2.

Wednesday, October 21

The day after a match, we took it easy. Light recovery work for everyone who had played, followed by more intense, smaller sessions for the lads who didn't. I encouraged the coaches to get creative with that time and while they designed most sessions to fit Chester DNA (technique, technique, technique) the drills could be about anything - a coach might use the group as guinea pigs for an idea he had while high on midnight cheese. That meant Wednesdays were varied and vivid. When training was this much fun, it helped you get over the angst of not playing the night before.

Yeah, our drills were excellent and after a win, when the banter lubricated aching joints, training was always a good laugh.

"This isn't funny, Max. Tell us what really happened."

I groaned. I had arrived at Bumpers Bank after a fitful sleep knowing that what I needed was to run around, kick some balls really hard, and let off some steam in the gym. Instead, I had been dragged into an impromptu meeting in the Sin Bin, the cabin where we did sports psychology, video analysis, and team meetings. It was small, which was good when you wanted to create a sense of togetherness, but bad when you wanted to sprint a hundred yards in ten seconds. "You're all overreacting."

MD, my boss (kinda), didn't agree. If his sallow face and rumpled clothes were any guide, he had slept less than me. "Tell us."

I sighed and got to my feet. My former bodyguard, John Smith (AKA the Brig) was at the front. He hadn't gone home last night; he had been assisting the police while launching his own inquiries. My new PA (protector-assassin) was off to the side. The events of the night before had perked Briggy all the way up; she was the only person in the room who looked fit and fresh. The entirety of our senior back office staff were there, along with the new batch of admins we had recruited over the summer. The senior coaches and physios were upright and alert, while the most incongruous participant was our head groundsman.

One of the on-site cooks burst in. "Did I miss it?"

I shook my head. "This is absurd. Look, I'm fine, okay? Here's what happened. Couple of dudes wanted my laptop. I used my knowledge of positional play to skilfully manoeuvre them into a flat back two, then ran straight up the middle. They ran to grab me but I put the brakes on and they crashed into each other and fell over, out cold. Okay? Now the maddest part was that one guy had actual stars circling around his head but with the other one it was little tweety birds."

Ruth, a hot blonde who liked horses, said, "The men were tied up."

"Yes," I said, warming to my story. I moved around the room making eye contact with everyone. "I was like, shit! Need to incapacitate these miscreants! So I grabbed their shoelaces and trussed them up like turkeys. The best thing? Even if they got to their feet, they wouldn't have been able to run! That's a two-for-one piece of skill. Beautiful."

Brooke, a hot blonde who liked horses, said, "The steward said it was Briggy who tied the men up."

"Yeah, of course," I said. "She was there, right? She was not impressed with my Bunny Rabbit method. She grew up on a barge in Hamburg and she knows eight knots. Eight! Can you believe it? Simon saw her retying the knots I'd already made."

MD said, "I don't understand why you're obfuscating."

The Brig said, "With regret, sir, it's a police matter now. The men are in custody and we hope to find out who they were working for whilst ensuring the prosecutors have a rock solid case. We should not discuss the incident, only what it means."

One of the new back office guys - David, I think he was called - had soft fluffy hair and tiny glasses. He said, "The phones are blowing up from the media. We need to put out a statement."

That pissed me off. "You're David, right? David, what you've just said scares me more than what happened last night. You don't work for the Daily Mail. You don't work for talkSPORT. You work for Chester Football Club. We exist to play football matches, not to rush to the phone every time some odious hack clicks their fingers. We are the big dogs, we set the tempo, we are the protagonists in our own story and don't need to do anything except get back to fucking work. This show's over."

The Brig was tall, lean, straight-backed. After serving in the army he had gone off to do mercenary work. When I couldn't find anything good to stream, I sometimes closed my eyes and reimagined movies with John as the star. What if he was in Die Hard? What if he was in Die Hard 2? What if he was in Die Hard 4? "Sir," he said, with some disapproval. "This would be an opportune moment to reassure your staff that you are in rude health and that we are taking steps to ensure this doesn't repeat."

"Yes, fine. Fine." How could I end this scene early? When you discussed feelings with English people they tended to remember they had left the oven on. I tried opening up. "Okay, ah, yeah it was a shock. I didn't expect anything like that to happen again. I didn't sleep well but... all good." Virtually no-one was satisfied; I would have to give them more. "Some of you know I'm going to do one of my famous 'He's Done What?!' moments later this season. Absolutely can't discuss it yet so don't even bother asking. All you need to know is that I'll be popping over to Germany for a few weeks and it'll be insanely hard and I thought yeah I can't fucking deal with learning a language on top of everything else so I'll get a translator. If he or she is going to follow me around for sixteen hours a day, why can't they take some of my general phone calls, too? I need an assistant, everyone says. This was a chance to try someone out for a while, right? See if that even fits into my workflow. Why not start early, in that case? Especially since our friends in Germany are paying. And then I thought, you know what? I'm very annoying and even if I'm on my best behaviour I'm going to piss a lot of people off. So let's get someone who can translate, is smart enough to keep up with me, and can fucking lay out two beefy boys in five seconds. Enter Briggy. The movie of her life will be called The Risk Manager and it will be awesome."

Ruth was shaking her head and it was obvious she hadn't yet spoken to her boyfriend, the Brig. She was as in the dark as everyone else, which was fine because she didn't actually work here. "And yesterday was her first day? Is that coincidence?"

"I fucking hope so," I said. I looked from the Brig to Briggy. We had talked it out pretty extensively. The Brig nodded. I said, "We're sure it's a coincidence. Look, if she wasn't there I would have handed over the laptop, the end. Worst case would have been they made me unlock the spreadsheets but there are 30 protected files on there and I would have started with the dummy ones, right? They didn't have infinite time. I think they were being paid to get the laptop, nothing else. But, like, I'm not just wandering around with my head in the clouds. I've just hired a risk management specialist and I'm a risk management savant." I pointed to the Brig and Briggy. "I've got two people close to me who understand security, plus I've got Dylan and the army boys." I had spent a year teaching a Welsh army unit how to play football and the squaddies were always keen on earning a bit of cash on the side. "My schedule is pretty unpredictable so it's hard to imagine being attacked tonight, right, because no-one knows where I'll be. On match days I'll have Briggy and a couple of Welsh bouncers."

