at that! So pretty. There! Look! Ha!

Hans: What?

Frank: Best is giving them the old jab-jab-straight. Claude Sonko is the best player on the pitch, yes? He is having a wonderful game. Bayern are feeding the ball to his side. One, two, but the third time the intention is on the left. It's so simple, but when did they coach this? They had a match three days ago and I heard from my friends at Bayern that yesterday they trained basic 4-4-2 shapes and Bestball. When did they prepare for this? And now look! He has sent them to their own half ready for kickoff, but they are lined up in a 3-4-2-1 formation!

Magda: What does that mean?

Frank: It means do not underestimate this young man.

Mr. Fruity: I just got chills. Shame he's a proto-fascist.

Hans: Goal! They've given the goal.

***

36'

Bayern are changing their approach.

I paced around the technical area keeping an eye on things but basically letting the players get on with their jobs. The second goal had shut the home fans up, and it was a bit of a double whammy. First, seeing the ball hit the back of the net. Second, after the long, hope-filled wait for the video ref to disallow the goal, being told that it was valid.

While Lee Kennedy was busy shouting at the referee to ignore science, I was reorganising my team. Busting out the 3-4-2-1 to take a look at it in case it might suit my needs for the second half.

The new formation was pretty sweet. I set Cheb (on the left of midfield) and Jost (on the right) to a defensive mindset. Their job was to shut down the post-to-post attacks I had warned about, but in a normal match where I was balancing risk and reward in a conventional way, at least one of them would be able to join attacks.

Having three centre backs was overkill but it gave us three guys with good heading in front of our goal. Pestis hadn't created much threat since the first quarter of an hour, but if they did get in a cross we would have bodies in the danger area. In a dream scenario I would have had another guy like Edgar in the back three so that I could slip them forward to the DM slot. That would have given us crazy levels of control, but I had Willi, Pak Young, and Dumi. Willi was out of position already, so it made no sense to put more strain on him. The three CBs could stay as they were.

Edgar Wilde and Petar Gutić were better as DMs than central midfielders so their current position wasn't optimal, but they were comfortable on the ball and while they wouldn't necessarily create threat, they wouldn't block the moves that others were initiating.

Beat Ritter was my box-to-box midfielder and in the new formation he was playing as a central attacking midfielder with licence to get into the penalty area. I expected him to struggle slightly in this particular setup because there would be a fair amount of onus on him to get creative, which wasn't his natural game. When Adam, Danny, and Didier came on in the second half, Beat would be more able to do what he wanted - finish moves - without having to create chances.

The formation as it stood maybe had too many square pegs in round holes, but it was fresh, surprising, and had one main advantage - it put Claude Sonko in front of goal, slightly to the right, just as he liked it.

***

39'

Bayern are leading two-nil and look the more likely to score the next goal.

Pestis are struggling to get a touch of the ball. At times they are chasing shadows!

Tillmann passes left to Alloula. He cuts back onto his right foot, bypasses Wilde, and finds Gutić.

Gutić to Benn.

Benn to Gutić.

First-time pass to Sonko.

Away he goes!

Panic sets in among the defenders. They haven't been able to stop him so far this half.

Sonko has Ritter to his left in support. He shapes to lend the ball to his teammate...

But it was a decoy! Sonko with a delicious fake and -

He's fouled!

The Bayern Munich players have lost their temper with that one.

It's a yellow card for the defender and a free kick in a very dangerous position. Ideal for a left-footer.

Who will step up to take it?

Claude Sonko, please. I double-checked he was the designated taker, double-checked that he was the one putting the ball down, and then I smashed the Free Hit button to increase his chance of scoring by 10%.

The way Claude was playing, I felt like I had improved his chance of scoring to about 140%.

"Oh," I mumbled. "Did I want to do that?"

It took almost a minute for the referee to get Pestis into position. Claude inhaled, looked left, looked right, exhaled, stepped forward, and curled the ball around the wall, inside the post. Back of the net! Swish!

Three-nil. What now? These guys were out of control. The mission was going to shit!

Hoggy and Kaspar Benn, the backup goalie, grabbed me from behind. If they were going to mob me at every goal I was going to end up battered.

Danny came up to me, beaming. "That count as good delivery?"

"Ian McKellen could do no better."

"Who did he play for?"

"All right, Danny. Go back to your crevice."

I wandered around, briefly wondering what to do. Three-nil was the maximum, really. Any more goals would risk the heist. Till had scored. Cheb had assisted. Claude was on 10 out of 10 with an assist and a goal.

Yeah. They'd had their fun; it was my time now.

"Shut it down, guys. Park that bus."

***

Mr. Fruity: What's happening? Why are the Hungarians kicking ass all of a sudden?

Frank: They're not. Bayern are letting them have the ball.

Mr. Fruity: Why?

Hans: Yeah, why? It looked like Bayern could score whenever they wanted.

Frank: Am I the only one who watched your interview?

Magda: Yeah, come on guys. The kid has something big planned for the second half.

[Pause.]

Frank: That time, I got chills.

***

Playing so defensively allowed Pestis to get the ball into our box a few times. One header was tipped over the bar by Ulrich. The corner was overhit and went all the way over everyone's heads, out to the right back. He crossed towards his captain, a defender who scored a few goals a season. Pak Young got his body close to the ball, stopping his oppo from getting clean contact. Ulrich made a save.

The home crowd were getting up again. New hope was stirring. Watching these half-attacks and quarter-chances was stressful but this buzz from the crowd was actually perfect - if my players could hold out for a few minutes.

The alternative was to let them loose, and that would have led to a fourth goal for sure.

