for sure. So what? One for the road? I have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow."
"Okay, let’s do it. By the way, how are you going to get to Sheffield on Tuesday?" If you want, I'll get a spot for you."
"No, thanks. I'll get there on my own, I need to stop by Doncaster on the way."
"Someone interesting at Rovers?"
"There’s one kid who’s an attacking midfielder but he’s not very stable yet. We need to check him out in a serious situation."
"And who did they get for the Cup?"
"Norwich."
"Well, if he can do anything against those bone crushers, then the bloke really has talent."
"Yeah, we’ll see. Shall we get out of here?"
"Yeah, come on."
As he got into the taxi, he gave my hand a firm squeeze.
"Alex, don't tell anyone what you just heard from me," Johnny said, giving me a conspiratorial nod. "You're a good mate. Thank you!"
"Yeah right," I laughed. "Cheers, take care of yourself mate!"
2
The bone crushers were up to par as Johnny had predicted, my boy from Doncaster couldn't do anything against those Norwich City boys and was just trampled over and flattened in the first half. Then by the seventieth minute, when the Rovers already had a score of nil-three, he was completely replaced. I didn't stay to watch the beating anymore so I went back to Sheffield.
It's a great idea that they play Cup matches at different times, that way you can watch a game in one city, and have plenty of time to get to the neighbouring one to see another match.
"Hey Alex! How's your ward doing?" asked Johnny who was the first of our people I met in Bramall Lane.
"He’s a little weak so far. How are our blokes doing?"
"There's a warm-up session in twenty minutes and the mood after Reading is combative."
"Well, may God grant such a mood as that…"
Mood is very important in football but unfortunately, it is not everything. We started quite briskly, and in the first half-hour we could have opened the scoring twice but in one case the ball struck the crossbar slightly and then went out of bounds and in the second the United goalkeeper stopped the ball from going into a corner with an incredible jump. They had no mercy on us and by the time the break came we were already losing nil-two.
I would be better not to tell you what happened in the locker room, but everyone got it, including my Cameroonian, although I think he did his best. However old man Harris needed blood and fresh meat and finally, he told everyone to get out, and promised that if we lost we would all be walking home.
Apparently it worked as during the second half, the blokes went all out and my ward was also in top form. First during one of his attacks he almost reached the point where he could have struck from the left flank and if it had not been for their defender, who knocked the ball away at the last moment, we would have scored. Then, from one of the corners, Fleming spun the ball right into Iron Mikey's bald head, and Iron Mikey had no choice but to score. It was his first goal of the season and in fact I don't remember him scoring last season either, but Mikey is Mikey and he didn't even change the expression on his mug, as if everything was how it was supposed to be. He just tore the ball away from their defenders and took it to centre pitch.
After that, the score stayed the same until the last minutes. United was already doing everything they could to run out the clock, old man Harris was raging on the sidelines and the referee kept checking his stopwatch, trying to decide whether to go straight to the judge room or give us a couple more minutes of stoppage time. Their fans began to sing their sad song, which they should have considered a victory song, while ours just yelled, spat at security and tossed all sorts of rubbish onto the pitch. In general, everything was going as usual, another lost cup match on the road, but then all of a sudden my cannibal did something unexpected.
Who knows whether it was something he picked up in Belgium, or something they teach them at the Ajax school, but he suddenly abandoned his flank and went on the attack with our central defender, the big Icelander Sigurdsson, who had already been playing second striker for the last five minutes.
You had to see it. At that moment the game was reduced to the good old "kick the ball forward and you’ll see, something good will come out of it". In fact I don't even remember which of the blokes put the ball into the penalty box. Sigurdsson was struggling, the ball somehow flew up sideways out of the havoc, where Parker also missed it, so that the ball now flew up somewhere at a level just above the waist. And then Fabrice performed a scissor kick, I don't know how he did it in the fight against their defender, but the fact remains. Our Cameroonian folded, executed the scissor kick and the ball bounced off the turf and went straight into the goal! That was it, so much for "a pinch of snuff", or "a Night Out in Sheffield".
Most of all, however, I felt sorry for the judge. The wanker was probably already getting ready to go to the pub with his co-conspirators on the sidelines, and then bang! Added time, and then there might be a penalty. The United fans had forgotten all about their "packet of Woodbines" and were roaring and whistling and hooting, but they were nowhere near as loud as our idiots. Our people staged a real orgy in the guest sector. How little the blokes needed to be completely happy!
"Parker! You fucking bastard!" Harris couldn't contain his excitement, either. "How could you not hit the ball, you bitch? What the fuck is this?! After every training session I'll have you hitting rugby balls for half an hour! Do you understand me, you fucking Pinocchio?"
"I love you too, Coach!" he said, proving what a wanker he was.
"Get it together! Focus!" The old man didn't let them rest on their laurels. "Be careful with the defence! Make them shit themselves and then squeeze the faggots!"
And the blokes did it! We did it in extra time, so the referee and his linesmen would be happy as they didn't have to watch over a penalty shootout. They carried it off so well that it was one for the road!
First, our left winger, Varga, made such a cross that he could at least now be sent to the Hungarian national team. Parker pushed past their defender and kicked the ball to Kenneth, who ran up, and kicked the ball so hard that it almost tore through the net of the goal. Then when the entire United team moved forward, our team ran away in a three-in-two counterattack. After that it was just a matter of technique. Fabrice, Adam Varga and Parker played the game perfectly, and my team-mates just rolled the ball into an empty net.
Four-two. Turn out the lights, game over. Now it would be possible to get plastered on joy alone. I even wished I hadn't been driving, but I didn't want to leave my car in Sheffield.
How the boys got home, I'm afraid to imagine that. Our next game was on Sunday, so Harris let the blokes celebrate. Anyway, Johnny Martin told me later that he didn't remember much, and to get a machine like Johnny plastered, you'd have to try hard.
After the match, Fabrice appeared in all of the newspapers. The blokes from an online-publication did an interview with him in which he, without much hesitation, compared himself to Choupo-Moting. However in general, it all turned out quite well. For only two shitty matches, the cost of my kid on a well-known German portal jumped up one and a half times.
On Saturday, at the pre-match press-conference, it was only the lazy who didn't ask about