Our head of youth development and part-time data nerd, Spectrum, shot his hand up. "What's on the laptop?"

"Nothing special. The squad's wages, which I know is not ideal, plus some numbers that sort of, ah, show how good I think the players are. It would be embarrassing if those got out but those numbers are just my opinion, aren't they?"

Briggy said, "Max has been telling everyone he has an advanced artificial intelligence that, quote, has solved football. That's why the laptop was wanted."

Spectrum was frowning. "And do you?"

This was crazy to me. Spectrum had been by my side as I had diagnosed entire teams in seconds, reorganised them, pressed on oppo weak points, spotted players who were hiding injuries, and much, much more, all without a computer in sight. What data would my AI be using when it came to twelve-year old players? I supposed Spectrum thought I was doing the young players through sheer talent while using the AI to be even better with the seniors.

I rubbed my eyebrow. The AI story had kept people off my back for three-and-a-half years but if it was putting me and people around me in danger, it had to go. "No. There's no AI."

Ruth threw her hands up. "So how do you do it, then?"

Spectrum turned to her. "It's something to do with the laptop, he just doesn't want to tell us what."

"Would you?" said Brooke. "It's a billion-dollar secret."

"Hey now," said Briggy, sitting up. "Did you say billion with a B?"

Brooke turned back to me. "Max, how many hundred-million-pound players do we have on our books?"

"It's impossible to know for sure," I said.

"Max," said Brooke.

"Three."

"Does that include you?" said Colin Beckton, player-coach.

"No."

"Make it four, then."

"Thanks, mate. I think of myself more as a seventy-seven-million-pound player." 77 was my squad number.

"It's Soccer Supremo," said Spectrum. Everyone turned to look at him. "I knew it from the start but Max insisted he'd never played it and had barely heard of it, but sometimes he asked me questions about really specific parts of the game."

Outside, the shouts of the lads getting ready for training called to me like a siren song, but the cabin was deathly quiet. Spectrum had given me a possible explanation, hadn't he? "My name is Max Best and I'm a Soccer Supremo addict." I looked left and right. People were into it! We were off to a great start! "My entire career is built on Soccer Supremo but I have been too prideful to admit it. I wanted people to think I was special but I'm not. I'm just yet another nerd who learned about tactics by trial and error. I'm a bald fraud."

Briggy eyed my amazing trim. "Why do you keep calling people with great hair bald frauds? You said it about TJ, too."

MD was impatient. "It's a football thing. Can we stick to the point, please?"

The interruption had given me a few valuable seconds to think. "I... what do I do? I get a player profile from the Soccer Supremo database and input it into my spreadsheet. I tweak the numbers based on what I see in training. I probably run fixtures through the match engine dozens of times until I get a strategy that works. The game's just a simulation, isn't it? They have spent millions of pounds and thirty years making it realistic. I can try out hundreds of strategies and use the best ones in real life. That's why I make substitutions at strange times, isn't it? Because in the simulations that was the one thing that worked... And obviously I use it for scouting. I need a right back with pace and positioning. Bosh. The game gives me 24 options and I start making calls."

"What the shitting crap are you blithering on about?" said Ruth. "That makes no sense. What about Wibbers? Roddy Jones? You spotted them long before they were in any computer games."

I dug my index fingers into my temples. "Soccer Supremo is built on the work of scouts around the world. They watch players and send hugely detailed reports that get added to the central database. I... pay the scouts to send the reports to me, too. I see the numbers many months before they go into the finished game."

Spectrum shook his head. "There are thousands of scouts who contribute to Soccer Supremo."

"Right, I couldn't afford to pay them all. Um... I know eight scouts who work the British Isles and they give me tips. That's how I knew about Wibbers and Roddy."

"What about me?" said Pascal Bochum, my diminutive German forward. "I wasn't in the database when we met, or for a long time after."

I pointed at him, slowly. "You had been partially scouted playing for Darlington's youth team. The scout sent me your file but wanted to, you know, finish getting all your numbers before putting you in the game but in the meantime you moved clubs so he couldn't. When we met, I knew you were fast and clever but didn't know as much about you as other players. That's why I made you do a trial. It was so I could fill out your player profile! Hey, this works."

"What about Youngster?" said Ruth. "He wasn't even playing organised football when you discovered him. There was no way a scout could have given you a tip."

"I thought he was someone else."

A single laugh exploded out of Ruth. "Max!"

MD was pinching his nose. "You don't want to tell us your method, that's understandable. If you don't have the laptop with you, can we still perform to the same level on the pitch?"

"Yeah, it's nothing to do with anything."

"Will you please agree to stop carrying the bloody thing around?"

I held up a finger and closed my eyes. "Something's happening. An idea. I... Shit, it's gone. I think there's a way to address this. Everyone? Everyone listen. I'm fine. I'm not planning to take any stupid risks in the near future."

Ruth said, "Oh, what was that?"

"What?"

"As you said you weren't planning to do anything stupid you got a guilty look on your face!"

I tutted. "Please be sensible, Ruth. As I was saying, I'm not planning to take any risks or make this an unsafe place to work. We will get more security and I will address this whole laptop mess very soon, I promise. The Brig's got friends in the police. He can't tell the rest of us what's going on, but in Brig we trust, yeah? We're coming at this from all angles but guys, none of it matters if we don't beat Barnsley on Saturday. We need to get that three points otherwise, if you think about it, the terrorists have won."

"Fucking hell, Max," said MD.

"While the gang's all here, I'll do a few quick introductions with Briggy. Football people, please go and football. If someone could set up a free kick scenario for me, that would be amazing."

Sticky, our goalkeeper coach, was a gruff Yorkshireman. "I'll go in goal if you want to take some shots, boss. All the lads will be happy to." We had four goalies in the first team squad and while one played for a different club, he trained with us. Having four keepers meant I could take shots for quite a while without wearing one out.

"Yeah, top. How soon can you be ready?"

"The others are warmed up, or should be. If you want to get stuck in..."

"Bosh. Sometimes I love this place."

I looked around. Everyone would need reassurance, including Ruth. She was tough but she was more sensitive than she liked everyone to think. We ran a sports agency together and while its expansion would come to something of a halt if I died, there was already enough talent on the books to make Ruth very, very rich. We would have to sit down and talk about my will. What would become of my share in the business? Maybe I'd split it between Ruth and Emma, though I had read too many Agatha Christie novels to tell them I was planning that.