I gritted my teeth. Balancing the risk and reward was insanely hard today because my goal wasn't simply to score one more goal than the other team.

I suffered. The players suffered. There were three minutes of added time. That meant 42 extra experience points for my stash.

I focused on my XP counter, watching it go up slowly.

The ref's whistle was such a relief. The first part of the mission had gone almost perfectly. Now for something much harder.

***

In the dressing room, I sat on a bench, staring at nothing, taking on nutrients. That half had been a lot more draining than it seemed. Battling against my emotions, trying to stay focused, trying not to look up at the VIPs behind me, trying to stay out of the aggro with Lee Kennedy, plus making lots of tiny tweaks in match orders, positioning, while keeping an overview of what was really important.

The physios did their jobs and told me what I already knew - there were no major injuries in the first half, certainly nothing that warranted a player coming off the pitch.

The physios, Diane, Hoggy, and all the lads were buzzing. No wonder - we had played amazingly well that half. Amazingly well. Willi and Cheb were on 7 out of 10 - enough to justify keeping them on for the second half. Jost Benn was a rare 6 but he had done his job. Claude, of course, was the standout. 10 out of 10.

"All right, everyone," I said after about five minutes. I clicked my head around and found my neck muscles were stiff. "I just want to say... That was mint. There's this movie where a guy has to spend thirty million dollars in thirty days. He hires a fancy interior decorator to remodel a massive room he doesn't even own. She finishes on the last day. He's out of money by then so she goes, I have to take all this away now, but do you like it?" I smiled and rotated my finger in a big circle. "I like this. I actually like this. Thanks." I looked down, swallowed, cleared my throat, swallowed again. "I need everyone who isn't a player to leave."

No-one moved until Torben said something in German, and Hoggy joined in.

The physios filed out, followed by the reserve goalies, Stefan Clown and the subs I wouldn't use, plus Hoggy himself. Diane Berger didn't want to go but Briggy shepherded her out with minimal fuss.

Briggy closed the door with her on my side of it. I opened my mouth to speak but Briggy forestalled me. She opened the door, said something in German - I only understood the word 'Diane' - and as Diane clomped away, Briggy said one last thing. She closed the door and gave me a confident nod.

"Okay," I said, rubbing my palms together. I discovered that I was all kinds of clammy. Nervous. "Okay," I repeated, uncertainly.

Adam said, "Max, you good?"

"Er," I said. "Yeah. No. You know when you rehearse something in your head a million times and then it's time..." I unscrewed a bottle of water and poured loads of it down my flappy Manc gob. Not quite flappy enough, sometimes. "Let's, er... Fuck it, I'm just going to say things. There's no perfect order for this."

I took another swig and put the bottle down. I walked around the dressing room. It was one of those that had a sort of cupboard island in the middle of the floor, which I always found odd, but it at least defined the route. I stopped.

"Here's the headline: this is my last match at Bayern Munich."

"No!" cried about half a dozen guys. Others looked stunned.

"What about Stuttgart?" said Adam. "And Mainz?"

"When was this decided?" demanded Danny.

I raised my hands to get some order. "It hasn't been decided. It will happen, like, five seconds after this match ends. Yep yep yep," I said, because now everyone wanted to speak. "Guys, we only have about eight minutes to get through a lot of stuff. Just listen up a minute. Okay, the reason I've been blabbing about Mission: Impossible today is that they are heist movies. You know the bit where he's dangling from the rope in the computer room? He's stealing something. This, today, this... This is a heist. I'm doing a robbery. I'm going to do a theft right here in this stadium while standing on the touchline. Paul Braun likes a bit of drama but he won't like this. I'm going to be toast.

"And that's okay. I knew it would be like that. I want it to be like that. It has to be like that."

I rubbed my hands again; not sweaty.

"Let's talk about you. When Dieter Bauer approached me to do this job I was like, no thanks. But then I thought, hang on. They're going to Hungary and I'd be in control of one of the best teams in the world. I knew there would be resistance but if I could find eleven players I could work with, I'd be able to do something incredible, something no other manager would even think to do.

"It's not just Bayern who won't keep me as a manager. After tonight, no big club will go anywhere near me. Not ever." I smiled to myself. "At least the Chester fans will be happy. I won't keep going off on adventures." I put my hand on Willi's shoulder. "It's okay, dude. I'm building my own megaclub. It'll be like yours but with more fun, groovier music, and better haircuts."

I paced around.

"Don't worry about me. Tonight isn't about me. It isn't even about you. You're my heist team and you're going to help me steal something. The coolest burglars leave something in return. Some little trophy, a calling card, to taunt the police. In that tradition, I'm going to leave something here. Sort of a hybrid heist reverse heist. Audacious as fuck.

"Here's the deal. Upstairs is one of Europe's worst human beings. He calls us decadent; his politics are abhorrent and go against the values of Bayern Munich and UEFA. Why are we here, you might ask? Very fucking good question. But we're here. The vampire got invited into the house, didn't it?

"Fuckface loves football. He's here at as many home games as he can get to. He built this place. It's his baby. We are going to steal... his love of football."

"What?" said Edgar.

"We're going to absolutely annihilate this team in the second half. I'm talking humiliation. Unbelievable humiliation. We're going to run up the score. He's going to leave this place feeling sick. I had a bad dim sum once and now when I even look at a Chinese dumpling I feel like I'm going to vom. That's how I want him to feel tonight. He'll feel sick to his stomach and when someone says Your Omniscience, your team are playing Liverpool next week, how many stooges do you want applauding your every burp? He'll say, ah, you know what? I'll skip that one.

