January Window

11

In the week leading up to the Newcastle match, Kenny Traynor arrived at the club and gave his first interview on the Press Bureau TV Sports Channel. Our new goalkeeper was a big fair-haired lad with an easy smile and an accent that was as thick as the head on a pint of heavy. When he spoke it was like listening to Spud in Trainspotting. As a result Zarco insisted on my appearing with them in front of the invited newsmen, to translate, which added a usefully comic touch to these dull proceedings. Otherwise it was the usual bullshit about how Traynor was ‘really looking forward to the challenge of the Premier League and working with a world-class manager like João Zarco’. Asked why he had decided to join City instead of another club like MUFC, Traynor made no mention of fifty thousand quid a week, but instead talked about the quality of the squad and the attractions of living in a great city like London. Asked what he thought he could achieve at a club like London City — which is more or less the same question, when you think about it — Traynor declared he wanted to keep a clean sheet for as long as possible and to help City to win the Premier League. Champions League... FA Cup... Zzzzz.

Traynor and Zarco were also filmed in the doorway of Hangman’s Wood holding up Traynor’s new silver goalkeeping shirt with his name on the back. That’s the thing I hate most about football: the clichés. You can’t blame the players for that — they’re just kids, most of them; Traynor’s only twenty-three and he doesn’t know any better. No, I blame the fucking reporters for asking the same old tired and predictable questions that produce these clichéd answers.

Things got a little more interesting when Bill Fleming, an old warhorse of a reporter from STV in Glasgow, suggested that it was extremely insulting to Scots viewers to have what Kenny Traynor was saying ‘translated into English’, as if they were ignorant of the language. Zarco paused for a short moment and then asked me to translate what Fleming had said, which got a big laugh. I think he understood perfectly well, but Zarco’s comic timing was always excellent. He waited for me to repeat Fleming’s complaint and then smiled.

‘I don’t mean to be insulting,’ said Zarco. ‘But I have been told that it’s not just the Portuguese who have a problem understanding Scottish people. It’s English people, too. So where is the insult in having a translation? That is something I don’t understand. Scott Manson is from Scotland and I understand everything that he says. You, Mr Fleming, you are from Scotland but I don’t understand anything of what you say. You say you speak English, and I will take your word for it, but this is not how it sounds to me. Maybe the problem is not with me but with you, my friend. Maybe you should learn to speak better English, like Scott here. Perhaps this is something Kenny will also achieve while he is playing at London City. I don’t know. I hope so, for his sake. To make yourself understood in a foreign country is not so difficult, I think. Everyone here seems to understand me all right. But I’m no Professor Henry Higgins and I don’t care about the rain in Spain. For sure I can help to make Kenny a better goalkeeper, but I’m the wrong person to offer him speech elocution on how he can make himself understood. Maybe if he opens his mouth a little when he speaks it will be better, I don’t know. You should try that yourself, Bill.’

To his credit Kenny Traynor kept on smiling good-naturedly while his new boss was speaking. Lots of people were laughing but they did not include Bill Fleming.

Later that day I found myself translating again, this time from German. Our new star striker, Christoph Bündchen, came to see me in my office at Hangman’s Wood. He spoke good English but told me that he preferred to speak in German, in case anyone overheard our conversation.

‘Is something the matter, Christoph?’

‘No, not at all,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to have your advice about something.’

‘Sure. What is it?’

‘First of all I want you to know how much I love this club, and how much I like living in London.’

My stomach lurched a little; Christoph Bündchen was quite likely a star striker in the making, and one we had bought cheaply, but where was this going? What was he going to tell me? That he was a compulsive gambler like ‘Fergie Fledgling’ Keith Gillespie? A secret boozer like Tony Adams? A compulsive gambler and a secret boozer like Paul Merson? Or had he already been tapped up by Chelsea — who had form for this, of course — or one of the other big clubs? Not that I had much time for the FA’s farcical rule against tapping up: good players were always going to be tapped up. Tapping up — approaching a player contracted to another club without its permission — has always been part of the game. I smiled thinly and tried to contain my jangling nerves.

‘That sounds ominous. Please don’t tell me you want a transfer to another club. You’ve only just got here and made your mark. We need you, son.’

‘This is very difficult for me, Scott.’

‘Look, if it’s about pay then I’ve already spoken to Zarco. He’s confident that we can get you another ten grand a week.’

‘Thank you, but it’s not about money. Or a transfer. It’s about something else. I don’t really feel I can be who I am. I’m different from these guys.’