Yeah, I'd talk to Ruth later - she was my neighbour so that was easy - and after training I would pop up to Brooke's office and play Soccer Supremo and talk about death. Double the fun!

But there was only one serious candidate for the first big talk. "MD, let's go for a tiny chat."

***

MD and Briggy followed us outside and waited for a half a minute while I got my boots on and picked up a bag of match balls. Sticky got the goalies from the far field and set up the mannequins on the side of our main training pitch closest to the Sin Bin.

It must have been the shock or the worry, but instead of going back to work, most of those who had been in the meeting came to the side of the pitch and watched from between the goal and the corner flag, while my players gathered around behind me.

To this group, I said, "Guys, can you fuck off, please? I want to have a private chat with MD and let him know the sky isn't about to fall."

Youngster, one of my prodigies, one of three Chester players who would one day be worth one hundred million pounds, shook his head. "We would like to know what happened."

"They came at me, four of them - no, five! - but as luck would have it there was a stepladder right there in the car park and I used that to defend and defeat. No big D, okay? Right, now scarper."

"Is that what happened, Mr. Dean?"

"Ah, no. No, apparently Briggy dealt with them. I wouldn't get on her bad side, lads."

I clicked my fingers. "That reminds me. This is Briggy. She's my new personal assistant and she'll be doing some of the menial jobs I don't want to do, such as talking to you lot. If she says Max says jump, you say how high. If she says give me five pounds, you say ahhh Max didn't say. Everyone got it? Good."

Alfie Clitheroe, a young midfielder who wasn't yet good enough to play for the first team and was finding it hard to carve out a niche in the team dynamic, said, "Are you gonna take free kicks, boss?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Can we watch?"

His excited curiosity drew a few chuckles. I said, "Are you in a rush, MD?"

He rubbed his nose. "No. A dose of you showing off might do me some good."

I laughed. "It's not showing off! I didn't ask fucking fifty people to stop what they were doing, did I? I just want to blow off some steam." He didn't reply. "Fine, I'll show off, if you insist. Lads, get closer." My squad formed a dense semi-circle a couple of yards behind me. "I've been thinking about how to explain football to Briggy. I thought I'd try to do it through the lens of risk management. Who thinks that's a good idea?"

Youngster put his hand up, realised he was the only one, and dropped it, but he thrust it all the way back. He was a twenty-one-year-old from Manchester but spoke in the serious, deep tone of a fifty-year-old Ghanaian funeral home director. "I do."

"Okay, that's enough motivation for me to plough ahead with what is obviously a failed concept."

Briggy smiled. She liked being the centre of attention, which was pretty fucking weird for a bodyguard. "I'm very curious about this, especially since you said you were a risk management savant."

"That might be an exaggeration but I think about risk non-stop. Okay, let's take one scenario in football. I've been running around like a little boy in short shorts, having a whale of a time, and some villain has booted me up the arse. The referee has said, oi, leave it out!"

"That's what referees say, is it?"

"I don't know, I never listen to them."

My players laughed at that, but MD shook his head. "Max has a ref's licence and he's an amazing referee. Sees everything. One strategic risk for our football projects is that Max decides he likes being a ref more than being booted up the arse."

"Can you stop showing off please?" I asked. "Briggy knows you're a top international businessman, okay? Strategic risk? Jesus. Who talks like that? Right, because the foul happened here, I get a shot at goal from the same spot." I took a ball and placed it down. "That's Swanny in goal. Swanny, you happy with the wall?"

"Bit to the left, please."

I turned my head and two players rushed to move the 'wall', which was four metal mannequins side-by-side. "Thanks, lads. So I'm here. I'm going to try to score a goal. What are the risks?"

"Oh, this will be interactive?" Briggy turned to the lads and tried to look sweet. "Can anyone help me with the answer?" The lads looked at me; no-one spoke. Briggy scoffed. "You're really the king around here, aren't you?" She shrugged. "The goalkeeper doesn't know where you will shoot. Can he cover the entire goal?"

"Mmm not really. Depends how hard I kick the ball, how high I shoot, how close to the posts, things like that. It's not like a penalty where the odds are massively in my favour. A penno is about an 85% chance of a goal. This is like 5%. I'm absolutely incredible at this so for me it's, what, 7%? It's super hard and most of the time I'd chip the ball up for someone to try to get a header. But you know what's mad? I wasn't asking about the risk to Swanny. What's the risk to my team?"

"To your team? Nothing. You've got the ball."

"Youngster?"

"If Mr. Best hits the wall, the opposition could have the opportunity to break."

I demonstrated by hitting a mannequin. "The moment where I lose the ball and the other team gets it is called a transition. We practice transitions a lot because it's a great chance for the oppo to score a goal on us, but when they're trying to exploit the chaos is also an amazing chance for us to transition on them. You know the way you think football is boring? That's because most coaches try to minimise how many transitions their team gives up."

"Because they are so risky."

"Exactly. Right, let me hit one. Swanny," I said, to let him know I was ready.

Ten yards ahead of me was the wall. Another fifteen yards ahead was the right-hand side post. I let my eyes go up the post and left onto the crossbar. If I could curl the ball around the wall and into the top-right corner, no goalkeeper in the world would save it.

I took a step and gave my leg a gentle whoosh, flicking my foot just a smidge as I made contact. The ball spun as it softly rose, dipped, and clipped the outside right of the post.

The lads made all kinds of cooing noises, while Swanny stood there with his huge gloves on his hips.

Briggy said, "I don't understand. It wasn't a goal, was it?"

"No," said MD. "But it was beautiful nonetheless."

"Miss," said Youngster, stepping in front of me. "Did you follow the flight of the ball?" He stepped forward until he was aligned with the wall. "Mr. Best hit it here, to the right, and brought it back. When he gets it just right, the wall hinders only the goalkeeper's view." He smiled, eyes shining. "We use their defences against them."

I said, "What's good about that kind of strike is there's no chance of a rebound and thus no risk of transition. At worst, the ball will flick off a defender's head and I'll get a corner."

Briggy thought about it. "Make the wall bigger."

"Perfect," I said. "Dazza, you're with me. Youngster, mark him."