"And he'll skip the next one. And the next one. His life will feel as empty and desolate as the people whose lives he has ruined."

Dumitru said, "What do you get?"

"Me? I get fired." I scoffed. "I get blacklisted. I get death threats."

"So why do it?" said Danny. He looked really young.

I felt a surge of righteous anger - my face twisted and distorted and I had to fight to control it. "Because one day soon I'll be the best manager in the world. Everyone will want to play for me, even if their agents tell them hell no." I shook my head. "But I still won't have any gay players. White, black, asian, Christian, Muslim - sure. But I couldn't bring an openly gay player here, could I? It wouldn't be safe. Fuckface is leading the war against them. Why do it? Because if he wins, who's next? Muslims? Black guys? Mancunians? This is war, men, and without knowing it, Paul Braun and Dieter Bauer handed me a tactical nuke - you. I want to detonate you right here, right now, in this stadium. I'm gonna fuck things up." I added, more quietly, "That's what I do."

I took a few paces forward, one back.

"I did some maths, or tried to, at least. Something like 450 players have ever started a World Cup final. That's the biggest single match in football, right? Some of you might get to one, but believe me, your grandkids aren't going to be asking you about that. They're going to ask you about this next 45 minutes. This one, right here. This is the biggest match of your career.

"You watched my interview. I did my best to get the whole country tuned in. They're not there to see you win 5-0. They want to see you give Fuckface a slap. They want to see you give a voice to the people whose voices have been stolen. There's a great scene in Mission: Impossible - Fallout where a bad guy says, you're too late, it's done. The hero - Max Best in a Tom Cruise mask - goes, 'it's done when I say it's done'. If you're on that pitch in the second half, you keep fucking going. I'll put you in the right place to cause maximum damage. I'm talking about you playing the best game of your life, filling your boots with goals and assists, but you don't stop. It's not done until I SAY it's done."

I'd got myself so hyped I was yelling. I took one long, healing breath while tapping my finger and thumbs together. I calmed enough to smile at myself.

"You can't believe how much I envy you. I wish I could be out there. This is the game of my dreams. The mission is..." I remembered what Zoran had said. "Yeah, the mission is optional. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is fuck these twats up for 45 minutes, non-stop." I spread my arms. "I need eleven guys to opt in. You don't need to worry about what happens if you opt out. I do actually believe in free will, mostly, but also, I won't be in charge tomorrow so, yeah. Consequence-free environment."

"I'm in," said Zoran immediately. About eight people said the same thing a second later. For some reason I was locked onto Till Rehder, who I didn't even want to use in the second half. He was breathing heavily, eyes blazing, like he would run through a brick wall for me.

"That," I said, trying not to get too emotional, "was cool. But, ah, maybe I need to do it the other way. Who wants to opt out?"

Willi said, "Why would we opt out? You want us to score lots of goals? That's what we always try to do!"

Cheb tilted his head. "Do you want us to wear rainbow armbands?"

"No. Don't do anything like that. That would be counter-productive today. Just play. Play hard. Don't take your foot off the brake. We have 45 minutes together until I drive the car off the cliff while you guys jump out the back."

Cheb pulled a face. "You watch too many movies. Max, we're all in. Time's running out. Get on with it."

"I have a question," said Adam Adebayo.

My heart sank. Losing one of the dreamweavers would probably cost us two goals, although the way Claude Sonko was ripping the game up, maybe it wouldn't. "Go on."

"It's just, didn't you say something about this was an impossible mission? You want us to score loads of goals but we already got three and I'm not even on the pitch yet. What's, you know, the impossible part?"

Relief is a pretty decent drug. "Here's one," I said. I looked at Bayern's best defender. "Kumba. Are you up for this?"

"I want to play."

"Kumba Viera," I said, pacing around. "Man of the Match against Bologna. Building his legend," I said, loud. "Building his earning potential," I added, cheekily. Back to my normal voice, I said, "As is right and proper. Kumba," I said, moving towards him and crouching. "I challenge you to be Man of the Match tonight. A centre back, playing 45 minutes, in a game where Claude Sonko has hit a natural ten? How would you classify that, Adam?"

"Impossible," he said.

I jabbed my finger at Kumba. "He's gonna do it. We're gonna attack till we drop and he's gonna clean up our mess. He's gonna come up for corners and free kicks and win every header. This is how I make sure we keep going for goals, guys. Give Kumba 45 minutes to prove his worth. Prove he's worth the massive new contract his agent is negotiating right now." I jabbed my finger again. "How much will two goals add to your wages, bro? Fucking millions." I leaned closer. "Get yourself paid."

Adam said, "I've got another question. You could have asked for fat stacks yourself. You wanted to do this for minimum wage. I heard you had to fight them for minimum wage. Why?"

I shrugged. "Like, am I doing this because I believe in it or am I doing this for two million Euros? This way there's no confusion." He nodded; that made sense. I added, with a sly grin, "Also, I didn't want to have to pay it back when I piss them off."

I strode to the tactics board and counted to five to make sure I hadn't skipped anything I wanted to say. In that gap, Dumi said, "What is your gift? You said you would leave a gift."

I tried not to smile. "That's between me and the people of the world. I mean, it's possible you might, sort of, be able to spot it. When it happens." I laughed but caught sight of the timer. "Okay, we need to get a move on. Operation Mission: Impossible - Dead Man Walking. Tactically, we're going to do what I was brought in to do. I know I've been a dick but I have genuinely tried to do right by Bastian, you know? So we're going to do his formation. 4-2-3-1. His coaches will be able to step in for the next couple of games doing this, and this'll be what you do again in January. You get me?" I smiled. "It just so happens to be a formation that will devastate these pricks, and it's one I haven't used much since I got here. So, you know, surprise."