He folded his arms defensively, stood back on one heel and then tapped his lips with a forefinger, like Samir Nasri making his famous shush gesture. (I still don’t get why he does that — who the fuck is he telling to be quiet? The fans?)

‘Different? How?’

‘When I was playing in Augsburg I was living in Munich.’

‘I know. That’s where we met, remember?’

‘Yes, but do you want to know why I was living in Munich?’

For a brief moment I wondered if he was a neo-Nazi and then rejected the idea; Christoph only looked like a Nazi.

I shrugged. ‘Munich is a nicer city than Augsburg. At least that’s my own impression.’

‘Have you heard of a part of Munich called the Glockenbachviertel?’

‘Yes, I think so. It’s the trendy part. Lots of art galleries. I often used to go there and look for paintings.’

Christoph nodded. ‘There are lots of gay people living in that part of Munich.’ He paused for a moment. ‘That’s why I was living there, Scott. Because I couldn’t live the way I wanted in Augsburg. What I mean to say is I was living in Munich with a man.’

I felt my spirits sink. This was going to be coaching football at its most challenging. The only gay footballers who’d ever stepped out of the closet as far as I was aware were Thomas Hitzlsperger and Justin Fashanu, and Fashanu committed suicide, which wasn’t exactly an encouraging precedent for anyone else in the game who felt moved to declare his homosexuality.

‘Right. I see.’

‘It’s just that Mr Zarco said some things the other day on television about the Qatari World Cup — about having gay friends — which was very encouraging. And I thought that perhaps it might be all right to be gay at this club. Unlike my last club, where I had to live a kind of lie about who and what I was. Which is hard, you know?’

I winced a little at the mention of Zarco and the Qataris. Since his comments about the 2022 World Cup the London City press office had been besieged with threats from anonymous Arabs; we’d had three bomb threats at Hangman’s Wood. Meanwhile the Qataris continued to deny any impropriety and FIFA’s executive committee in Zurich had complained to the FA about Zarco; as a result of this the FA had felt obliged to cancel their invitation to Zarco to become a member of its England team think tank. Zarco’s response to all this would certainly have been to repeat his allegations had Phil Hobday not told him to button it.

‘Look, Christoph, if you’re asking me for advice on being gay, I can’t give you any. I have one or two friends who are gay but none of them are in football. But if you’re asking me what I think you’re going to ask me...’

‘Should I tell the guys in the team I’m gay? That’s what I want to know. That’s what I’d like.’

‘Then the answer is no, absolutely fucking not. Don’t ask me to justify it, Christoph, because I can’t, but being gay is just not acceptable in football for the simple reason that the game is the last bastion of open bigotry and homophobia. There are no openly gay footballers in any of England’s top four divisions. Of course that’s not to say there are no gay players. Everyone knows who they are, or thinks they do, but those players keep it quiet for one simple reason: fear. Not of the other players, but fear of the abuse an openly gay player would receive from the fans. Right now there are lots of fans on terraces all over England who still sing songs about the Munich air crash and about the Hillsborough disaster, and who make gassing noises towards Tottenham fans who are all presumed, wrongly, to be Jews. In my time in football I’ve heard these bastards sing songs about Sol Campbell’s mental breakdown, Dwight Yorke’s disabled son, Karren Brady’s miscarriage, the floods in Hull, and the excellent public service done by various murderers including Harold Shipman and Ian Huntley. All of which means that there’s quite enough shit that they can throw at you already without giving them anything more. That’s why you can’t tell anyone, Christoph. Wear a pair of rainbow football laces if it makes you feel any better; there are at least some straight players who’ve done that. Otherwise you have to keep this quiet. You’ll be committing career suicide if you say something now. I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but I’m sorry, that’s just how it is.’

Bündchen sighed. Looking at him now it was hard to believe the young German could be gay; then again, I never notice these things. Sonja claims she can tell, but I never can. A small part of me wanted to applaud him for his desire to be so open, but mostly I felt I’d told him how it was. Individually most football fans would probably tell you they couldn’t care less about someone’s sexuality, but on the terraces, a different mood prevails. The Germans have a word for it: Volksgeist. It means ‘the spirit of the people’, and the spirit of the people usually collects around the lowest common denominator.

‘Look, you have a wonderful talent and on the basis of what I saw the other night against Leeds, you have a fantastic future ahead of you, Christoph. You could do anything in the game. You could play for your country, make a great deal of money and get right to the top of football. And having got there — who knows? In a few years it could be you who leads from the front and who changes things for the better. I for one hope they do change. But you’re at the start of your career and right now my advice to you is never to talk about this with anyone but me at this club. Anyone at all. The fewer people who know about this the better.’