Darren 'Dazza' Smith, a hulking Australian striker trundled forward like a good-natured battering ram, taking up a position fifteen yards to my left and about eight yards forward. Youngster, a defensive midfielder, put his hands out to hold Dazza back, but the Aussie was a foot taller - quite a mismatch. "Now, Youngster, join the wall." Relieved, my fellow Mancunian went to the right of the mannequins. "As requested, a fifth dummy," I said. Youngster rolled his eyes but laughed goofily.

I clipped a high pass that Dazza bonked into the goal with his massive forehead.

"Well," scoffed Briggy, "don't leave him alone."

"You've got five in the wall, one goalie, that leaves you five defenders. Zach, mark Dazza."

"Who's Mark?" said Briggy. "That one was a joke."

Zach did what Youngster had done - grappled with Dazza - but he did so with much more enthusiasm. The pair pushed and shoved each other, relentlessly, endlessly searching for an advantage. Their tussle was mesmerising. "Wow. That could go on a fresco. All right, so now if I clip the ball up for Dazza..." I said, as I planned the pass. I leaned back and clipped the ball softly over Youngster's head, with spin... but it came back off the post.

"Fuuuuck!" yelled Swanny. "I always fall for that."

Youngster pointed to my feet. "The disguise in the striking technique... it is perfection."

I took another ball. "It's not perfection," I said. "You're just all super gullible. Here, let's do a cross so that Brooke can see her dude in action."

"I'm not falling for that one," said Swanny. He slapped his gloves together and took a step to his left, my right.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"Let's do Lee's new signal," I said. I raised my left arm, looked confused, and raised my right. There was some jeering in the area around Lee, whose Morale was listed as superb after his statistically amazing display the night before. The banter stopped as I eased forward and clipped the ball between the Australian striker and the American defender.

They both leaped, but Zach won the contest and mightily headed the ball out of the box. The contact between the players made a comic-book 'oof' sound. "Yeah," cried Zach. "My ball! That's my ball! Hurrr!" It was hard to know how much of this display was post-modern irony and how much was just him being Texan. "Let's go again, boss! I can do that all day. ALL DAY."

I rolled another ball into position. "Briggy, I told Zach his abs weren't symmetrical so that every time he went past a mirror he'd stop and check. Him constantly showing off his torso caught the eye of Brooke, my most irreplaceable employee. I knew she'd like it, and she recently committed her future to the club. That's called 5D chess. That's Brooke, there."

Just as Zach turned to look at his sweetheart, I sent up another cross. Dazza went hard, bundled Zach to the turf, and powered a header downwards. Swanny got his feet going, dived, and tried to palm the ball up and over but there was too much power on it.

"Throw another shrimp on THAT barbie!" cried Dazza, as he loomed over Zach. I think that's what he said, anyway. He reached out and picked his mate up. Zach was fuming and wanted to go again, but it was supposed to be a chill session.

"Hmm," I said. "What have we learned about football so far? More or less nothing, I think. No matter. Lads, fuck off now."

"Aw, boss," said Alfie. "One more proper one. Please?"

"Go on, boss!" called someone, and that turned into a crescendo.

I took another ball, placed it carefully, and thought about what I wanted to do. I had two main ways of striking a shot from this situation. The first was called The Cannonball. This went straight and true but if I caught it just right, it would dip late. That was deadly, but goalies weren't stupid and normally set up their wall in such a way as to cut out that option. The second technique was called The Beckham, where I would strike while leaning back and twisting, putting absurd amounts of spin on the ball. These shots had the potential to curl around obstacles and could continue to swerve, leaving the ball's flight path looking like a banana.

I turned away from Swanny. "Alfie. Do you want a cannonball or a Beckham?"

"Beckham."

"K."

I took two steps back and three to the left. "Oh, shit," said Swanny.

I concentrated, imagining the ball sailing around the wall, curving, and hitting the inside of the right post. That was good progression, wasn't it? The outside of the post, the post itself, the inside. Getting closer and closer. I glanced at the target, stepped forward, and put all the stress and frustration of a sleepless, anxiety-ridden night into one kick of pure release.

The ball flew up over the middle of the wall - a slight miskick - as Swanny skipped to his left, ready to fling himself and stretch his arm.

Too late, he realised I hadn't miskicked it and I had, in fact, misdirected him yet again. The spin took hold and the ball veered crazily to the left, taking it left, left, left, into the side-netting

The buzz from the players was gratifying, as was the sound of Alfie flicking his wrists and saying "Rarr!"

Briggy smiled. "Remind me never to get on your bad side... while you've got a football and are wearing boots."

I turned and shooed my outfielders away. "Get training now, please. Thank you." They went to the other end of the pitch, where Peter Bauer had laid out loads of cones. That seemed to be the signal to the admin team that they could depart, too.

Swanny stepped behind the goal and another goalie, young Wilfred Banks, took position. He was improving nicely but goalies seemed to develop slower than outfielders so we had to be patient with him. I took a quick free kick, not trying to hit it too hard, putting loads of spin on. Banksy's feet danced and he leaped, stretched, and flicked the ball over the bar.

"Niiiice," I said. The rotation of the goalies started in earnest, with a new one 'taking the sticks' after every shot. I clipped spin-laded shots while chatting. "Briggy, this is MD, as you've worked out. He's the managing director of Chester and he's also my partner in a football club just across the border in Wales."

"I heard about this," said Briggy. "This is the Max Best Universe."

"I heard it as the Maxy Club Model," said MD.

I fired a shot over the bar, then pointed. "Just over there is a big field. In that field is one football pitch, one building, and a few cabins like these ones we've got here. That unassuming little plot..." I slapped one over the wall, top-right, and there was a pleasant rustle as the ball hit and rolled down the net. "That plot of land is the base of a gigantic football factory I call the Northern Powerhouse. I've been all up and down Wales scouting their best kids, right, and the teams I have assembled are already so awesome that families in the south of Wales want to get in on the action. Saltney Town, that's the team, is stocked. It's stacked. It's absolutely bonkers how much talent there is."

"Why Wales?"

"Why not?" I said. Top-right, nice save. "Have you ever had someone who believed in you?"

"Yes."

"They gave you what you needed when you needed it and you're always looking for ways to return the favour?"

"Yes," she said, quieter.

