January Window

4

City’s training ground, at Hangman’s Wood, was the best of its kind in England, with several full-size pitches, an indoor training facility, a medical and rehabilitation area, saunas, steam rooms, gymnasia, physiotherapy and massage rooms, a number of restaurants, an X-ray and MRI clinic, hydrotherapy pools, ice baths, an acupuncture clinic, basketball courts and a velodrome. There was even a TV studio where players and staff could be interviewed for London City Football Television; Hangman’s Wood was, however, strictly off-limits to press and public on a daily basis, something the media hated. High walls and razor-wire fences surrounded our football pitches so that training sessions could not be subject to the attentions of tabloid photographers with tall ladders and long lenses; in this way bust-ups between players, or even between players and managers, which are sometimes inevitable in the highly charged world of modern sport — who can forget the hugely publicised shoving match that took place between Roberto Mancini and Mario Balotelli in 2012? — were kept strictly private.

And in view of what happened on that particular morning at Hangman’s Wood, this was probably just as well.

Not that there was usually much to see, as João Zarco preferred to leave training sessions to me; like many managers, he liked to observe the proceedings from the sidelines or even through binoculars from the window of his office. Matters of match fitness and teaching football skills were my responsibility, which meant I was able to develop a more personal relationship with all the players; I wasn’t one of the lads, but I was perhaps the next best thing.

João Zarco controlled the club philosophy, team selection, match-day motivation, transfers, tactics and all of the hirings and firings. He also got paid a lot more than me — about ten times as much, actually — but then with all his style, charisma and sheer footballing nous, he was probably the best manager in Europe. I loved him like he was my own older brother.

We started at 10 a.m. and as usual we were outside. It was a bitterly cold morning and a hard frost still lay on the ground. Some of the players were wearing scarves and gloves; a few were even wearing women’s tights, which, in my day, would have earned you a hundred press-ups, twice around the field and a funny look from the chairman. Then again, some of these lads turn up with more skins creams and hair product in their Louis Vuitton washbags than my first wife used to have on her dressing table. I’ve even come across footballers who refused to take part in heading practice because they had a Head & Shoulders advert to shoot in the afternoon. It’s that sort of thing that can bring out the sadist in a coach, so it’s just as well that I happen to believe you’ll get further with a kick up the arse and a joke than you will with just a kick up the arse. But training has to be tough, because professional football is tougher.

I’d just done a paarlauf session with the lads, which always produces a lot of lactic acid in the system and is a very quick way of sorting out who is fit and who is not. It’s a two-man relay and a team version of a fartlek session — one man sprints two hundred metres around the track to tag his partner, who has jogged across its diameter and who now sprints again to tag the same partner, and so on — that leaves most men gasping, especially the smokers. I used to smoke, but only when I was in the nick. There’s nothing else to do when you’re in the nick. I followed paarlauf with a heads and tails routine where a player runs with the ball towards the goal as fast as he can and then shoots before immediately turning defender and trying to stop the next guy from doing the same. It sounds simple and it is, but when it’s played at speed and you’re tired it really tests your skills; it’s hard to control the ball when you’re also running flat out and knackered.

Along the way I offered explanations for why we were doing what we were doing. A training session is easier when you know what the thinking is behind it:

‘If we’re fit we can open up the pitch, and create space. Making space is simply a matter of breaking the wind and the spirit of the man trying to mark you. Get eyes in the back your head and learn to see who is in space and pass the ball to him, not to the nearest man. Pass the ball quickly. Leeds will defend deep, and dirty. So above all be patient. Learn to be patient with the ball. It’s impatience that ends up giving the ball away.’

Zarco was more involved with the training session than usual, shouting instructions from the sideline and criticising some of the players for not running quickly enough. It’s bad enough to be on the end of that when you’re out of breath; it’s something else when you’re almost puking up from exertion.