‘I see.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s disappointing.’

‘I’m sorry, Christoph. Truly I wish I could tell you something different. But best keep it quiet, eh? At least until your career is over. And then talk about it. The same way Thomas Hitzlsperger did.’

He nodded. ‘All right. If you think it’s best.’

I breathed a sigh of relief as he went out of the door.

But Christoph Bündchen wasn’t the only one at London City with a secret that had required me to play counsellor. The fact that Zarco was having an affair with Claire Barry, who was the club’s acupuncturist, had become common knowledge at Hangman’s Wood — so common that I had felt prompted to speak to him about it. Me, of all people, offering him advice on the wisdom of having an affair with a woman who was herself married. Claire was a decent woman but her husband, Sean, was a bit of a thug; and if he wasn’t he knew plenty who were. He ran a private security company that did a lot of work in the Gulf States, which meant he was frequently away; he also employed a lot of people who were used to solving problems with violence.

‘People are beginning to talk about you and her,’ I’d said over the Christmas holidays, which is a very busy time for an acupuncturist at a football club, as you might perhaps imagine. ‘Tell me to fuck off and mind my own business if you like, but I’m your friend. You’ve been good to me and I wouldn’t like to see anything happen to you, João. The press would love to give you a going-over for something like this. Remember what happened to John Terry. They think you’re an arrogant bastard and they’re just waiting to catch you out. So why don’t you cool it for a while? I’m not telling you to forget her. That’s up to you. All I’m doing is telling you to keep it zipped for a while. Just to put people off the scent.’

He listened quietly, and then nodded. ‘You’re right, Scott. You were quite right to tell me. And thanks. I’d no idea this was well known at the club. I appreciate it, my friend. And I’ll certainly do as you say. I’ll tell her it’s got to stop.’

Of course, Zarco completely ignored me. How do I know that? I don’t for sure. But a couple of days before the Newcastle game I noticed he had a packet of single-use, sterile acupuncture needles on his desk. He saw me pick them up and offered an explanation before I could even mention it.

‘Claire’s been showing me how to treat my own knee,’ he said, taking the needles out of my hand.

‘In here?’

‘Yes, in here.’

‘You mean you sit in here and stick needles in your own knee?’

‘Yes. Of course. What else would I be doing with these needles?’

‘I don’t know.’

Like a lot of ex-players Zarco suffered from painful knees and acupuncture was able to provide a more effective and safer form of pain relief than drugs and creams. That wasn’t what was suspicious. It was him dropping the needles in the bin while he was talking that made the explanation sound so lame it needed crutches. It looked like someone getting rid of evidence and frankly, given the number of strokes he pulled, he ought to have been a bit better at it. For example, I knew he had three mobile phones: one for work, one for play and one for something else. The play phone and the one for something else he kept in a drawer in one of the filing cabinets in my office and took them out when he needed them; we both knew without him having to ask that this was fine with me. This was just one of his funny little ways and something you had to put up with if you were ever going to be a trusted friend of Zarco’s. You’ve heard of mate’s rates; well this was mate’s traits.

‘You should get her to show you how to do it,’ he said. ‘Maybe you could treat your ankle in the same way. There’s no need to be squeamish about needles, you know. It’s just one prick.’

For a brief irresponsible moment I considered telling him that he was the only prick I knew about before I thought better of it; he was the boss, after all, and if he was still shagging Claire Barry, it was none of my business.

Nor was it any of my business when, one afternoon, I dropped into a BP service station near Hangman’s Wood to put petrol in my Range Rover. Now the club had an account at the nearest Shell garage and Viktor Sokolnikov always picked up the tab for everyone’s fuel, a perk the taxman knew nothing about and which was worth several hundred pounds a week, especially when you were driving a Ferrari or an Aston Martin, as most of the players did at City. Consequently, no one ever went to the BP garage about three miles further on where they had to pay for petrol. No one except me, that is, for I had always been scrupulously honest in all my dealings with the Inland Revenue and I always paid for my own fuel. Untaxed perks were definitely not my thing. When you’ve been to prison you never want to go back there.

Zarco was sitting in his left-hand drive Overfinch Range Rover — identical to my own — which was parked next to a white Ferrari. He was having an animated discussion with the owner of the Ferrari, who I recognised immediately. It was Paolo Gentile, the agent who had handled Kenny Traynor’s transfer. Now when you’re a coach you see a lot in and around a football club that turns out to be not your business, and sometimes, if you want to keep your job, you learn to keep your fucking mouth shut. I learned that in the nick.

So I drove away again without even stopping.