False Nine (2 page)
*
The tram – which was supposed to run from Edinburgh Airport to a stop just across the road from my hotel – was out of action that particular morning; a power cut, they said. So I got the bus. It was an inauspicious start. And Tempest was right about something else, too: they were still bitching about independence.
I checked into the Balmoral Hotel, ate some oysters at the nearby Café Royal and then went down Leith Walk towards Easter Road to see Hibs play Queen of the South. The ground and the pitch were better than I remembered and I guessed there were between twelve and fifteen thousand there – a big difference from the record attendance of sixty-five thousand in 1950, when Hibs played their local rivals Hearts. It was a cold but beautiful afternoon, just right for a game of football, and while the home side had the better run of the play for most of the match they were unable to take their chances. Paul Hanlon and Scott Allan both went close and Hibs lost a chance to go level on points with a side they ought to have beaten with ease. The Queens looked happy to have come away with a point in a goalless draw that did not please the Edinburgh fans. Jason Cummings was about the only player who impressed me when his swerving thirty-yard shot was saved by the Queens’ goalkeeper Zander Clark, but it was a less than memorable game and on the evidence of what I’d seen, Hibs, who were more than ten points adrift of the league leaders, Hearts, seemed destined to be spending another year out of the SPL.
I went back to the hotel, ordered some tea which never came, had a hot bath, snoozed my way through the football results and
Strictly For Morons
, and then went around the corner to a restaurant called Ondine, where I’d arranged to meet Midge Meiklejohn who was one of the club’s directors. He was an affable man with a large head of red hair and green eyes. In his lapel was a Hibs crest which served to remind me just how old the club actually was: 1875. And of course this proud tradition was a major part of the club’s problem. Of any old club’s problem.
We talked generally about football for a while and drank our way through an excellent Sancerre before he asked me what I’d thought of the game and, more importantly, Hibs themselves.
‘If you’ll forgive me,’ I told him, ‘your problems aren’t on the pitch but in the boardroom. You’ve had how many – seven? – managers in ten years? Who’ve probably done the best that could be done, in the circumstances. The manager you’ve got is doing a great job, and things aren’t going to get any better until you address the fundamental problem which is that football clubs are like regional newspapers. There are simply too many of them. Prices are going up and readership is declining. There are too many papers competing for too few readers. The same is true of football. There are too many clubs competing not just with each other but with television. Your gate today was maybe twelve thousand, while some of your players are on two or three grand a week, maybe more. Your wage bill must take two thirds of your gate. Which leaves running costs and the bank. Your business is dying on its feet. Full-time football is just not a viable option for you or, for that matter, for nearly all of the Scottish clubs, bar two.’
‘So what are you saying? That we should just give up?’
‘Not at all. But the way I see it you have two choices if you’re going to survive as a club. Either you do what some Swedish clubs do – clubs like Gothenburg – with most of the players taking part-time jobs as painters and decorators. Or there’s what a French philosopher speaking about something else calls “the detestable solution”. A solution which makes total business sense but which will have the supporters crying out for your head, Midge, and everyone else on your board.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A merger. With Hearts. To form a new Edinburgh club. Edinburgh Wanderers. Midlothian United.’
‘You must be joking. Besides, that’s been considered before. And rejected.’
‘I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the right solution. Edinburgh isn’t Manchester, Midge. It can barely support one good team, let alone two. You use the assets of one club to pay off the debts and build a future for them both. It’s simple economics. The only problem is that tribes don’t like economics. And Hibs and Hearts are two of the oldest tribes in Scotland. Look, it worked for Inverness Cally Thistle. In less than twenty years they’ve merged two failing clubs and gone from the Scottish Third Division to being second in the SPL. The case for a merger is irrefutable. You know it. I know it. Even they know it – the supporters – in their heads. The only trouble is that they don’t think with their heads, but with their hearts. If you’ll pardon the expression.’
‘These people aren’t like other people,’ said Midge. ‘They know how to hate and more importantly they know how to hurt. I’d probably have to seek police protection. Leave the city. We all would.’