I threw in a pair of jazz hands on the last word before moving the magnets around.

"Torben in goal.

"Back four of Willi, Kumba, Pak Young, and Cheb. Full backs, you'll be allowed to run forward. Both at the same time, even.

"The defensive midfielders will be Petar and Beat." Edgar was a more natural DM than Beat, but the latter would give me a ton more goal threat, which was almost all I cared about. It didn't matter if we left some structural gaps because a bench-boosted Kumba Viera would play like the actual best defender in the world. I didn't normally get excited about seeing defenders, but fuck, this had the potential to be extraordinary.

"CAMs are Adam, Danny, and I'm going to keep Claude on for a while. Didier, you'll get as many minutes as poss but it would be stupid to use all five subs in one go. You could still easily get a hat trick, though. When you come on, those defenders will all have yellow cards and they will be mentally disintegrated.

"Zoran as the striker."

With that, our average CA would be 164.1. If we took out Willi and Cheb, the nine older players averaged 172.3, and four of those would be bench boosted.

"Guys," I said, checking the countdown clock. We had a minute left. "You're gonna go out early so that Diane Berger can see that you're not wearing armbands or t-shirts with messages. It has been a privilege working with you." I looked down at my bog-standard white trainers, and when I looked up again, I was grinning. "Let's go out with a bang."

***

The second half kicked off while I was still coming up out of the tunnel. Diane Berger was at the end. She looked me up and down.

I grinned and patted myself. "Shit white trainers, shit black hoodie, no armband. It's wild you don't trust me when I say things." I rushed past her so I could see the pitch and start getting XP again.

The stadium wasn't quite as full as at kickoff but that was normal. Guys were queuing for the toilets or downing the rest of their pints. There was no reason for anyone to leave early, certainly not after the dramatic end to the half when the home team had appeared to be knocking on our door big time. One goal and they were right back in it!

I walked slowly to the technical area, scanning the pitch intensely, looking for things that could go wrong.

"Nothing can go wrong," I said. "This plan is flawless; this ship is unsinkable. I defy the gods."

Yeah, okay, I didn't actually say that. I knew full well that the plan was flawed. For a start, my players were human beings. Rich brats, in some cases. What did they care about human rights in foreign lands of which they knew little? Why keep going after the sixth goal? Six-nil would not give Fuckface food poisoning. Six-nil could easily become six-one with the last kick of the game. Six-one was nothing.

I needed today to be something.

***

Hans: What is this? It's the same as the first half.

Frank: The team is much better. The four players who came on are world class.

Hans: But it's just football. Why would anyone support Bayern Munich for this?

Frank: That, I do not know.

***

The formation looked good. The new players needed a few minutes to get into the rhythm of the game, and more than that, to create a new rhythm. Kumba's match rating jumped first. He won two absolutely monstrous headers and leapt to 7 out of 10. Everything I had been planning for what seemed like years was on track.

My next decision was maybe the hardest of all. I didn't want to pull the parachute too early, but I couldn't leave people back home hanging. Something had to change, ideally sometime soon, or all the viewers who didn't normally care about football would switch off.

With five minutes of the second half gone, I turned to Briggy and raised my eyebrows. She nodded back and dug around in her kit bag. It looked like any other Bayern kit bag because that's what it was. But instead of containing bandages, disinfectant, or spare shirts, it contained super-high-tech heist equipment. Real science fiction stuff.

The first tool was a selfie stick. Briggy attached it to a brand new phone that contained a local SIM card, and dialled. I had to try to keep at least one eye on the pitch to grab that sweet, sweet Champions League XP, so I stood next to Briggy until she made contact.

Soon after, I was on a video call with a very confused Hans Reiz. "Hans! Bubby!" I said, as I showed him where I was.

"Mein Gott," he said. "You're live in the stadium. Is this allowed?"

"Does it look like I give a fuck? Stop complaining about me on your YouTube channel and double down on the hype. I'm going to call back in two minutes and you're going to put this feed onto the other feeds."

I handed the stick back to Briggy. The fourth official came over to tell me not to broadcast live from the technical area. I put my sunglasses on and pulled my hood over my face until he fucked off. I pulled the hood clear and folded up the shades.

I skipped along the touchline and rubbed my hands. This was going to be amazing. So amazing.

"Max," said Edgar Wilde. He had come out of the dugout and into the technical area. Dumitru Demetrescu was next to him. "We want to know what's going on."

"I told you, guys. We did a big speech thing at half time. Don't you remember? It was about six minutes ago."

Dumi made a noise. "You are not stupid. What you said was mostly stupid. We know there is something else going on."

"Oh, what's that?"

Edgar grunted. "That's what we're asking you."

Dumi said, "You need allies. We like you. I think you want to do something good here. Tell us what. We can help. We want to help."

Edgar said, "Yeah, boss. Come on, gaffer!"

I frowned. "What in particular makes you think there's more to this than I said in the dressing room?"

"Because," said Edgar, "Kumba getting Man of the Match isn't all that impossible, is it?" He slapped Dumi on the shoulder. "Dumi's got a mind like a Venus fly trap. He's been watching you. We all have. No way are you getting the sack for beating a team too bad. When you say this is Mission: Impossible, it's not about football because you don't think anything's impossible out on the pitch. So what is it? What's really going on?"