When the drill was over Zarco walked on to the pitch and instinctively the lads gathered round to await his comments. He was a tall, thin man and still looked like the strong, fearless centre back he’d been in the 1990s for Porto, Inter Milan and then Celtic. He was handsome, too, in a rugged, unshaven kind of way, with sleepy eyes and a broken nose as thick as a goalpost. His English was good and he spoke in a weary, dark monotone but when he laughed, his was a light falsetto, almost girlish laugh that most people — myself excluded — found intimidating.

‘Listen to me, gentlemen,’ he said quietly. ‘My own philosophy is simple. You play the best football you can, as hard as you can. Always and forever, amen.’

I started translating for our two Spanish players, Xavier Pepe and Juan-Luis Dominguin; I speak pretty good Spanish — and Italian — although my German is near fluent, thanks to my German mother. I could tell this was going to be a bad bollocking. Zarco’s worst bollockings were always the ones given quietly and in his saddest voice.

‘This kind of thinking won’t ever let you down, not like any of those other guys — Lenin or Marx, Nietzsche, or Tony Blair. But in the whole of life on earth, there is perhaps no philosophical mystery quite as profound and as inexplicable as the one of how you can manage to lose 4–3 when you were 3–0 up at half time. To fucking Newcastle.’

The less wise started to smile at that one; big mistake.

‘At least I thought it was a mystery.’ He smiled a nasty little smile and wagged his finger in the air. ‘Until I saw this morning’s poor excuse for a training session — Scott, no offence to you, my friend, you tried to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as always — and it suddenly occurred to me as if an apple had fallen on my head why this had happened. You’re all a bunch of lazy assholes, that’s why. You know why a lazy asshole is called a lazy asshole? Because it’s not good for shit. And an asshole that’s not good for shit isn’t good for anything.’

Someone sniggered.

‘You think that’s funny, asshole? I’m not making jokes here. You see me laughing? You think Viktor Sokolnikov pays me millions of pounds a year to make fucking jokes down here? No. The only people making jokes around here are you people when you kick a football. Nil — nil against Manchester United? That was a joke. Let me tell you, it’s not just nature that abhors a goalless draw, it’s me, too. We can’t win unless we score and that’s all there is to it, gentlemen.

‘Now, as many of you know, I read a lot about history so that my team can make it. Which is crazy because you people aren’t fit to make the tea on the bus home, let alone history. Seriously. I look at you all and I think to myself, why did I bother coming to manage this club when they don’t even bother to try? Yesterday, some prick of a journalist asked me some crap about what makes a good manager. And I said, winning, you idiot. Winning is what makes a good manager. Now ask me a better question that doesn’t suck like the last one; ask me what should be the aim of a good manager and I will give you a longer answer for your readers. I will write your copy for you, you prick. As always I was doing his job for him, okay? Because that’s the kind of helpful guy I am. Zarco is always good copy. The aim of a good manager in football is to show eleven assholes how to play as one man. But today I think this task is beyond even me. Each manager in this league is a product of the era in which we live, but in my opinion I’m the only manager who can raise himself up above the ordinary thinking of his time. I can make the impossible happen, it’s true. But I’m not Jesus Christ and today I think that even I can’t make the biblical miracle of getting eleven assholes to play like one man.

‘The biggest assholes I’ve seen this morning are you, Ron. You, Xavier. And you, Ayrton. Lazy is what you are, which is to say lazier than the others. Lazy with the ball and lazy when you don’t have the ball. If you can’t find the ball then find space. You remember Gordon Gekko in that movie? Greed is good. That’s what he said. And that’s what I say, too. Be greedy to get the ball back from the opposition, Xavier. By any means necessary. Ron, you should want the ball the way you used to want your mama’s tit.’

‘Yes, boss,’ said Ron Smythson.