‘Then to quote Private Fraser, you’re doomed. Doomed, I tell ye. It’s the same for most of the clubs in the north of England. It’s history and tradition that are holding them back, too. There’s this singularity called the Barclays Premier League that deforms everything that comes close to it and which is sucking everything in English football into its mass. The big clubs get more successful and the poor ones disappear. Who wants to go and pay twenty quid to watch Northampton Town get stuffed when you can support Arsenal in the comfort of your own home? That’s the physics of football, Midge. You can’t argue with the laws of the universe.’
‘It’s only a game,’ said Midge. ‘That’s what these bloody people forget sometimes. It’s only a game.’
‘But it’s the only bloody game as far as they’re concerned.’
I went back to the hotel to watch
MOTD
but it hardly seemed worth it since the matches were all Scottish ones. Not that there would have been any English Premier League matches anyway because of international duties, which meant I was at least spared watching Arsenal throw away a three goal lead, as they’d recently done against Anderlecht in the Champions League. That had grieved me a lot less than it might have done. The fact is that since I started to watch football with the eyes of an ordinary fan I’ve come to appreciate something genuinely beautiful about the beautiful game. It’s this: learning how to lose is an important part of being a fan. Losing teaches you – in the words of Mick Jagger – that you can’t always get what you want. This is an important part of being a human being – perhaps the most important part of all. Learning to cope with disappointment is what we call character. Rudyard Kipling had it almost right, I think. In life it helps to treat triumph and disaster with equal sangfroid. The ancient Greeks knew the importance that the gods placed on our ability to suck it up. They even had a word for it when we didn’t: hubris. Learning how to suck it up is what makes you a mensch. It’s only fascists who will tell you anything else. I prefer to think that this is the true meaning of Bill Shankly’s oft-quoted remark about life and death. I think that what he really meant was this: that it’s character and sand that are more important than mere victory and defeat. Of course you couldn’t ever say as much while you’re the manager of a club. There’s only so much philosophy that anyone can take in the dressing room. That kind of shit might work on centre court at Wimbledon but it won’t wash at Anfield or Old Trafford. It’s hard enough to get eleven men to play as one without telling them that sometimes it’s all right to lose.
Tempest O’Brien was one of only three female football agents in the game. The other was Rachel Anderson who’d famously – and successfully – sued the Professional Footballer’s Association when she’d been forbidden entry to the PFA dinner in 1997, despite being a FIFA-registered football agent. It was Rachel who’d broken down barriers in the game for people like Tempest who I’d appointed as my agent just before I went to work with Zarco at London City. Before becoming a football agent, Tempest had worked for Brunswick PR and the International Management Group. She was clever, very good-looking and made everyone she met feel as though they were as smart as she was. Football might be less racist than it used to be but as the likes of Andy Gray and Richard Keys demonstrated in 2011, it’s still a bastion of sexism. I should know; sometimes I’m a bit of a sexist myself, but as a black man in football management I felt it was my duty to help break down some barriers by giving Tempest the chance to represent me. I’ve regretted it only once. We were at the Ballon d’Or awards party in Zurich a couple of years ago, both staying at the Baur au Lac, and we almost went to bed together. She wanted to, and I wanted to, but somehow good sense prevailed and we managed to finish the evening alone and in our own rooms. She looks a bit like Cameron Diaz so you’ll have a pretty good idea of why – at the time, anyway – I regretted not going to bed with her as any man might have done. Tempest’s second idea was a job at OGC Nice. .
‘Actually,’ she admitted, ‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure that there is a job and maybe they’re not sure themselves. They’re French and they play their cards pretty close to their chests. Besides, my French isn’t that good so I can’t read between the lines of what’s been said. Your French is much better than mine so I expect you’ll suss out what the true state of play is there. But it is Nice and they’re a league one side so it won’t do you any harm to meet them and for them to register that you’re tailor-made for a job there. If not now then perhaps in the future. I can’t imagine a more beautiful place to work. They’re suggesting they meet you in Paris because they’re playing PSG this Saturday. It ought to be a good game. Anyway, take Louise. Stay somewhere nice. Have lots of sex in an expensive hotel. ’
It was all good advice and my girlfriend, Louise Considine, didn’t need much persuading. A detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police, she had plenty of leave due to her and so it was that we caught the Eurostar to Paris early one Saturday morning in November.