I thought about it. Half of what was going to happen would be very obvious very soon. Briggy knew about that part, as did a couple of other people. Emma suspected. But I hadn't actually told anyone the wider scheme. I held up a finger while I checked the action. We were starting to dominate in a major way. Lee Kennedy's tactics imp was trying to cook up a response. They would probably do some heavy tackling, pick up some yellow cards, then change out those players for fresh legs. That was the only real response they had. I should know - as Chester manager I had been in their shoes many times. That was why I hadn't gone Full Max, hadn't made my five changes in one go.

"Okay, guys," I said, holding the defenders by one shoulder each and giving them a quick blast of eye contact. "It goes like this. We're not just going to run up the score. That's just to make sure people talk about this match for years. Decades, even. People will say, oh, eight-nil, ten-nil, twelve-nil, that was the match where Max Best... Yes, that one."

I shifted position so that I was between them, all three of us facing the pitch. Not ideal for a conversation but I needed to see the action.

"People are going to be mad at me. I want to provoke something right here in the stadium. People will try to hurt me or whatever, right, and we'll show that it's not safe to come here. If it's not safe to play football here, why would anyone come? If no-one wants to come, why is Hungary even in UEFA? Huh. Good question. Maybe they... shouldn't be."

Dumi swore in his native tongue.

Edgar reverted to his native roots. To me, he said, "You what?"

Dumi was shaking his head, almost reverently. "You are a damned fool, Max Best. A damned fool. Impossible mission is right. This is beyond impossible."

"No, mate," I said, giving him a friendly squeeze. "I'm the manager of Bayern Munich and all of Germany is watching this. If German teams refuse to play in Hungary, UEFA have suddenly got a very big fucking problem. You're one of the most famous Romanians. Your voice matters. Edgar is an England international. Okay, England might not be my best allies but they got punked by Hungary a few times recently and there are always racist incidents when England come here. Wales will back me. Gibraltar will back me. The Scandinavian countries will back me. How many countries are fucking sick of Fuckface and his anti-European shit? All we need to do, guys, is start the conversation. Once it builds momentum, anything can happen. Kicking these pricks out of UEFA is not impossible. It's actually easy. I'll tell you the impossible part."

"I'm scared," said Dumi.

I stepped forward and turned around, pulling them close, bending slightly so that we formed a mini-huddle. "Once they're out of UEFA, maybe people will start to ask why this anti-European mafia state is even in the European Union." Dumi's eyes widened. I think he made the sign of the cross but I can't be completely sure because I was turning back round. "I'm not just stealing his love of football, I'm stealing his place in the world order."

"Dumi, is he crazy? I can't tell."

The Romanian was staring at me. "He's not crazy. It won't work. It can't work. But fuck me, he's going to try."

I slapped him on the back harder than I intended. "You're goddamn right." Briggy signalled that Hans was ready. "It's time. Hey guys," I said, getting quiet, getting cheeky. "Wouldn't it be amazing if the thing Fuckface loved was the thing that destroyed him? Guys? Yeah? That's, like, poetic. I love poems, guys. I wrote some for Emma and she put one on the fridge but it's gone now. She says she doesn't know what happened to it."

Edgar gawped. Dumi said, "I take it back. He is crazy."

I fizzed with electricity and fired some of it into their eyes. "You can’t start a fire without a spark." I did jazz hands as I walked away from them, backwards. "Showtime!"

***

"Hans," I said, grabbing the selfie stick and pacing around. "This is happening now. Here I am, Max Best, manager of Bayern actual Munich. That's funny, isn't it?"

"Hilarious," he said. I was giving him ringside seats to something, but what that something was he still didn't know.

"Let's pop to the dugout and spend some time with the players. Take all this weight off my tired feet. Muscle weighs more than fat, Hans, did you know that?"

"I did. Are you too muscly? Shh, Magda!"

Briggy moved her kit bag aside to clear space for me to flop. "I did put on a bit of extra mass, to be honest. Footballers can get too big, you know, but I can't play while I'm here so I thought, ah, whatevs. Why not get swole?"

"If only it were that simple for the rest of us," said Hans, not really committing to an angle.

"Yeah, well, I didn't quite get the 8-pack I was going for. Emma calls it a 7-pack. She's cruel, sometimes."

"I very much doubt that, Max."

"Well," I said, standing up. "That was fun. Make sure your phone is charged, bro. I might call back."

***

Hans: What the shit was that? What's going on?

Frank: He is exceedingly strange.

[There is a rare moment of quiet. In this period we might reflect that half of Hans's partygoers are now watching his TV. Interest in the match is growing.]

Mr. Fruity: [Screams.]

Hans: The fuck?

Mr. Fruity: He changed his shoes!

Hans: What?

Mr. Fruity: Argh! He's off camera. Why do they keep showing the football? Nothing happens! Wait till we see him again.

[Pause.]

Mr. Fruity: He must have done it while he was talking to you, Hans.

Hans: Why... But so what... I mean...

[Giant scream from multiple people.]

[Laughter.]

Magda: Red cowboy boots, Hans! Your boy is in red cowboy boots!

Hans: But... [He looks right into the webcam, up to the TV. His expression changes.] Holy fuck. I got it all wrong.

Mr. Fruity: But why wouldn't he put them on in the intermission thingy?

Frank [leaning back, smiling]: Someone would stop him. Once the half is going, people don't want to stop it.

Magda: What even is happening? This is better than Eurovision!

***

56'

Sonko drives ahead. He breaks to the right, cuts back, finds Ritter.

Ritter clips the ball to Adebayo. He takes it on the chest and flicks it behind him.

Bratko controls and holds off the defender. He touches the ball to his left, where Kowalski is sprinting.

Kowalski touches the ball to Adebayo.

He clips it first time behind the defenders.