‘Which is probably last week in your case, Ayrton. You play like a stupid baby. Not a man. Look at you. Bootlaces undone, socks hanging down — why don’t you suck your thumb as well, like little Jack Wilshere? You’re not even out of breath, my friend. I look at you and I see an asshole that’s not good for shit. An asshole that’s not even worth fucking. And another thing, Ayrton: playing football for the love of the game and because you once read a poem about being an English gentleman is a luxury that even Viktor Sokolnikov can’t afford. You want to play football this way you’d better go and play for Eton College or Harrow or one of those other homo schoolboy sides where they play up and play the game because they really want to win the Battle of Waterloo. But don’t do it for London City. Better still, go and suck some cock at FIFA and maybe they’ll give you a fair play award. Me, I’m not interested in that shit. If you have to get a hard-on to poke the fucking ball in the net with then you’d better do it. And I don’t care if you ruin your chances of ever having children in order to score a goal — that’s what you’d better do, my friend. That’s why you’re being paid a hundred grand a week. To win. So the next time the ball comes off your hand and goes in the net you’ll swear on a stack of Holy Bibles it came off your head or your foot or you’re out of this fucking football club. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Fuck you,’ said Taylor. ‘I don’t have to take that kind of bullshit from you or anyone.’

I closed my eyes for a moment. I knew what was coming now. I thought I did, anyway.

‘Yes you do.’ Zarco took two steps forward, stood in front of poor Taylor and shoved him. ‘Yes, you fucking do, you stupid child. My job is to talk. And part of your job is to listen. Even when it’s what you don’t want to hear. Especially when it’s what you don’t want to hear. Which in this particular case is that you’ve got to try harder.’

‘Fuck off.’

It had been a while since anyone had really seen Zarco raise his voice in what was popularly known — with apologies to Phil Spector — as the wall of sound. Possibly it really wasn’t as loud as it seemed, on account of the fact that Zarco usually spoke quietly; but it was loud enough when he was right in your face and you were close enough to see the plate on the roof of the big man’s mouth, not to mention what he’d eaten for breakfast.

‘Try harder!’ he screamed. ‘Try harder! Try harder!’

The best thing to do in these circumstances was close your eyes and take it; I’d seen some take it and cry afterwards — big men, hard men. Now Taylor was a senior player, a hard lad originally from Liverpool, and not used to people screaming in his face, so he turned and walked away, which was possibly an even worse idea than answering back.

Zarco picked up the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be a plastic training cone, and hurled it at Taylor. The cone hit Taylor between the shoulder blades and almost knocked the man off his feet, which had him coming back at Zarco with strangler’s hands and real malice in his eyes.

‘You fucking bastard,’ he screamed as some of the other players caught him by the arms and held him close. ‘I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll fucking kill that smart bastard.’

Zarco just stood there as if he hardly cared if Ayrton Taylor came at him or not and it was easy to see how, when he was a centre back at Celtic, he’d taken a punch almost without flinching from the Hibernian centre forward, Billy Gibson — a punch that had cost him two teeth. Gibson had been sent off, but not only had Zarco not retaliated, he had stayed on the pitch and even headed the winning goal. Famed for his brutal scything tackles, Zarco had put many a player back into the stands and it was no surprise that the Bleacher Report still listed ‘Butcher Zarco’ as one of the hardest men ever to play soccer, ‘because of his chops’.

‘You’re dropped,’ said Zarco. ‘Dropped for being a cunt. You’re always tweeting things to your seven thousand followers. Now tweet that, you childish cunt.’

But this wasn’t the end of it; the very same afternoon Zarco put Taylor on the January transfer list and I quickly formed the conclusion that the Machiavellian Portuguese had engineered the whole incident so that he could make an example of a senior player to encourage the others. So much for sportsmanship in the beautiful game, you might say. But Zarco was right about one thing: Ayrton was lazy — perhaps the laziest player in the team. There were quite a few who thought that Didier Cassell might not have been injured if Alex Pritchard had not been allowed the space to shoot because Taylor hadn’t tackled him the way he should have done. Besides, everyone knew we had younger strikers who were just as able as Ayrton Taylor and on less than half the money. Sometimes getting rid of one player can be as effective a way of improving the team as buying a new one.

