Chapter 814: Direct Route
I got out of that building at 7.
At 10 past, on the A222, a number I did not know came through the car with a +212 on the front of it, and 212 is Morocco.
I nearly did not answer it. 40 numbers I do not know have rung me this week and 38 of them were journalists.
"Coach Walsh."
"Speaking."
"I am the father of Achraf Hakimi."
I pulled into a lay-by and was careful, because I have been burned once this summer already by talking to the wrong person about the wrong player.
"Sir, before you say anything. I cannot discuss your son with you. He is under contract at another club and if I have that conversation on this telephone I am in trouble and so is he."
"I know. I am not telephoning you about a transfer."
"Right."
"Your man Freedman spoke to me for 9 minutes this afternoon and told me a thing nobody has told me since May." A television was going behind him. "In 7 weeks a great many people have telephoned Mr Salas about Achraf. Nobody has telephoned this house.
"And this afternoon a man I have never met rang it to tell me something that cost his club a footballer."
"Sir."
"That is the whole reason." He stopped. "You gave my son a World Cup, and I watched you take the blame for losing it on a television in this room, and my wife had to leave.
"So I am saying thank you, and I am not asking you for anything, and now I will put the phone down before either of us says something we should not."
"Can I say one thing that is not about football?"
"You may."
"He was the best player at that tournament and it was not close."
There was a pause on that line.
"He is angry with you," his father said.
"I know."
"He will be angry with you for a long time."
"I know that as well."
"Good," he said. "That is how you know he is his mother’s son."
And he put the phone down.
Steve Parish rang 4 minutes later, before I was off the A222.
"Are you driving?"
"Hands free."
"Somebody has bid for Aaron. 40 million pounds, 30 up front and 10 over 3 years, it came in at 6 minutes past 4 and I said no at half past."
I did not say anything.
"Danny."
"I am here."
"I did not ring to ask you. I rang to tell you I had already done it." A door went on his end. "I am not selling a 20-year-old out of our own academy to fund a stand, and if you have spent any part of today thinking I might, we will have that out on Monday."
"Who is it?"
"I am not saying on a telephone on a Friday."
"Steve."
"You will be in a car park at 8 in the morning telling 40 photographers what you think of them." He almost laughed. "Monday. With Dougie."
I came off the roundabout at Elmers End.
"His agent will have told him by Sunday," I said.
"His agent will have told him tonight."
"So I have got a 20-year-old walking into my building on Monday who has just found out somebody thinks he is worth 40 million pounds."
"You have," Steve said. "And that is your job and not mine, and I do not envy you. Go home."
I did the sum anyway, on the Beckenham Road, because I could not help it.
Aaron is 1 of exactly 4 club-trained men in that squad, and 4 is the floor. Sell him and we do not lose a registration in September.
We lose it on the 9th of August, and it does not come back.
Dougie rang at half 7.
"You have spoken to Steve."
"I have."
"Right. That is that dealt with, and now you can listen to me for 3 minutes about something that actually needs doing this week."
That is Dougie Freedman. 40 million pounds is a Tuesday to him.
"Go on."
"Theo is off the board. Real are loaning him to Sociedad for the season and there is no option in it, so Madrid are keeping the boy and we cannot have him in August or next June either."
"And that is us finished on the other one as well," I said.
"Is it."
Something in the way he said it made me indicate and slow down.
"Dougie, I pulled us out at midday. You sent the letter. I watched you do it."
"You pulled us out of an auction," Dougie Freedman said. "Which is a different thing to pulling out of a footballer, and if you had let me finish a sentence this afternoon instead of putting the phone down on me I would have told you that at 1 o’clock."
"Say it now."
"Salas does not own that boy. Salas has never owned that boy. Achraf Hakimi is under contract at Real Madrid and Real Madrid are the only people on this earth who can sell him to anybody."
I came off the Beckenham Road into a bus stop and put the hazards on.
"So we go direct."
"So we go direct. To Madrid. Tomorrow morning, in writing, from me to their director of football, with no agent anywhere near it."
"They will not sell to us."
"They will not sell to us at 40, and 40 was never their number." A drawer went on his end. "40 was Salas with 4 clubs in a room and a World Cup on the television. Take Salas out of it and you are back to what Madrid actually think.
"And what Madrid actually think is that they have got Carvajal for 6 more years and a 19-year-old they cannot play, and their preference was always to lend him out for 2 seasons and have him back at 21."
"So what do we bid?"
***
Thank you to Sir nameyelus, Kostas_Gounakis and GeriatricGuineaPig for the support.