Kowalski is onto it like a flash.

He shoots...

He scores!

Bayern have a fourth.

Scintillating football!

The guys ran towards me. My instinct was to shoo them towards the fans but then I remembered.

"Come in," I said, waving them closer.

I pointed to Briggy. She was holding the phone and gave me a thumbs up. A TV cameraman was coming from the right. When the players were close, I bent down, gripped my flimsy tracksuit bottoms, and ripped them off. It didn't go as well as on TV shows, but it was dramatic enough.

I was wearing red boots, knee-high orange socks, and bright yellow lederhosen. Oh, and a shit black hoodie, as is tradition.

The guys laughed their heads off and formed a huddle.

"What's under this?" demanded Danny, high on his goal.

I slapped his hand away and called out to the whole group, "If you wanna see what I got, show me what you got. Get the fuck back to work."

"Wait," said Adam. "You gonna strip every time we score?"

I bit my bottom lip. "Fuck. That's way better than what I came up with. I'll do that next time I get to play in front of a fuckwit dictator. For now, next goal, the hoodie comes off. Good?"

Adam and Danny eyed each other, and, moving at the same time, sprinted back to the pitch.

***

58'

The pass is hit much too hard and Ulrich collects.

He rolls the ball to Tillmann. He's under pressure so goes back to Ulrich.

The goalie plays it right to Alloula. He is pressed and tries to find Ritter.

The ball is intercepted. Danger for Bayern!

Kumba Viera bodies his opponent and comes away with the ball.

Harsh but fair!

Viera sprays a pass wide to Sonko. He moves ahead but cuts back onto his left.

He has options in the box. Or will he shoot? He can hit them from there...

He crosses.

GOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!

Bratko leapt like a salmon and powered the ball past the goalkeeper!

Five-nil to the away team! Some of the home fans are leaving.

The German champions run to celebrate with their manager.

I made sure the cameras were in place and slowly unzipped my hoodie. When that was done, I hunched down and threw it up into the air, revealing that I was topless except for a pair of braces in the traditional Bavarian lederhosen style. Traditional except that they were bright green.

The players lost their minds, as did the German fans when I appeared on the big screens.

More locals departed. The ultras didn't. They booed and gestured but didn't move from their crevices.

What? I'm not being provocative enough?

***

Magda: Go, Max, go!

Mr. Fruity: I'm gonna cry.

Frank: I know it's not the point but the quality of the football is unbelievable.

Hans: Unbelievable?

Frank: Unbelievable. There's one thing that I don't get.

Magda: What's that, cupcake?

Frank: Red boots, orange socks, green pants.

Mr. Fruity: Yellow pants, green suspenders!

Frank: Right. But that leaves, ah, blue, indigo, violet. Where... I mean...

Hans: I think we're going to find out.

***

60'

Viera collects. He strides out of the defence.

The Pestis defenders have their hands full with the movement of Bayern's forward players. Viera keeps going.

He's approaching the penalty area. Will he shoot?

He winds up... but passes simply to Adebayo.

Adebayo feints to cross but drives left.

He's fouled!

It's just outside the box.

"Briggy," I said. "I'll take the rest in one go."

"Understood."

"Are people talking about my abs?"

"Um... not so much."

"Jesus fuck! These are the best abs ever. Have you seen this? This little line here? That's pure sex, that."

"Maybe I'm checking the wrong social media accounts, sir."

61'

Adebayo floats the free kick towards the penalty spot.

Kumba Viera gets there first!

While the ball was smacking into the back of the net for the sixth time, I was already putting on the rest of my gear. A wispy blue scarf, an indigo princess crown, and a violet fairy's wand.

"How do I look?" I said.

"Quit stalling," said Briggy. "You promised you'd dance."

I laughed, then pointed my wand at the so-called singing section. "I was gonna dance to their shitty drummer but he has fucked off home, it sounds like. Briggy, can you beatbox? Lay down some phat kick drums for me."

She didn't, but I danced anyway. You know that saying, dance like no-one's watching? That's hard when you know that twenty million people have got eyes on you, plus a billion Euros of footballing talent is clapping, laughing, and showing you how dances are really supposed to look.

I think I looked more like Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air than I would have liked, but I can't be good at everything.

I'll tell you one thing for sure. Rather a lot of people in the stadium were a little bit ticked off with me. Somewhat cross, it's fair to say. It's like I always said - football provides a rainbow of emotions.

***

In the next three minutes we had five shots. It would have been ten but every time we missed, the goalie was taking fifty seconds to restart the match. Lee Kennedy was trying to reorganise his dudes but they were flat-out ignoring him. They had lost faith in him and were mutinying, trying to limit the damage we were causing. 4-5-1, men behind ball, waste time, pray we didn't get to double figures.

I replaced Claude Sonko with Didier Cartier. Claude came off the pitch applauding the away fans, paused to take a good look at me, and gave me a big hug.

While the hug was happening, I switched the formation to 3-4-3. All-out attack with the following three strikers: Zoran Bratko, Kumba Viera, and Pak Young.

One solution to a low block is high quality crosses aimed at tall, powerful human beings who are good at heading.

I danced and gestured with my wand as though it was transmitting the orders. "You shall go to the ball!" That made me cackle.

I waved the wand at the Bayern fans and they cheered. I waved it at the home fans and they booed. Actual magic wand!

The seventh goal came shortly after, and it was the one that really kicked off the trouble.

***

65'

Cartier advances on the right. Alloula goes on the overlap.

Alloula with a good first touch. He sets himself, looks up, and crosses.

Pak Young is first to it!

Great save!

Kumba Viera stabs in the rebound!