‘You don’t have to come to the game, you know,’ I told her. ‘If I were you I’d go shopping at Galeries Lafayette, or go and see the new Picasso Museum.’
‘Well at least you didn’t tell me to go and buy myself some expensive lingerie,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Or to go and get my hair done. I suppose I should feel glad about that.’
‘Did I say something wrong?’
‘What kind of girlfriend would I be if I left your side for one minute this weekend? I want us to sleep together, bathe together, and go to the football together. But I have only one condition. And it’s this. That you leave your awful pyjamas at home.’
‘They’re silk,’ I protested.
‘I don’t care if they once belonged to Louis XIV. I like to feel your bare skin against me in bed. Clear?’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
The train was full of people heading to Paris for some early Christmas shopping and these included some boisterous football fans who spotted me in the international departure hall at St Pancras and struck up with a chorus of,
‘You left ‘cos you’re shit, You left ‘cos you’re shiiiit, Scott Manson, You left ‘cos you’re shit.’
Which wasn’t so bad, all things considered. I’ve heard a lot worse about myself than that. Besides, I was the one who was travelling to Gare du Nord with a beautiful blonde on my arm, even if she was a copper.
‘Does that bother you?’ she asked.
‘Nah.’
‘Good. Because these days I’m only empowered to arrest people who are on Twitter. Going after real thugs and criminals is no longer a proper and efficient use of police time.’
‘I can almost believe that.’
‘It’s true.’
On arrival we checked into our hotel and went straight out again to have some lunch. Even in Paris there are times when food has to come before anything, although that wasn’t quite the way Louise saw it.
‘
Soupe à l’oignon
is just the thing to have inside you before a match,’ I said. ‘Not to mention a cassoulet and a good bottle of Riesling.’
‘I can think of something else I’d like inside me,’ said Louise. ‘As soon as we’ve finished lunch I’d like you to take me back to the room and fuck the arse off me.’
And so after an excellent lunch we went back to the hotel; there was just time to fuck the arse off her before catching the Metro from Alma Marceau to Porte de St-Cloud.
I liked going to a football match on the Metro. No one recognised me and it was like being an ordinary fan again – even in Edinburgh I’d had a few smart remarks on the way down Leith Walk to Easter Road. The PSG fans in the Metro carriage certainly smelled real enough; it was like a bar in there. But they were well behaved and I saw no sign of the hooligan element that was supposed to exist at PSG and which, in 2006, had resulted in one fan being shot dead by the Paris police following a racist attack on a supporter of Hapoel Tel Aviv. Millwall might get off on the fact that no one likes them but it has to be said that no one dislikes them enough to shoot them dead. Not yet, anyway.
Outside the Parc des Princes there were more cops on the streets than there were lovers’ padlocks on the Pont des Arts. They looked like they meant business, too. Most of them were armed and dressed for a riot which seemed less than likely: it wasn’t Nice but Marseille – currently topping Ligue 1 – who were PSG’s most bitter rivals.
‘They’re not taking any chances,’ said Louise, ‘are they?’
‘Every time I come to Paris it seems there are more coppers than there were before. I think if you’re looking for a job in France the gendarmerie is probably the best place to start. It seems the French government doesn’t trust the people.’
‘Can you blame them?’ It was just like Louise to speak up for another country’s police force. ‘Between 1789 and 1871 they had five revolutions in this city. Sometimes it seems that there’s a demonstration every other weekend. The French are an obstreperous lot.’
‘In an English-speaking world there’s a lot to feel obstreperous about. I admire their determination to hold on to what makes them French. We could do with a bit more of that in England. Maybe learn a lesson from the Scots. Have a referendum about whether we want to kick them out of Great Britain. Something like that.’