Soccer Supremo - A Sports Progression Fantasy

”Jesus wept,” I said. ”Mate. This is a social sport. It’s a team sport. You’ve got something with this model. It does things that I haven’t seen anywhere else and it shows the value in player connections and it accepts that the sport is messy and that players don’t need to be cleanly winning headers to be contributing. That’s all gold. But then you’ve just told me you think Adam Summerhays is shit. I can’t work with someone like that. Everything we do at the club is about getting the most out of Adam Summerhays and players like him. If you think he is not improving, your model is broken. If you think we should just bin him off, you’re not the right fit for Chester. If your work can’t help me improve him, you’re no good to me.”

I thought about another guy with an Indian background, a defender called Vivek. I had scouted him and brought him to training. A coach at Chester said he was dogshit. That coach was wrong, but we had found a way to work together and now he was in charge of our youth system.

”If it was just this, we could maybe get past it, but it’s everything. It’s the bombardment of emails, texts, the hacking, the stalking, the weirdness. You want to get into football because you think it’s loads of numbers but it’s not. It’s people. You wouldn’t be working with me. Look at the league table; I don’t need you. You’d be working with my coaches, with Spectrum from the youth teams, with the players themselves. How old are you?”

”28.”

”Right. You’ve spent a lot of time working on your tech skills and zero effort has gone into social skills, soft skills, emotional intelligence, being a team player. I do not give a shit how smart you are, how brilliant, if you sigh and roll your eyes when a certain player is mentioned. It’s our job to take raw material and make it better. Not everyone is elite. I just scouted a kid who could hit the top end of the fifth tier. Doesn’t he deserve to be treated with respect? Yeah, which is why I signed him. I think there’s value in taking anyone at any level and raising them to their potential whether it’s Premier League or National League. I’ve grown out of tech bro absolutism.

”My system isn’t EDO, it’s seeing high potential in everyone and going to insane lengths to unlock it. For a minute I thought there was a chance you could be part of that, but in the end, you’re not a good fit. So look, this was very interesting and based on what I’ve seen, I’m sure you will get a job at another football club. You can tell them I was impressed. Please don’t contact me again. Don’t contact my assistant.”

I moved to the right and gave Jacob a tiny shoulder massage. He said, ”Are you leaving?”

”Yeah. Have to crush my enemies tomorrow. Early night.”

”Okay, seeya.”

”Bye,” said Stu.

I gave him an exasperated look. ”You’re coming with me!”

”Right right right.”

I left the bar without looking back at Pradeep. Stu and I worked our way through the NEC Arena while I gave the various stands longing looks. I stopped briefly at the one selling hand-made dice. ”Stu, would you rather have an exquisite, unique set of dice... or some jam?”

He perked up. ”Jam, definitely. Blackcurrant. Mmm, yes please!”

”Interesting.” I tried to look blank but inside I was rejoicing. My model was flawless.

***

I had a choice of what to do next. I could go to the hotel and have an early night, or drive back to Chester and sleep next to Emma. Normally, that wasn’t something I needed to think about for very long, but something about the way Pradeep had ruined my mood made me want to be alone.

I went to the hotel and took the elevator. It was filled with some songs that had been turned into an abstract, presumably royalty-free version of itself. It was incredibly familiar but I couldn’t place it. I hummed it in the shower and brooded for a while, slowly coming to the conclusion that while Pradeep was irritating and Danish sports equipment companies should be put in a stockade and publicly shamed, they weren’t the main reason for my grump.

No, it was me coming into contact with Bradford City and their axis of evil.