His second goal of the match.

The away team are rampant!

Most of the guys celebrated by running to the away fans, but Zoran came to me and stole my blue scarf. He put it on and said he wanted to play while wearing it.

Diane Berger freaked out and intercepted him before he took to the pitch. "Zoran," I said. He looked at me; I shook my head.

He grinned and took it off, handing it to Diane. While he went off to join the others, Diane looked down at the offending item.

Then she put it on.

***

Magda: Yeah! You go, girl!

Frank: [Quietly laughing, leaning forward, frowning, throwing himself back again.]

Mr. Fruity: [Has acquired a very short electronic keyboard and is trying to write a song.] We are Bayern... We are Bayern! Something something... Across the sea... No, no good. How about... FC B, FC B, whisper words of wisdom, FC B.

Hans: Hey, quiet! Look!

[Briggycam switches from Diane Berger and does a 180 to show us the other technical area.]

Magda: That scene's a mess. What's going on?

Hans: Lee Kennedy is... Ha! He has been sent off! Look!

[Much jeering.]

Frank: He must have said something awful to the ref.

[On Briggy's shaky phone footage, we see a furious Lee Kennedy being restrained by his tactics guy. Someone with a Manchester accent is singing 'Cheerio, cheerio, cheeri-ooooooo!']

[Kennedy gives up the struggle, but it's just a ruse. He threatens to break free but a few riot police have turned up for some reason and a couple get involved in encouraging Kennedy to scarper. Max Best appears. 'Hey, Kennedy', he calls out. Best gets as close as he can, and he's not laughing or joking now. With a face of thunder he points to the grass beneath their feet and says, 'Mission? Accomplished.']

***

With Kennedy gone, there was an imbalance in the number of managers, so to make things a little fairer, I crossed no-man's land and pottered around in front of the home team's dugout.

That went down slightly worse than I expected, inciting the home team's subs and coaches and whatnot. The ref even jogged over and showed me a yellow card.

I protested that I thought that's just what you did, like moving one place up in a queue, but he didn't seem to follow my reasoning.

I satisfied myself with making maximum use of my own technical area, prancing around, moonwalking, line dancing, chucking in a bit of beginner-level Samba, push-ups, one-handed push-ups, blowing kisses to all sides of the stadium, and, while the TV cameras were on me, raising the letter L above my head in the direction of the VIP boxes, which was intended as a tribute to Lee Kennedy.

***

Hans: Come on! Yeah!

Mr. Fruity: Max Best's blue-and-white army!

Frank: Bayern play in red.

Mr. Fruity: I'm reading from the chat. A guy called Stoop is teaching us the Chester songs.

***

It was around then that the flares started to fall.

I decided it would be awesome to dick around with them, even falling to my knees at one point to hold a pair of red flares over my head like I was in The Rock, the greatest ever movie about globules of deadly poison. The Rock was a heist reverse heist, same as what I was doing. In that movie, they were heisting Sean Connery onto Alcatraz while taking the globules of poison. In this multimedia, multi-platform event, I was stealing from the Prime Minister while leaving behind a trail of joy, much like a tall, handsome slug - if a slug could get almost all the way to having an 8-pack.

A cameraman had latched onto me. Presumably, the broadcasters had realised that everything I was doing was worth capturing close-up, and while I was sure some very senior people in the local government were trying to get the broadcasters to stop featuring me, the TV company was a power unto itself. It didn't take orders from anyone.

It might be worth pointing out that I had been laughing pretty hard for a few minutes, and as we chased the eighth goal, as the ultras who wanted to batter me got ever closer, I noted that Pestis had given up all pretence of playing and had fallen into a 6-4-0 formation. Yeah, we could spam crosses into the box and hope one of our big boys would nod it into the old onion bag, or...

71'

Bayern Munich have switched to the module: Bestball.

I briefly stopped dicking around. To the left, tough-looking guys had broken through the line of police and were racing towards me. To the right, even tougher guys were even closer. That's not what made me gawp, though.

For the first time ever top-tier bench-boosted superstar players were doing Relationism.

Adam Adebayo, effective CA in the region of 200, passed to Danny Kowalski, ditto, who flicked the ball to Didier Cartier, who might have been playing at about 180, Adam's usual level. The three guys drifted to the right of the pitch, making fools of anyone who came near them. Cheb Alloula sprinted to join the blob. Beat Ritter was next, then Pak Young said, fuck it, I don't have much to do.

The Relationism module always threw up a mini-game where I could collect bonuses for what my players did and use those to feed energy back to the pitch. I started to do that but wondered how long I would actually stay in this module. I'd probably do it for two minutes max, right? Hans was spot on about that - this was too cool to debut in front of these ghouls. It was just so fucking awesome... Beautiful.

And it got better.

Leaderless, the home team lost their minds. Instead of sticking to their zones they rushed into the blob.

My eyes widened. More and more players were moving away from Zoran. One of Adam or Danny would emerge from the blob, play a simple pass to him, and he would score number 8.

I tried to signal it with the wand, tried to summon the move like I was casting a spell.

I snapped my head back, stunned, as it played out just as I imagined. With one difference: it was Didier who got the assist.

Eight fucking nil, bitches, and we still had twenty minutes to go. The laughter was coming harder now that I had unleashed the Pandora's Box that was the Relationism module. I was giddy - beyond giddy - cackling and laughing and well on my way to whooping. Some men were fighting nearby so I got in line with a cameraman and held up a peace sign.

"Max!" cried Briggy. "Ghost Protocol! Ghost Protocol!"

