False Nine

by Philip Kerr

  Only in Britain did the clubs and more importantly the television companies treat the game like it was some kind of pantomime. The show must go on, and all that bullshit. Perhaps this had been all right back in the day when the game was played on mud at a snail’s pace – as at the Baseball Ground in 1970 – but these days the pitches were as fast as billiard tables and it’s speed that causes most of the injuries in the modern game. Of course it was the injury to me and my reputation that ought to have been occupying my thoughts now. I was going to be a laughing stock. Viktor Sokolnikov’s newspaper – his latest toy – would make sure of that.

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘I’m afraid I must insist. And more importantly for you, my lawyers will insist upon this, too. A top English firm. Slaughter & May. I imagine you’ve heard of them. Mr Manson, I sincerely hope you can understand just how generous I have been already, in coming to you in person like this to explain your unfortunate mistake. I could have placed the matter in the hands of the police and alleged a criminal conspiracy to defame both me and my company. And you would almost certainly have been arrested. But a public apology will be enough for now. Afterwards, when the dust has settled, we can discuss how you can make the matter up to me. It may be that there’s some sporting service you can yet do me.’

  I nodded. ‘Very well. Look, I’m sorry. I really don’t know what else to say right now. I’m not usually lost for words. Perhaps when I stop feeling like a complete idiot I’ll be able to think of something.’

  ‘Perhaps it would help if I had my lawyers draw up a statement for you to read tomorrow. I shouldn’t like you to say nothing at all out of sheer embarrassment.’

  ‘Yes. That would help. You’ve been very gracious about this, Mr Jia. I can see that now.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He paused. ‘You’re sure you can do this?’

  I nodded. ‘Oh, I’m used to looking like a complete twat in front of the television cameras. Why did we lose? Why didn’t we play better? Why did I make such a stupid mistake? When you’re a football manager, sucking it up – it sort of comes with the territory.’

  6

  Trying to avoid the English newspapers, I spent the next two weeks staying with my parents, at their chalet in Courchevel 1850 and Skyping Louise, who was busy anyway with her police work. Thanks to the Russians Courchevel is one of the most expensive resorts on earth where a simple omelette in a restaurant can cost as much as thirty euros. I skied – badly – read a lot, drank too much and watched the telly. My dad calls it a telly; actually it’s more like your local cinema, with a high-definition screen and projector and short of standing in your technical area, it’s probably the best way to watch football that has ever been invented.

  The only downside is having to listen to Gary Neville, who doesn’t seem to have a good word to say about anyone and just isn’t very personable – as you might perhaps expect of a defender. I should know. I’m not very personable myself. Sometimes I make Roy Keane look like a game show host.

  ‘I don’t think it’s right,’ said my dad, ‘that you can stop playing for a top team and then be allowed to comment on top team matches. There’s a clear risk of bias. One week you’re United’s most loyal player, and the next you’re Sky’s pundit and commentator? Piss off. Yes, you bring expertise to the commentary team but you can’t just put away the feelings of rivalry and animosity you have for Arsenal or Manchester City, nor the opinions you have about certain players. It’s like asking Tony Blair to take charge of Newsnight and then have him ask George Osborne about Conservative economic policy. It can’t be done fairly. To my mind there should always be a cooling-off period. At least a season before you’re allowed on the telly.’

  ‘So put it in a Tweet,’ I told him.

  ‘And stay off Twitter, will you?,’ added Dad. ‘You don’t want to put your foot in it again. Leave that to Mario Balotelli.’

  In a place like Courchevel, avoiding the press was easy enough but avoiding the comments about me on Twitter was more difficult, especially as with nothing better to do with my time it was becoming something of an addiction.

  Seems as if chinks have same problem as white people. They can’t tell one dozy black bastard from another. #Manson’s-fuck-up

  That was fairly typical. But some of the comments were actually quite funny.

  Confucius say, better the Russian devil you know than the Chinese devil you don’t. #Cityincrisis

  What do you call a retarded Chinese football manager? Sum Ting Wong. Or Scott Man Son?

  My dad lives very well, it has to be said. His ski chalet is looked after by the local Hotel Kilimandjaro; they supply a chef and other hotel services which means you don’t have to do anything when you’re there. But my dad could see I was becoming restless and one morning, as we walked along to the ski lift, he told me he’d had a call from a friend of his who was on the board at Barcelona FC.

  ‘Tell me, son, when you were working for Pep Guardiola, did you ever meet a vice-president called Jacint Grangel?’

  ‘I expect so. But I don’t honestly remember him right now. At Barcelona they’ve got more vice-presidents than Ann Summers.’

  ‘It seems that he’s got a job for you. It’s not a management or coaching job. It’s something else. Something temporary. But something potentially lucrative. And which he said requires your special skills. His words, not mine.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say on the telephone. But I’ve a shrewd idea of what’s going on. Look, I’ve known Jacint Grangel for thirty years and I can honestly say he’s not a man who would waste your time. Besides, you can speak good Spanish – even a bit of Catalan – so I reckon you can look after yourself down there.’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time here, you know that, don’t you? And you can’t hide forever. You fucked up. So what? Football is all about fuck-ups. It’s what makes the game interesting. You fall off the horse, you get back on.’

