It was a Thursday, last August, I remember it being a Thursday because Thursday is the day when Lars Medelsvensson comes to give me his renowned Geriatric Massage (it's all he knows and besides, I'm quite brittle) and I remember this particular Thursday, as Lars finally returned my copy of How To Stop Repeating Yourself And Influence People. I had just rolled over onto my stomach and put my face in his hole when the phone rang.
It rang for some time before I answered it, my daughter had changed the ring-tone to a voice message my wife left, nagging about semen stains on her new Gianni Versace designed sofa, (manufactured by the Italian furniture maker Gregori Salotti, which she compelled me to mention), as at the time one of the lads, having had a misunderstanding with his missus, was crashing at ours. Like all good husbands, I have, over time, built up a certain immunity to my wife's more berating inflections.
When I finally did pick up, I recognised the voice immediately. The unctuous intonation, the unmistakeable rapidity of agent speak:
"AlrightGafferit'sbeenagesHow'sthekids?How'sthedog?How'sthewife?SorryaboutthesofaSendmethebillYouknowhestilldoesn'tknowhowithappened..."
The slimiest, slickest of all football agents, Paul Stretford, who makes the Exxon Valdez look like a soggy bruschetta, who makes John C. Calhoun look like Martin Luther King, was on the blower, and already, I was wishing I had let it ring out.
After a seemingly interminable ten-minute conversation, I slowly put down the phone, as if it was fine china, my senses askew. Lars looked at me and knew something was wrong, he began to furiously massage my temples, and slowly, I came back to reality. Again he asked me what had happened, "what did he say?" though this time the apprehension in his voice was unabated. I looked at him, directly, the words seemingly finding alternative exits, because he was still waiting for me to say something. Craning, to make audible my incoherent whispers, I replied, "you heard me." The colour drained from his face and (forgeting the techniques he had leaned from my book) again repeated "they're fucking with Sir Alex. There's no going back now."
*
The following morning, I arrived early at the training ground. Unsurprisingly, my secretary informed me upon my arrival that several fellow managers had called already. She asked, innocuously, what they could all possibly be calling about and I, untypically enraged, replied that I was organising a leaving do for Bolton's mascot, Lofty The Lion, who was taking early retirement following an incident with Fulham's Billy The Badger.
It seems I wasn't the only one whom Stretford had called and after an hour or so of conference calls, Gmail Chats and Twitter DMs there was a definite split between those who were terrified of SAF and would support him and those of us who despised him and wanted to see him burn. Ian Holloway, firmly in the former camp, immediately went on the tele and robustly defended SAF or Furious as he is commonly known. His impassioned and robust championing of Furious, basically called for a return to what amounts to player slavery, he "belongs" to Man Utd and so forth.
The rest of us just sat back and watched it unfold. Schadenfreude the Germans call it.
As the manager of a top-flight fantasy football team, it is difficult for me to empathise with SAF in this situation. The maximum I can sign a player for is twelve months and every season I partake in arduous contract negotiations, where agents act as power brokers, and inflate and fuel the megalomaniacal tendencies of the modern player. It must be remembered that only thirty-five years ago players had no freedom of contract and only fifteen years ago players had no freedom of movement, even after their contracts had expired.
Holloway and his ilk should remember this before they call for their players' rights as E.U. citizens (and workers) to be curtailed.
No comments:
Post a Comment