"I'm always beefing with everyone but the people in charge of Welsh football believe in me. They've supported me, staked their reputations and careers on my talent, they listen to me, they act on my advice. It's intoxicating being able to operate in a situation where people aren't always throwing up obstacles. No offence, MD." I cracked a shot against one of the mannequin heads - so annoying! I went again, more carefully, and drew a save. "Wales have been amazing to me so in return I'm taking them to the moon. No biggie." I struck the next shot with unexpected violence and the keeper did well to parry it. "Part of the plan is to build a training centre there, with dorms for the kids to come and stay for a long weekend of football training. Chester's players will use equipment that we won't have here in Bumpers, so it's win-win." Good save, low to the left. "MD is stressed that if I'm murdered, the Chester project will collapse and he will have spent a small fortune on a Welsh folly no-one ever asked for."

MD said, "I also like you as a person and don't want to see you hurt. By the way, it's a large fortune."

Sticky was in goal so I took a bit more time and absolutely cracked a cannonball, sweeping it across the wall to the left of the goal. Sticky sidestepped and punched it away. "I thought that was in. Are his arms getting longer? Mike, as you know I'm a trailblazer on and off the pitch. On the pitch I created The Art of Slapping, I brought Relationism to these previously dreary shores, and I codified the three Ts of football."

Briggy said, "Are you going to explain all that?"

"It'll come up, yes. I've been thinking of working on something called The Fourteen Stations of the Cross."

"What's that?" said MD.

"Don't know yet; it's just a cool name." The next goalie had let a couple in a row in, so I chipped an easy one. I wasn't trying to break anyone's spirit. "But as well as being a deep football thinker I'm also a business leader in waiting. Briggy, you haven't heard that I invented a management technique called Inbox Zero and coined the phrase, Buy Lee, Sell High."

"That's awful," said MD.

I ignored his feedback. "My latest contribution to the world's stock of knowledge is thus. I have been thinking about risk and I've divided it into four types. The first is what I call operations risk."

"Oh, boy. He does this thing, Briggy, where he falls asleep with a Wikipedia page open and when he wakes up he assumes he wrote it."

Briggy did a girlish laugh I wouldn't have expected from her.

"No," I said. "I invented all of this. Operations risk is where operational errors stop us achieving our goals. Okay, that would mean some kind of fiasco at the stadium, if the billing department couldn't process ticket sales, if payroll didn't pay the players and they went on strike, or if the team fell to pieces. I feel like that is 90% of what I think about on any given day. Not so much the back office stuff but we gave Brooke budget for five new staff, didn't we? That David guy and the others. That's to build resilience into our systems. And, like, the players wouldn't turn on us for one admin error. I think we're in good shape. Don't you think, MD?"

"Yes."

"Two is what I call asset impairment risk."

"That's the term you chose, is it?" said MD, twinkling at Briggy. All the business talk was kneading away at his tense muscles, slapping him gently while essential oils filled his nostrils.

I remembered I was supposed to be taking shots, and dabbed one really slowly that dropped just under the crossbar. Swanny clawed it away. "Let's move into the middle," I called out, mostly to keep the goalies busy. The young ones rushed to move the mannequins and the bag of balls about eight yards to the left. "Asset impairment risk is when our assets lose value. That could be like Youngster getting seriously injured. Any injury is bad, but with modern medicine, players can come back."

I had been cursed for years and had access to the Injuries tab for most of that time. I had been going round the country asking players with serious knee injuries to agree to share their medical data with Physio Dean so he could aggregate hundreds of cases and try to work out root causes and to track which treatments got players back into action faster. In all that time I had only seen three cases where the curse told me a player's maximum ceiling had permanently lowered, and in all three cases it was only a five percent reduction.

Briggy said, "What other assets do you have?"

"The stadium," said MD. "But it's brand new and we don't leverage against it. If the accounting value halved, so what?"

"It's not a business risk, then," I said. "No, I think our risks are all about the players. If one breaks the law, goes to prison, things like that, they lose transfer value. We try to only recruit decent people and we try to have a positive, inclusive culture so if someone had a drugs or gambling problem maybe we'd spot it, maybe they'd come forward." I frowned. "I think I'd spot a drugs habit." The wall was in the middle of the goal so I had to choose to shoot left or right. I went left; Banksy saved. "Look, some players could lose value but not all of them."

"Do you have insurance?" said Briggy.

"Some," said MD. "It's very expensive. We stick to what Max calls the crown jewels."

I was about to strike the ball but paused. "Let's go through the squad again and see who's worth enough to insure. That's changing fast." I went left again; Swanny caught the ball. "Ooh!" I said, laughing. "Now who's showing off?" Swanny pretended he wasn't absolutely delighted but I could see his Morale in his player profile; it had shot up.

MD said, "What's third on your list of risks?"

"Yeah, well, obviously it's, er..." I turned away and pretended to sneeze. "Competitive risk. We're not alone in this ecosystem. It could be that the landscape changes. I mean, an easy example is that Oxford United, Portsmouth, and Wycombe spend crazy money in January while we're weakening our squad." I took a shot. "Wycombe's owner is worth five billion. Portsmouth is owned by the guy who ran Disney. He's a billionaire. Oxford are owned by two of the richest men in Indonesia. These days I'm more surprised when an opposition owner isn't bonkers rich."

"But if any of the money they spend comes to us," said MD, "I'm fine with them splashing the cash. The sporting risk is the competition becomes so intense we can't handle it, but we have Max so normal rules don't apply. Until he gets mugged one time too many. That's what's keeping me awake at night, Max."

"Right but what I'm saying is we have Sandra Lane, we have Colin, Peter, Pascal. Great coaches. I'm training them to be managers and by the way, in Wales we've got the manager and under him, five more top Welsh coaches."

"Succession planning," said Briggy, with approval.

"Yes, although I call it Chester: The Next Generation. The playing squad is amazing and there are players in the youth system ready to step up and a whole pipeline beneath them. The football side could run for two seasons with no new input. You might finish fourth and lose in the playoffs but I think the team would be pretty solid and life would be pretty good. My goal is that every month I'm here, that period where the club could coast gets extended by two months, if you see what I mean."

"You think we could coast for two years?" said MD. He had an 'owner' profile that told me his Ambition score was a lowly 4 out of 20. He would naturally be attracted to a period of relative calm.

"If I die, you sell Wibbers, Youngster, and in a couple of years, Roddy Jones. You get big money and five percent of their next fees. Don't let the next manager blow all the cash and you'll be solvent for a decade. If you want I can make you a list of, like, a hundred players in their early 20s who can do a job in League One. You could survive with those guys and if you're patient, never have to pay a transfer fee."