  ‘Supposing it’s not a horse you get back on, but a donkey?’

  ‘Only one way to find out. Get your arse to Barcelona. They’ll pay your expenses. And you’ll get to see the best team in the world play football. I’d come with you myself but you’ll do better on your own. You can make up your mind without your old man there to sway you one way or the other. Don’t want you blaming me for what you end up doing.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Come on. Why not? You always liked it in Barcelona. The women are nice. The food is good. And for some reason they seem to like you. They’re what you have to bear in mind. Not the bastards who hate you. There are people who want you to fail. You have to say “fuck them” and then shit on their heads. You have to rise above yourself, Scott. That’s how success is measured.’

  7

  The Princesa Sofia Gran Hotel is located in the west of Barcelona and is but a stone’s throw from the famous Camp Nou. It’s not the best hotel in the city – the Princesa has all the charm of a multi-storey car park and I much prefer the art-deco charms of the Casa Fuster nearer the city centre – but it is where FC Barcelona conducts a lot of its commercial business. If you hang around the hotel’s vast, rather Saudi-looking lobby long enough you’re almost certain to see someone famous from the world of Spanish football. From my chilly suite on the eighteenth floor I had a splendid view of Camp Nou which, from this altitude, looked smaller and less impressive than I remembered. It’s only when you’re inside the stadium that you can appreciate how it can accommodate almost a hundred thousand spectators. In 1993 the pitch was lowered by eight feet which helps explain this footballing trompe-l’oeil; and even now there are plans to remodel the stadium and increase capacity by 2021 to 105,000 at a cost of six hundred million euros. Nothing seems to be beyond the ambitions of this club or the Qataris who help to bankroll it. And why not? If you’re ever in Barcelona you should check out the FCB museum; it’s only when you see the trophy cabinet that you can begin to understand where the club�
�s ambitions are founded.

  There’s more than one football club in Barcelona – RCD Espanyol has a large and enthusiastic support, especially among those who are opposed to Catalonian independence – but you wouldn’t know it while you’re there. Almost the whole city wears FCB’s blaugrana colours and everyone you speak to seems to support the club. Virtually the first thing you see as you arrive in the ultra-modern airport terminal is the FC Barcelona shop where, among other club merchandise, you can buy yourself a doll as big as a football boot that resembles your favourite player. In their plastic boxes these have the look of illustrious, embalmed corpses. The Luis Suarez doll is especially like a cadaver from a Mexican catacomb, while Lionel Messi’s figure wears a rictus smile as if he’s not quite sure if his lawyers were serious or not when they told him how much previously avoided tax he now has to pay on undeclared income.

  ‘They want me to pay how much? You’re joking, surely? Did you really say fifty-two million euros?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  By all accounts, that’s not the end of the affair, either. It seems that Messi may have to stand trial, with the possibility of going to prison, which is at least one way that Real Madrid can be absolutely certain of el clásico.

  It was a cold Sunday night when I walked out of the hotel down to Camp Nou to see a match against Villarreal. I caught a quick glimpse of some of the players arriving in the black cars given to them by club sponsors Audi, whose four-ringed logo is in prominent evidence at the entrance to the club with the result that any match at Camp Nou has the air of a cut-price Olympiad. Still, to my mind these Audis look better to the paying public than Lamborghinis and Bugatti Veyrons. Black means business and a German saloon or Q7 exudes an air of common sense which is sorely lacking in the luxury car showrooms these footballing superstars have at home. And there’s one other good thing about driving a more modest car like an Audi: it’s less likely to arouse the envy and spite of the Spanish tax authorities.

  I had a ticket in the central grandstand which entitled me to as much free cuttlefish and Cava as I could eat and drink in the hospitality suite. At €114 a seat there were plenty of locals doing just that, although I could see little or no evidence that any of this hospitality extended to anyone wearing the yellow of Villarreal. I’m not even sure any of them were in the stadium, and certainly no one expected them even to score a goal up against the sheer firepower of Messi, Suarez and Neymar – no one except me, perhaps. Villarreal has a good record against FCB and hadn’t lost a match since November. I necked a quick San Miguel and, keen to avoid the eye of anyone who might remember me from my time at Camp Nou, I went to take my seat.

  The minute I felt the glare of the green, heard the buzz of the crowd and caught the smell of the newly sprinkled grass in my nostrils I felt my stomach tighten as if I had been putting on the shirt myself. It’s always like this. I expect there will come a time when I feel different near a football pitch but hopefully those days are still as far off as my Zimmer frame and hearing aid.

  My seat was almost on the touchline and very close to the dugout of the FCB técnico Luis Enrique Martínez Garcia. At this level the pitch at the Nou seemed vast and with this number of people cheering on their team it was almost laughable that anything the manager might say during the course of the match would ever be heard by anyone other than the fourth official or the other manager. Really it’s just for the benefit of the fans, or the TV cameras; when you see José Mourinho performing in his technical area think Laurence Olivier in Richard III; and certainly his theatrics are sometimes worthy of an Oscar or a Golden Globe. In spite of the fact that he looks a bit like Roy Keane, I like and admire Luis Enrique who’s probably the fittest guy in football management having competed in several marathons and ironman challenges. And not just me: back in 2004, Pelé named him as one of the top living footballers.