I turned and realised I was deep in the shit. A riot guy had asked himself why he was defending me and couldn't think of a reason. He knew some reasons he should crack me over the head with his hitting stick, though. Behind him, a couple of skinheads were closing in.

I steeled myself and threw my arm up. The riot police guy's baton cracked into it. The pain was searing, but I backed away, trying to keep the fear away from my face. Hundreds of people were out to get me in a very real and immediate sense. Not the two skinheads, though. They were lying prone in the technical area, and Briggy was rubbing her fist.

Some movement from over my shoulder made me look. A handful of ultras had got onto the pitch from that corner and were sprinting this way. I feinted left - the riot prick moved - but then I darted around him to the right and into the tunnel. The aggro needed to be on me and no-one else.

It was self-preservation time. I ran past the dressing room - Briggy was close behind - and turned left. Some baddies were in pursuit. "He went that way!" cried a rando in Hungarian, pointing to the right. Not such a rando, after all, but a long-time Pestis fan who had been persuaded to come back to the stadium for the first time in years. His boyfriend swiped a door open for me. Inside, I put on my disguise - that of a mechanic with a shit moustache. The tool belt was pretty cool. Made me feel like a real boy.

Briggy and I walked out to the car park and got into a total shitmobile. My heart sank. "Seriously?" I complained.

The Brig was in the driver's seat. Briggy got in the back and pulled on a cord that made half of the back seat go down. I had to crawl into the boot and hide. Briggy pulled the seat back up.

We pulled out, exiting the stadium grounds smoothly and with no fuss. The Brig was listening to a local radio station that was playing U2.

"Am I going to be in here for seven hours?" I complained.

"Hush," said Briggy. "They might hear you."

"Fuck me," I said. My arm was really starting to hurt. Like, really really. The adrenaline that came with being chased and hunted in a hostile arena died down just enough for me to feel sick. The fuck had I just done? Also, we were far enough from the stadium that I no longer had the Match Overview. Would they still be doing Relationism? I had meant to turn it off. What was the score now? Would the match even be finished?

I tried to follow the action by cycling through the player profiles of Torben, Adam, Danny, and Zoran. If there was a goal scored or conceded it would show up in their statistics for the season. Nothing was changing. While I was looking I got kicked out of the Bayern Munich screens completely.

That wasn't fair! I had paid 2,000 XP to get permanent access.

It was, in fact, still there, but the order of my squad list had changed. Bayern had been at the top; now it was at the bottom. I could go back in and continue cycling through the players, but I knew what it meant. Paul Braun had fired me.

***

About six minutes into the drive, we turned onto a bumpy road and the car stopped. Briggy pulled down the seat and helped me out.

We were in some light industrial space. It was dark but for the streetlights and the Brig's phone. A car beeped and its tail lights flashed.

"This way, sir," said the former commando. He helped me into the back seat of what felt like a much nicer car. "I thought you would make me stay in the boot, like, as a prank."

"Not today, sir," said the Brig. "Not today." He spotted me cradling my arm. "How bad is it?"

"Er... pretty fucked, I reckon."

He inhaled. "We have to drive sensibly, sir, but we'll get you out of here as soon as we can. Dylan is waiting just across the border."

"Dylan?" He was a Welsh army guy, one of the players I had coached when I was experimenting with Relationism.

"He's in Austria in case we need backup or another driver."

"Do we have a plan for crossing the border safely?"

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it," said the Brig, which earned him a fist bump from Briggy. Great line. It sounded familiar. Had they been watching...?

"Would you say," I said, suddenly feeling woozy from the pain and stress and self-doubt. "That this mission is taking place... with military precision?" Briggy's door closed and the car pulled out of the little place. Soon after, we were on a decent road. "Briggy, check the score."

"We left the phone back there with the other car. Not even the slightest chance we can be tracked, but I don't know the score. I know the Prime Minister stormed out."

The Brig said, "Emma knows you're okay and we left word for Diane that you won't be hanging around to face the local police. We have planted a rumour that you're on the way to a small airport where you have a private jet fuelled and waiting."

"This is so top. What did Emma say?"

He smiled. "She said next time she books dance lessons, you can't cry off. And she said she's proud of you." He looked at me in the rear view mirror. "And she said your abs were top."

I smiled and rested my head on the soft thing. The car continued for a minute, then slowed down as we approached a red light. The traffic lights changed before we came to a complete stop, so the Brig was able to bring us back to the speed limit. "Red light," I said, closing my eyes. "Green light."

"Excuse me, Mr. Best," said Briggy, which made me open my eyes. She leaned around and tapped something I hadn't seen until then - the backs of the seats had screens built in. "Would you like to watch a movie?"

"Oh... no, thank you."

"Would you consider the cinema of the north-west? Chester, perhaps?"

I stared at her, bewildered, until I realised she was paraphrasing the end of the first Mission: Impossible movie. "Absolutely," I said.

The Brig pressed a button and the incredible theme tune to Mission: Impossible rocked the car, while on the screen, Chester FC's match against Hyde United started playing. In the space of about twenty minutes, I'd gone from managing in the Champions League to watching Chester's reserves against a semi-professional team in the Cheshire Senior Cup.

"Whose idea was this? You're a genius. Best early Christmas present ever."

Briggy seemed pleased by my reaction. "What's next, Max?"

"Next we have to turn this," I said, nodding towards Chester, "into a team that can beat Bayern Munich."

"That's impossible, is it?"

"No, not even close. I know how good I am now. It's not easy, but... Ah, fuck it. Yeah, it'll be easy."

She smiled. "You'll find ways to make it harder, though."

The Brig tipped his head back and laughed. "Busted, sir. Busted."