MD's eyes briefly went larger than the balls I was forgetting to shoot. I clipped one to the right. Saved. "Such a list would help me sleep at night, Max. Yes."

"Okay, I'll get on it and put it in a bank vault. I'll charge the expense to the club, I reckon. Briggy, you can help me with that, right? That's spy stuff."

MD's expression had soured. "A bank vault?"

"Yeah. You get it when I die. Not when you sack me."

Briggy said, "If they're paying for the vault, Max..."

If I wasn't paying for the vault, I wouldn't be able to control who could open it. "Wow, you're great. Good catch."

I swept a ball to the left, which was saved again. "Whose side are you on?" complained MD.

"I'm just having fun," said Briggy. "Who knew football was such a heady mix of ultra-violence, rutting boys, and earnest risk management discussions full of oneupmanship?"

"What's the fourth risk factor?"

"Um..." I brought my hand up, but couldn't read my writing. "Can't remember. Briggy?"

She took my hand, pulled it to a painful angle, and peered. "Franchise risk. What is franchise risk, Max?"

"It's... I can't remember."

MD said, "You can't remember even though this is your personal creation, this way of splitting risk into four concepts?"

I spat a vicious free kick over and to the left, but it was saved. Nearly time to stop, I reckoned. After the initial high of getting back on the grass, I was feeling pretty crap.

Briggy said, "Franchise risk is when stakeholders lose faith in what you're doing. Maybe you would understand it more clearly if you called it Reputation Risk."

"Ah, that's damage to the brand and stuff. Yeah," I said, closing my eyes while I thought about one aspect of my job that really got under my skin. "There are still businesses that won't trade with us because the old Chester City didn't pay its bills and then went bust. I mean, what can we do about that? We just have to try to be good and decent and all that, right? When we mess up, we look people in the eye and apologise. Treat people with respect and when you stuff up, make things right." I called out to the goalies. "I'm done, lads. Thanks for the sesh."

"We'll use the balls, boss," called Sticky. "You go on."

I felt my body. There had been some good hits in there but the consistency was bad. Technique meant being able to repeat skills. Maybe it was all the chatting. "Sticky, can you pencil me in for another one of these in the morning, please?"

"Aye aye, cap'n."

I took a few steps away from goal to give us more privacy and to give the goalies more space. "MD, the amount you're putting into Saltney, we'll recoup that from one player. Charlie Cullen, box-to-box midfielder."

"What's one of those?" said Briggy.

I pointed to large rectangle by the goal. "That is a penalty area or penalty box. There's one on the other side, right? A player who can go from box to box and be equally effective is really valuable. He's a defender when you're defending, a goalscorer when you're attacking. He needs great stamina because he's up and down all the time. They're slightly out of fashion these days but I think it's just because most managers aren't brave enough to let them rip."

"What's bravery got to do with it?"

"It's the question of risk again. We've got eleven players, right? Actually, scrap that, that's too abstract. Take the example from before, when I had that free kick. There were four defenders in the wall and one goalkeeper. What if I put seven players in the box for me to cross to?"

Briggy frowned. "From what I saw, you need one defender per person. So... seven defenders, goalie makes eight. I can only have three in the wall."

"Right, which would give the goalie kittens because of what I can do. The way my mind works is, what if I'm on the ball and I put everyone else in the box? Ten players."

MD side-eyed me. "Including the goalie?"

"Why not? How do you defend that?"

Briggy said, "But if you miss it's the... transition."

"And we don't have a goalie because he's in the wrong box," said MD.

I shrugged. "I want to win. Most managers want to avoid losing. The hard part is finding the balance between risk and reward. I'm good at it. Right, but we were talking about Charlie Cullen. In most teams he will look fine, look like a decent player. But if I've got him in my eleven, I'm going to give him opportunities to burst forward and get into the other team's box, while still making sure we have enough defenders. Under me, he'll score ten goals in a season. If he's 17 and playing at a good level, scoring goals, there's ten million pounds, easy. And he's just one player. The whole place is a gold mine, MD. Even if I die, you lay down the mine cart tracks and buy the pickaxes."

He shook his head slightly. "I'm much more at ease, Max, I have to say, but you've skipped over twenty potential risks. For example, our managers and coaches are poached and I don't know how to replace them."

"I'll make a list."

"And put it in the vault?" He squeezed his eyes shut. "The Welsh FA loves you but they are indifferent to me. They could leave me high and dry if you're out of the picture. What use is a ten-million-pound training camp that is used a few times a week by Chester FC players? Even if you stay there is danger around every corner! You have, what is it, two court cases against UEFA. Biting the hand that feeds you! And how many times have you been banned by the English FA? You have been attacked twice and left for dead once. You have fallen out with star players in the past. And let's not forget that you have a spectacular and frankly unfounded beef with the actual manager of the English national team!"

I scoffed. "Yeah, that's a risk all right." I mimed removing a cigarette from my lips and throwing it down, crushing it under my heel. "A risk for him."

***

I spent most of the day pledging to do something about this myth that had built up around my laptop, but I didn't want to spend my time drafting carefully-worded statements and reacting to the reaction. Briggy had handled it; everything was fine. Plus there was a riveting match to attend. I suspected it would be educational but I couldn't have foreseen just how much it would affect me.

That evening, Briggy drove me to Nottingham to watch Notts Forest versus Bologna in the Champions League. It had the potential to be a really interesting match but the main reason to go - I thought - was to gather experience points. The top competitions, such as the Premier League, Champions League, and World Cup, gave me 7 XP per minute. If I was the manager, the rate was doubled. If I played, it collapsed to 1 XP per minute.

There was a place in the curse that showed how much I had saved up.

XP balance: 6,410

The next perk I wanted to buy would cost 9,000 XP and I had to buy it in the calendar month of October. I had been grinding hard, attending at least one match per day, and if I stuck to my schedule I would have enough to buy the perk over the weekend. As awesome as that perk would be - more on that later - it wouldn't directly help me when I was in Germany.

I felt overpowered for the English third tier but amusingly underpowered for the challenge that lay ahead. I needed to keep grinding, keep earning, and use my resources wisely.