When I got back to my office I made a note of what Zarco had said, not because I disagreed with him but because I used to jot down as much of what he said about football as I could remember — especially the more colourful stuff; one day, I was planning to write a book about the Portuguese. Most football bios are as dull as arseholes, but that was one thing you couldn’t ever say about my boss. Next to Matt Drennan, João Gonzales Zarco was easily the most fascinating figure in English football and, probably, European football too. He didn’t see that, of course, and probably he would have disapproved of me writing anything at all about him — even a note in the programme. Zarco might have been outspoken but he was also a very private man.

That night I watched MOTD2 and there he was again, outspoken as usual, only this time Zarco — who was a Jew — had been asked about the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in Qatar:

‘Speaking for myself I don’t really want to visit a country where I can’t drink a glass of wine with a friend from Israel, perhaps. Or a gay friend. Yes, I have gay friends. Who doesn’t? I am a civilised person. Being civilised requires that you are also tolerant of people who are different. And who enjoy a drink. Maybe too many drinks. That is everyone’s choice, unless you live in Qatar. Perhaps Qatar will be different in ten years’ time. But I doubt it. Meanwhile I read in the Guardian that almost a hundred Nepalese workers have already died on construction sites in Qatar. Think about that. A hundred people are dead just so one little country can host a meaningless football tournament. This is madness. It’s a meaningless tournament because it’s no longer anything to do with football and everything to do with big money and politics. To my mind the last World Cup that meant anything was won by West Germany in 1974, which was also the host country that year. Since Argentina, in 1978, everything has been one big sick joke. There should never have been a World Cup held in a country that was a dictatorship like that one and where the cup was won by cheating.

‘But everything about this host country Qatar strikes me as wrong. It’s a well-known fact that to be a woman in an Arab country is not easy. So perhaps it’s a good thing that the main stadium in Qatar looks like a giant vagina. Certainly it strikes me as ironic that the biggest vagina in the world should now be in Qatar. Personally speaking, I am in favour of vaginas. I started my life in one; we all did. And I think it’s about time that an Arab country faced up to the fact that half the world has a fanny.

‘Also, you have to wonder why a country where you can be flogged for drinking alcohol wants to play host to a lot of English, Dutch and German football fans. But am I surprised that FIFA picked Qatar? No. I’m not at all surprised. Nothing about FIFA ever surprises me. Maybe no one told them it gets very hot in Qatar. Even in winter it’s too hot to do anything very much except flog some poor man because he’s gay. Now I hear that the Qataris are planning to use solar power to cool the effect of the sun’s rays in their newly built stadia; but I don’t think solar power can cool the allegations of bribery quite so easily. Of course, it’s easy to make me shut up about all this. You just have to pay me a million dollars like some of those FIFA officials. On second thoughts, make it two million. Then you know what? I, too, think everything in 2022 will be extremely wonderful.’

That was typical of João Zarco. The man was always good copy, although sometimes he said too much; even he would have conceded that. Sometimes he said too much and people kicked back. Literally. In a now infamous interview on Sky Sports, Zarco described the Irish football pundit and former player-manager, Ronan Reilly — who was sitting alongside him at the time — as ‘a piece of crap’ and ‘someone who couldn’t run a train set let alone a football team’. Reilly replied that Zarco had the biggest mouth in football and that one day the Portuguese would put his foot in his mouth, and if that didn’t happen then Reilly would gladly oblige with his own foot. A week or two later, at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year after-party in the ExCel Arena, the two traded punches and kicks and had to be separated by security staff. But not everyone Zarco criticised publicly was able to fight back like Ronan Reilly.

Take Lionel Sharp, who refereed a UEFA match we played against Juventus last October — an away tie that City lost. Interviewed on ITV after our 1–0 defeat, Zarco half suggested that Juventus — who are not without form in the skulduggery department — had ‘influenced’ Sharp at half time to give a penalty in the second half. Sharp was subsequently the subject of a lot of vicious trolling on Twitter, which caused him to take a fatal overdose of sleeping tablets.

Love him or loathe him, João Zarco was always interesting.