  The match kicked off at nine – only in Spain could a match be played at a time when many Englishmen are very sensibly thinking about going to bed – and straight away there was Messi, right in front of me and looking smaller and frankly much less happy than the doll wearing the number ten shirt I’d seen at Barcelona Airport. His twinkle-toes were working better than his smile, however, and he reminded me of Gene Kelly tap-dancing his way through Singing in the Rain, or Fred Astaire in Top Hat.

  A lot is made of the rivalry that exists between FCB’s Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid. And I’m sometimes asked, who is the better player? Which one would you have wanted to come to a club that you were managing? The truth is they’re very different players. The taller more muscular Ronaldo is a consummate athlete, while the five-foot-six-inch Messi is more like an artist. Ronaldo seems more arrogant, too, and I can take or leave his strutting torero act that he puts on when he scores a goal. It’s like he expects the ears and the tail of the bull he has vanquished to be given to him. Me, on the rare occasions I ever scored a goal, I always looked around to thank the guy who’d passed me the fucking ball. It just seemed like good manners. You pays your money, you take your choice.

  Reading the match programme I half-expected to see Barca‘s newest striker, Jérôme Dumas – reportedly now on loan from PSG – among the reserves at least, but there was no sign of him as yet. I was, however, delighted to see a match with Barca’s leading three scorers – Messi, Neymar and Suarez – leading their attack. It was all shaping up to be an exciting evening, as it’s not often you get a chance to see three of the best players in the world in action at the same time.

  The game started with Villarreal in possession but Messi’s skilful moves managed to put Barca back in command and Villarreal showed quickly that ultimately they lacked the balance, intensity and speed of the Barca team at its best. But Barca too were misfiring. Suarez had three early goal-scoring chances with only one on target – a point-blank salvo turned away by Villarreal keeper Asenjo after just thirteen minutes. Number 16, Dos Santos, missed three scoring chances, again saved by Asenjo. With such chances coming, the Barca supporters waited patiently for a goal, but after half an hour of play, things did not go their way. Villarreal’s Gaspar unleashed a left-footed blast that looked destined for the other side of the field until Tcherychev deflected the ball past Barca keeper: 0–1 to Villarreal.

  The goal had a predictably unsettling effect on the Barca players. Their energy disappeared, the team looked demoralised. The crowd fell silent. And the responsibility to get Barca back in the game fell again to Messi. One minute before half time he seized his chance. His searching pass found Rafinha in the area whose shot was saved by Asenjo, but the rebound fell to Neymar who banged it in without a moment’s hesitation.

  Having equalised, Barca returned in the second half transformed. They pressured and threatened, proving why very few other teams cause so much disarray in opposing teams on and off the ball, both in defence and attack.

  Nevertheless, Piqué’s defensive mistake allowed Villarreal’s Giovani to take advantage and assist Vietto’s strike, to make it 1–2 to Villarreal in the fifty-first minute. Camp Nou went silent again as if the crowd realised that the Yellow Submarine wasn’t going to go down easily. Just as the silence was becoming even more uneasy, both Suarez and Messi were denied before Rafinha scored the equaliser. 2–2. The cheering culers had just taken their seats when, in the fifty-fifth minute, Lio Messi let fly with a beautiful curving shot from outside the penalty area. With little or no room for the strike it seemed like the kind of goal that perhaps only Messi could have envisaged, let alone scored. 3–2 to Barcelona.

  The last half-hour saw Barca nervously protecting their lead, and slowly they wore the other side down. Near the end Rafinha was substituted and, feeling very cold – as the evening progressed the night grew colder and so did I, I’d forgotten must how cold Barcelona can be in winter – and irritated with what looked like an obvious attempt on the part of Barca to delay the game, I tweeted something stupid about how he was being taken off because it was his period. It was the same sort of Cranbe
rry Juice Joke that’s in Scorsese’s film, The Departed. But at the time I thought no more about it.

  The match finished. Villarreal had lost for the first time since November. But for Barcelona the win – which left them four points off Real Madrid at the top of La Liga – seemed typical of their lacklustre season: the flashes of brilliance were few and far between and they made it look hard work. As we would have said in England, they ’won ugly’. But they still won so most of the crowd went home happy. Frankly, I thought Villarreal – who had a goal disallowed for offside – were very unlucky not to go home with a draw.

  The next day – which was no less cold – Jacint Grangel took me to lunch at the Drolma Restaurant in the Majestic Hotel – one of the best in the city. To be honest it’s a little grand for my taste. I prefer somewhere more authentically Catalan, like Cañete in the older part of town. (Whenever I’m there I think of Hemingway; I’ve no idea if he ever went to Cañete but there’s a big ibex head on the wall that makes me think he’d have liked the place.) But then again I wasn’t paying. Drolma’s chef, Nandu Jubany, is considered to be the great genius of Catalan cuisine and it’s easy to see why; I’d forgotten just how good lollipops of foie gras with white chocolate and Porto reduction can taste.