The perk shop currently had 13 items for sale, excluding the monthly perk. A few of them were quality of life improvements, such as the one that would allow me to convert any in-curse monetary value to other currencies. Useful for when I was in Germany, for sure, but not absolutely essential on day one. On day one I needed to be able to win football matches.

That need also ruled out perks like the one that showed a player's 'true' market value and one that would allow me to upgrade Playdar, a scouting tool.

There were three perks that stood out as likely to help me in the short-term.

* For 15,000 XP I could unlock the 'inverted full backs' option. That would allow me to move a defender into midfield when we had the ball, which was obviously a nice option but the main reason to buy it would be social. In the sixth tier of English football I had been able to blag my way through conversations about inverted full backs by saying 'yeah that's too complicated for my players'. What would I say when I was the manager of Bayern actual Munich, one of the top top teams in the world? 'Oh I don't know how to do that?' I would lose what little respect I had. Doubly so since Bayern was the spiritual home of the inverted full back.

* 4,000 XP would buy me another Attribute. There were currently either ten or eleven gaps across the three columns of a player's profile. I knew that from the first column I was missing Anticipation, Flair would probably go in the second, and Set Pieces had to be in the third. It would be helpful to unlock an Attribute or two before I got to Germany, for sure, but was it essential?

* For 5,000 XP I could unlock the next formation.

"What's a formation?" asked Briggy, startling me because she hadn't said anything for ages and the timing of her comment was creepy. "I keep hearing about formations. What formation will we use against Barnsley? Things like that."

"It's how you lay out your players. Think like a battle. You have a couple of big solid units at the rear, multi-purpose guys in the middle, siege weapons at the top. Fast units to the flanks."

"Oh!"

"Barnsley use variations on three-four-three. That means three defenders, four midfielders, three forwards. Can you imagine that as three lines?"

"I think so. There's always one goalkeeper?"

"Yes. Formation numbers add up to ten and the classics are usually three numbers, like the classic of all classics, four-four-two. These days you often get one player who plays between the lines. I often use Pascal for that on the offensive side. So three-four-three becomes three-four-one-two. Can you picture that?"

"Three defenders, four midfielders... one... what's that called?"

"Attacking midfielder. He'd normally be in the centre so let's call him a central attacking midfielder, or CAM. Imagine Dazza and Gabriel as my two battering rams, with little Pascal behind. He's a bit like a skirmisher, running around, being a nuisance."

"And a general."

"What?"

"You said he was like a second brain. He's a second general."

"Sure, you could think like that. Generally speaking, lol, although it's satisfying to outwit an opposition manager by playing chess, I think long-term I'll have more success if I fill my team with smart players and let them have a lot of freedom. If you put your general between the two front lines, he's got an overview of the midfield, the forwards, and he can direct the action. Pascal's a risk-reward genius, same as me. If he was six foot five, he'd be a fifty-million-pound player."

"How important are formations?"

"Amazing question. Um... really important, but not as much as technique and decision-making. Choosing the right formation is one of the most important things a manager can do, for sure, but when the match starts you need your players to actually do what makes sense. My Chester lot are motivated because they're underpaid and want to move to bigger clubs and get paid obscene amounts. I can shout at a Chester guy and he'll buck his ideas up, right? How does that work at Bayern? The players earn more than the manager. They're all rich and famous. I think I wouldn't be a bad general, honestly, but no-one ever fought a war with millionaires. Can I handle elite players? That's a big, big question mark."

"Have you got anything in your motivational toolkit except shouting?"

"Of course I have. Threatening to rinse them in the post-match interviews. Threatening to make them train with the reserves. Threatening to bin them off." Briggy smiled and shook her head. I went on, "I'm worried I won't have the tactical know-how to compete in the first match and I'll lose the dressing room already. If you're one of those millionaire players, why would you run through a brick wall for some rando who doesn't know what he's doing?"

"You're a bald fraud with no skills. Remind me why you were chosen?"

"Because with me there's no risk I'd do better than the current manager."

"How is that a selling point?"

"Because he won't go for his surgery if he thinks he'll lose his job. He thinks I'll win two, draw two, lose two, something like that."

Briggy wasn't quite following but she didn't care. "You've got time before you go, right? You can work on your people skills. Why don't you imagine your Chester players are German millionaires?"

"Oh, you mean like role play what I'd do at Bayern but with my current players? That's... insane. I love it."

"By the way," said Briggy, "I've never been to Hamburg." She checked the rear-view mirror, which made me spin on the passenger seat, gripping the leather. She gave me a strange look but didn't comment on my reaction. "How's the planning going? For your heist."

I settled down. Tried to unclench. "Um... I picked out a hat."

Briggy laughed hard and went back to concentrating on the road.

I went back to the perk shop. The next formation I could buy was 3-4-2-1. Two CAMs behind one striker. Bayern had plenty of fast, creative players and not many top-class strikers, so that seemed like a good formation to have in my locker. It would work well at Chester, too. Wibbers and Pascal behind one of my strikers, with the left and right midfielders given license to run forward.

I smiled. Add a box-to-box midfielder like Charlie Cullen and we could really fuck teams up with that system. Did Bayern have such a player? "They've probably got ten," I mumbled.

"German millionaires hate when English people can't maintain an internal monologue. Top tip for you."

"Thanks, Briggy. You are the hammer."

***

Notts Forest versus Bologna.

Not exactly a match I would have expected to see in the Champions League when I was a boy, but sport is fluid. Dynasties rise and fall. Idiots get smashed, accumulated smart decisions pay off.

"Tell me about the teams," sighed Briggy, after she had spent ten minutes scanning for threats. We were at the City Ground, where in one corner of the stadium, five shipping containers had been placed on top of one another, adding 180 temporary seats. It was ugly as sin but spoke of the owner's ambition to make Forest bigger and better in every way, as fast as possible - or even faster. Plans were afoot to redevelop the quaint old ground into a beautiful 50,000-capacity wonderland. The Brian Clough stand would have solar panels on the top - where Max Best led, so the football world followed.

The on-pitch action was making me feel queasy, so it was good to have at least a partial distraction. "The whites are Bologna. In the red it's Nottingham Forest. They hate being called Notts Forest, so..."

"So you do that."

"Yes, but I actually like them. They're really interesting to me as a potential model for Chester. They spent a fair bit of money, which we wouldn't be able to do, but they focused on being solid, then added a counter-attacking threat. That means speed. Crazy speed. When they got those counters going they suddenly started winning games. Football's always evolving, though, especially in the Prem, so oppo managers said, fine, we'll sit deeper."

