Chapter 855: Momentum
I rang Milan at 5 past 11 and he answered on the 2nd ring.
Footballers answer on the 9th ring or they ring you back in an hour. He answered on the 2nd.
"Mister Walsh."
"Ivan. Have you got 10 minutes."
"I have got all day. Nobody is ringing me."
That is the only thing he said in 22 minutes that was about the summer, and he said it flat, and I did not go near it.
"Right. 3 things, and then I will let you go and you can ring me back or not ring me back.
"1. You are the left side of my front 3 and there is nobody behind you. Not a 19-year-old I am developing, not a lad coming back from a loan. You.
"2. 63 matches. Champions League, 2 domestic cups, a Super Cup in Tallinn next week. You have played 4 European matches after Christmas in your career and I have got a squad that is going to play 12."
"And 3."
"3 is Christian Benteke."
"Say that again."
"Christian Benteke is 27, he is 6 foot 3, and he scored 19 last season off about 40 crosses that were any good." I had my back to that window. "My set piece coach watched 40 of yours last night and he has torn up 4 of his 9 routines this morning and started again.
"You will give that man 100 crosses a season he has never had in his life, and he will score you 8 goals with his head, and you will be the reason.
"That is the 3rd thing."
He did not say anything for a bit.
"You are talking about football."
"I am talking about football."
"You are the first one."
Ha. Something moved in a room a thousand miles away, a chair or a door.
"Mister Walsh, everybody who has rung me in 5 weeks has started with 2 sentences and I know both of them before they say them. My own father started with them."
"I know. Somebody told me this morning not to be the 41st."
"Mateo."
"Mateo."
"Mateo talks too much." A pause, and then he said it himself, and I did not put it there. "You watched me miss it."
"I watched you take it."
That is the whole of what I said about Russia and it is all I was ever going to say about Russia, and there was about 4 seconds of nothing on that line afterwards.
"Have you spoken to my agent about the numbers?"
"Dougie Freedman has been on with him since about 10 past 10 and I could not tell you a single figure either of them has said, and I am not going to ask." I meant it and he could hear that I meant it. "I have rung you about where you stand on Saturday afternoon.
"That is the only part of it that is mine."
"Good," Ivan Perišić said, and he said it fast.
"What do you want, Ivan?"
"I want you at Beckenham on Thursday morning, and I want you to bring whoever you need to bring, and I want everything about money finished before you get in that building so that the first conversation you and I have in a room is about a left hand side."
"You have thought about this."
"I have had since 4 o’clock this morning," I said.
In July, in a room under that stadium at half 11 at night with 200 journalists in front of me, somebody asked me about the shootout and I said 8 words about it.
Do not write that Croatia lost. They did not.
Every newspaper in Croatia ran it the next morning. Kovačić told me that in April, when it did not matter, and I had forgotten he had told me until 20 past 9 that morning.
Ivan Perišić did not mention it on that telephone and neither did I, and he has never mentioned it since, and he has been at this football club a long time now.
Sarah had already started before I put that phone down.
I know that because when I came out of my office at 25 past 11 there were 6 people round the long table in the analysts’ room and none of them had been asked by me to be in it.
"Sit down," Sarah said. "We have got a problem and it is not the money."
Here is what a transfer actually is, and it is not 2 men on a telephone.
Sarah had the registration in front of her and she had been on to the Premier League at 9.
"Jesús comes off the list the moment Sevilla lodge it, and they are lodging it Thursday morning because their window and ours do not close on the same day. So I have got a 25 with a hole in it from about 10 o’clock on Thursday and a man I cannot put in the hole until his paperwork lands.
"If Milan are slow, we go into Saturday with 24 registered and no left winger, and I will have to name Semenyo."
"How slow is slow?"
"Italy," Sarah said, and that was all she said.
Rebecca had her arms folded and had not sat down.
"Their medical summary came through at 8. It is 40 pages and it is clean, and there is 1 line in it I do not like."
"Go on."
"April. Hamstring tightness, right side, 2 matches missed, no imaging attached." She put a printout on that table with a highlighter mark on it. "Inter managed it and it went away and there is nothing wrong with how they did it.
"But a 29-year-old winger with a right hamstring flag and no scan behind it, going into 63 matches, is not a signature I put my name on."
"He lands at 10."
"Then he is in the machine at 11 and I have got the read by half 1, and if it is clean I sign it off at 2 and you have got 3 hours to spare." She did not move. "If it is not clean, you do not get a signature and you will not want one.
"And before you make a face at me, Danny, I signed one off in January on somebody else’s paperwork."
Kovačić is at the far end of that building with a brace on until September.
"Right," I said. "11 o’clock."
Bray had a laptop open and he had not opened his mouth.
"Go on."
"I have watched 40 of his crosses."
"When?"
"Last night." He turned the screen round. "Sarah rang me at half 9 and said it might be a Croatian and to have a look, and I had a look."
I looked at Sarah. Sarah looked at a registration form.
"His back post delivery is 14 per cent better than anything we put in a box last season and I have got the numbers off Marcus, not off my own eyes." He turned the screen round. "He whips it. It comes back into a centre-half and it does not sit up, and he takes them left footed from the right and right footed from the left.
"So I am not scrapping anything. I have got 9 routines and they all still work.
"What I am doing is moving Christian 2 yards deeper on the out-swingers and putting Tarky on the near post instead of the 6 yard line, because the ball arrives about half a yard earlier off that man than it does off Wilf and every man in that box is going to be late for a fortnight."
"How long to teach it?"
"3 sessions. And I want the 3 sessions before the 11th, and if he lands Thursday at 10 I have got Friday and Saturday and that is 2."
Marcus had a folder with a name on it that he had made on Sunday night.
"Sunday?"
"Sunday, boss. After the Shield." He did not look up. "You said Navas was going in July and I have had a file open on 6 left sided players since the 20th, and he is 1 of the 6, and he was 4th on it until Croatia went out and then he went 1st.
"He did 203 crosses in a league season. The next man on my list did 94."
"Why was he 4th?"
"Because he was 54 million pounds in June," Marcus said. "The list is by price. It has always been by price. You know that."
I made 2 telephone calls that morning. This building had done 14 hours of work on a name I had not said out loud to anybody until 7 o’clock.
"Right," I said. "Sarah. What do you need from me?"
"Nothing until Thursday. Do not ring Milan again, do not put anything on a phone, and when his people ask about a signing on fee, say the number Steve gave Dougie and do not move off it by a pound."
"And if they walk?"
"They will not walk," Sarah said. "But if they do, we have got Semenyo, and Semenyo is 18 and he will do it and he will not be very good at it until about November."
Clk. She shut the folder.
"Meeting at 8 tomorrow. Everybody. Rebecca gets the room at 9 in case that hour turns into 3."