Hand of God

12

It was a warm Saturday afternoon in August when we arrived at the King Power Stadium in Leicester for our first match of the new season. Just to the west of the main entrance single sculls were going up and down the River Soar like hi-tech swans. Full of misplaced optimism at being in the Premiership once again, Leicester’s supporters were noisy but hospitable and a far cry from the kind of hostile welcome we could expect when we travelled to Greece the following week. I wondered just how good-humoured these fans would remain when they were faced with the cost of supporting their club at away matches in London and Manchester. It was high time that TV companies like Sky and BT started to insist on ring-fencing a proportion of the money paid to the Premiership to subsidise ticket prices: there’s nothing worse for your armchair fan than seeing empty terraces.

I still hadn’t resolved our goalkeeping crisis — we still needed to replace Didier Cassell — and if there was one player of Pearson’s I really envied it was Leicester goalie Kasper Schmeichel, son of the more famous Peter. Kasper had played for Manchester City and for Leeds United before joining the Foxes in 2011; he’d also played for his country, Denmark, on several occasions, and I had the feeling that, like his father, who had played for Man U until the age of thirty-nine, Kasper’s best years as a keeper still lay ahead of him. With fourteen days left before the summer transfer window closed I was seriously considering asking Viktor Sokolnikov if we could make an offer for the twenty-seven-year-old Dane.

Any doubts about Schmeichel’s ability were swiftly squashed when, just five minutes into the game, we were awarded a penalty. Prometheus powered the ball straight for the bottom right corner of the net, and how Schmeichel got a hand to it seemed nothing short of miraculous. That would have been impressive enough but, having batted the ball straight back at Prometheus, Schmeichel then launched himself across the whole width of the goalmouth, to the very opposite corner, where he just managed to prevent the Nigerian scoring on the rebound. Almost as important as the Dane’s agility was the way he cleverly managed to psych out our man even before he took the penalty kick. After Prometheus had placed the ball on the spot, Schmeichel had calmly walked out of his goal, picked the ball up, dried it on his shirt, and then cheekily tossed it back at the African, who angrily waved Schmeichel back into his goal. Some referees might have given a keeper a yellow card for doing that, but on the first day of the season? It looked like mind games and if it was, it worked.

A team’s overall psychology is never helped when you miss a penalty; and this was dealt a further knock when our captain, Gary Ferguson, scored an own goal which left the home side one-up at half time. Shit like that happens; you learn to shrug it off. What worried me more was seeing Prometheus berate his own team captain. I’m no lip-reader but I think Gary gave the kid a few choice words back, although how he restrained himself from smacking the boy in the mouth is beyond me. Generally speaking, when you’re the captain a smack and a curse tends to work better than just a curse.

‘Forget it, Gary,’ I told him, loudly, in the dressing room. ‘This is football not fucking Quidditch. If you’re a defender and you’re doing your job properly there are always going to be occasions when you’re going to score an own goal. It’s just statistics. A ball you’d clear from your box, nine times out of ten, will go the wrong way because this isn’t snooker and there are no perfect angles. You got your knee to it; and it came off your knee, that’s all. Nobody with a brain in his head could blame you for a goal like that.’

I looked at Prometheus who was busy changing his pillar-box red Puma evoPOWER boots for a pair that looked like they’d been made from an old tabloid newspaper: Why Always Puma? said the red headline on the side of the boot.

‘Are you finished pissing around with those fucking boots?’

At last I’d caught his eye.

‘Everyone in football makes mistakes,’ I said. ‘It’s that kind of game. If nobody made those mistakes the game would be as boring as England’s group for Euro 2016. And there’s nothing more boring than that. What I don’t ever want to see is anyone else in this team thinking that they have the right to apportion blame. Especially when they’re not without fault themselves. Finding fault, chewing ears off, arse-kicking and handing out bollockings — that’s my fucking job. Or Gary’s when the match is in actual progress. And if I ever see it happening in this team again I will bite the guilty party on the arse like a fucking hyena. I like my job and I don’t need anyone’s help to say what needs to be said. Clear?’

‘Why you pickin’ on me, man?’ asked Prometheus. ‘I didn’t do nuthin’. All I said to the cap here was that those big, hairy, white Scotsman’s knees of his was goin’ to lose us the game if he wasn’t bloody careful. It was like, a joke, y’know?’

It was no wonder Fergie threw boots around the dressing room; at that particular moment I wanted to take that ridiculous boot out of his hand and ram it down his throat. Gary was muttering, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ while Bekim was shaking his head, silently. Others just turned away as if they didn’t want to see what was going to happen next.

I smiled. ‘It was like a joke, yes, except that it wasn’t fucking funny. You don’t make jokes to your colleagues when they just scored an own goal for the simple reason that they might be feeling a little sensitive. It’s never funny when someone scores an own goal, unless it’s the other team that scores it. I shouldn’t have to spell this out for you, sonny — and don’t ever interrupt me again or I’ll tell Gary to shove one of his big, hairy, white Scotsman’s knees into your small, hairless, black Nigerian balls. That is if you’ve got any balls. Understood?’

Prometheus said nothing which seemed to indicate that he’d got the message. I rocked back on my heels for a moment and glanced around the dressing room. There was no one else I felt deserved any particular criticism; Leicester had ridden their luck, and that was all there was to it.

‘It’s a fact,’ I said, ‘that on the first weekend of the football season, newly promoted clubs often do well. They fancy their chances against one of the big boys. And why not, when they finished the season with — what did they get in the Championship — eighty-six points? They deserve to be in the Premiership and if they can’t give us a good game today, when they’re all fit and rested because only a couple of them saw any international duty, they never will. I guarantee if you play this same team at the end of the season you’ll walk all over them. So, don’t be surprised if their tails are up today. But keep your shape, and keep the ball; pass it around. Toblerone football, like we practised in training. Let them lose themselves in the magic triangles. If necessary, make them so fucking impatient to get on and win the game that they come to you. That’s when you open them up.’

It ought to have worked out that way, too. But it didn’t. We lost 3–1, following a brace of goals from Jamie Vardy and David Nugent who looked as potent a strike partnership in a newly promoted side as I’d seen in a long time. At 4.40 p.m. Leicester went top, on goal difference.

London City was third from bottom.