"Deeper?"

"They had defenders closer to their own goalkeeper. Remember Zach? Put him and me on the halfway line, boot the ball. I'm going to get it every time. When I'm ahead of him, he's toast. Put Zach twenty yards deeper and now when I get the ball I have to dribble it through him, around him, and all he has to do really is hold me up for two seconds and then the rest of the defence has enough time to come and help."

"I think I get it."

The shapes on the pitch shifted and my stomach lurched as though I was in a nightmarish rollercoaster. "So Forest add a giant battering ram."

"Like Dazza. The Australian."

"They got a New Zealand version of Dazza, and it's hard to describe the tortured nightmares that sentence is going to give me. Forest were suddenly involved in a lot of drab, low-scoring matches which their Kiwi Aussie won with one header from a free kick or corner."

"Yay, football," said Briggy, sarcastically waving her fists around.

"Absolutely fair," I said. "It was terrible to watch. But next they added a few players with guile. So the games got less drab and they were creating more types of goal. Counters, set pieces, some genuinely classy moves."

"What's a set piece?"

"Like, it's my turn and the other team can't do anything until I kick it. We say the ball is dead. I'm good at set pieces equals I'm good at dead balls. Forest scored those goals but also started getting more from open play. Is this too much detail?"

"No." She pointed to the pitch, where Forest were passing the ball around, probing for weak spots, while being hounded by the Italian team. "Open play is now, when they're dynamic. Set pieces are when the ball isn't moving."

"Basically. So do you see that the team evolved step by step? Every season they added one string to their bow while upgrading the overall quality level and now they're a real nuisance. It's brilliant management over many years to get to this point."

"How else would you approach the task if not step by step?"

"I mean, they did it in a very risk-averse way. The first rule here is always: don't lose. Don't lose. But it's three points for a win, one point for a draw, so another strategy is to take a high-risk approach. Throw caution to the wind. Heart attack football. Fearless football. Win three, lose two, and you're fifth in the league. Draw five and you're fifth from bottom. Another option is to hire a megabrain who can change tactics at the speed of thought."

There was a break in the play and I took a break, too. Unlike the director of football at Forest, I wouldn't have years and years plus a bottomless pile of cash to get to this point. There had been hints - vague, nothingy hints - that the curse had a time limit. I had all but convinced myself that most K-pop bands had curses with seven-year durations. If I was on a similar clock, I was half-way through and I needed to set things up so that either I could keep Chester's momentum going when my powers ran out, or someone else could. Even if the curse didn't have a deadline, there were all kinds of 'competitive risks' on the horizon.

More like anti-competitive risks. The Premier League could vote to abolish relegation. The teams who were in would stay in and those who were out could go swivel. The drawbridge would be pulled up. So long, suckers! Or they could keep relegation but reduce the size of the league, making it much much harder for little Chester to barge its way in. Or the megaclubs could join a European Super League. Why not a Worldwide Mega Super League? Chester could be one of the best teams left playing in the hollowed-out husk of what used to be English football.

No, we had to get to the Prem fast and rush to the top of the tree so that no-one would dare cut it down, but that was a struggle for another day.

Right now I was more interested in how to beat the Italian team than Forest.

"Bologna are freaking me out," I said.

Briggy's eyes popped open. "In what way?"

"They have a megabrain who's changing formations at the speed of thought." I scanned the pitch. "Basically, Forest have better players, which makes sense because they have four times the budget. Their manager knows how to motivate those millionaires and they do everything to a high level of polish. It's really good but it's simple. I mean, you could say it's good because it's simple and that would be a valid point."

"Well done, me."

"But I'd know what to do against Forest. They might still beat me but I'd know what to do. Bologna, though, holy shit. What a team. What a coach. It's fucking unbelievable. I don't know if I can cope with that."

Briggy checked I was being serious before laughing. "It all looks the same!"

Normos couldn't see it. What I saw on the tactics screens would often only be apparent to experts when they re-watched the match footage or when they pored over the data. I tried to stop my stomach from churning - I could catastrophise about this in private, later. "Yeah, you're right. It's a piece of piss. Nothing to worry about."

She slapped me on the arm. "Stop being a baby. Tell me what you see, oh mighty one."

I inhaled. "Their manager is called Evaristo. He's Brazilian but he lived in Italy forever and he actually played for the Italian national team. In his career, he played under five or six of the best managers going and decided to have a go himself. He got sacked for being shit - twice - and everyone thought that was the end of that. He got another chance and now the club's massively, massively overperforming and Evaristo seems like an actual genius. It's almost as though since he got sacked he met an old man who granted him a wish."

"What, and he wished to be a good football manager? What kind of dummkopf would do that?"

"Here, listen. I'll call out the formations I'm seeing, all right? Bear in mind most teams play the same system for an entire match, and some fans consider a manager progressive if he changes it at half time. Okay, they just went from four-one-four-one to four-three-three. Both the centre backs are pushing up! The fuck is going on? Two-two-six. I've never seen that. Back to four-three-three. Lost the ball. Four-five-one! Now they get it back with a turnover. Quick break, transition, chaos. Forest get back into their defensive shape. That Bologna player needed to be a lot faster, then. But now they're just keeping the ball... Three-two-four-one. This is actually mental."

"It's a lot of change and it's getting you very excited but does any of it help the team?"

"It's hard to tell. Some of the changes are whizzing by faster than I can work out what triggered them or what effect they should have. This is what I'm worried about. Assuming he doesn't have a demonic curse helping him out, Evaristo has coached every one of these moves to happen at specific times for specific purposes. Just as a coaching achievement, it's monumental. Assuming what he does works - and that's a safe assumption based on the fact the club's glory days were a hundred years ago but he's got them playing in the top club competition in the world - this is what a true tactical master looks like."

"Good job he's in Italy and you're in England, then."

I felt the blood draining from my face. "Right."

"You're worried all the coaches in Germany are the same level as him. They probably are. Ah, that's why they had to go to England to find someone of the right level. I understand it now."

I scrunched up my poor little face. "Have you ever climbed a fucking massive hill and when you got to the top you realised there was another hill, even bigger?"

"Yeah, every day before breakfast." She gave me a friendly slap. "Cheer up, Max. It's only football. No-one gives a shit that you suck."