stop whining!" He was insistent. "You know if it's true, I should write about it first!"
"Sean, what are you talking about? We’re on the way up, they have never been in better form and the blokes are ready to carry the old man in their arms. What possible dismissal?"
"Bloody hell, Alex. You are a real arse!" He didn't seem to believe me.
It looked like it was going to be a hot day. It was worth getting ready. I had a couple of whiskies at breakfast. I took a taxi right to the stadium as it was better not to go to the base.
Our bus arrived at the stadium forty minutes earlier than it was supposed to and I have never seen anything more heart breaking in my life than the way our blokes crawled out of it. Iron Mikey led them to this match as a playing coach and neither Harris nor Johnny Martin was with the team.
I didn't go to the locker room as I had nothing to do there. I walked around in the stands, met a few friends from the club, and talked to them about Harris. One of the doctors told me that Johnny also seemed to have refused to stay on with the coaching staff, although this may have been a rumour. I watched the warm-up from the bench. The blokes were running around nervous and they were all wound up. It was like there were electric shocks in the air. Something was going to happen.
From the very beginning of the game, the pitch was covered with smoke, one of our loudmouths lit something which produced serious smoke and in response the hooligans from Cardiff lit their own flares. They must get them into the stadium in their arses, I thought, for me it was always a mystery. As far as I could see no one actually watched the football match for the first twenty or even thirty minutes. The stands roared with curses at the Welsh and the guest sector kept pace. In general it was just the usual thing for such matches and that was mostly what any decent audience was going to watch. After all you can't really watch football when there is such line-up as Millwall vs Cardiff City. It was definitely not Barcelona vs. Real Madrid.
Towards the end of the first half, when the flares seemed to have run out for both our idiots and the dear guests of «Den», the smoke finally cleared and it became clear that there was nothing but complete rubbish taking place on the pitch.
As a coach Iron Mikey turned out to be quite brutal. I do not know how he motivated our blokes or how he pumped them up, but it all came down to the ruthless extermination of enemy midfielders, to endless jabs and fighting for the ball in the centre of the pitch. The entire tactic of our team today was hitting the ball as powerfully and far away as possible, everyone seemed to have forgotten about some sort of passing in the game. Overall it appeared to be more like rugby than football.
We have to give due tribute to the Cardiff players, they probably also missed playing such a game and gladly accepted the proposed rhythm and intensity, taking hits and tackles hard in the legs, using their elbows and knees, like in Thai boxing. Well, you can probably understand them, as their coach had also been a defender and a bone breaker in the past. At the beginning of the season he was still trying to teach his "masters of the leather ball" to exit a defensive game through short passes, something which Guardiola was also looking for, but when in the first few matches this «tiki-taka» brought them a series of goals into their own net, he returned, so to speak, to the roots.
At the break, the team line-ups were incomplete when they left the pitch. Their team removed two players and we only took out Davey Roberts, but five more were hanging on yellow cards.
My ward got kicked in the legs a couple of times, but he seemed to be doing a great job and didn't get into any fights. I simply couldn't miss the second episode of the show called "the setup from Iron Mikey" and found my way into the locker room.
Our new coach was pleased with the "dedication and team pressure". I didn't even know Mikey knew such words. He was especially pleased with how the "Welsh faggots" ran to their dressing room with their tails between their legs and seemed afraid to come out for the second half. Well, that's what he said for good measure. Ours, of course, had also paid a price. Adam Varga couldn't even step on his left foot and Parker had a deep cut to his eyebrow, but Mikey was relentless, and his pumping up of the team ended with a roar of "For Harris!" What the blame of the blokes from Cardiff was for the resignation of the coach is something history is silent about but they had to be held responsible for this.
Just before going back out onto the pitch I caught Mikey's arm.
"My friend, get my cannibal off the pitch," I whispered softly, so that no one could hear me. "They'll rip his legs off."
"Don’t worry Alex, don't piss yourself!" He smiled again. "Fabrice is a smooth bloke! We’ll play well!"
He’ll play well of course.
The second half matched the first. However, their coach had managed to bring his blokes to their senses during half-time, so City finally started playing football. We were saved by the fact that they had one less player than we did, although even with unequal squads they showed us what the difference is between playing football and "team pressure" from Iron Mickey.
At the fiftieth minute they brought their striker into a killer position, but how he did not manage to score remains a mystery. Then a dangerous shot was made after a corner kick and at the end of everything, their captain fired a free kick into the crossbar, but somehow the score remained even.
In the final minutes, our «coach» finally got a red card and went to the locker room, having had time to «talk» to their assistant manager on the way. In general, Iron Mikey's coaching debut went off quite well and even though the score remained nil-nil, the fans really liked the match. It was all particularly touching.
I prayed all through the second half that my charge wouldn't get his legs blown off and that he wouldn't respond to one of their racist defenders. Thank all the gods, Fabrice managed to hold off and only got one yellow card, and it seemed that he stayed on his feet after the match without any assistance.
3
On Monday, Harris gathered everyone together for a farewell dinner. I had expected him to do it somewhere like in a good old English pub or a Chinese eatery, but the old man surprised everyone and arranged for them to close Le Gavroche which had two Michelin Stars.
Most of the boys were dressed in tuxedos, not all of them mind you but many. If you had seen Johnny Martin in a suit or Iron Mikey in a shirt with cufflinks, I'm sure you wouldn't have been able to sleep for a long time afterwards. Personally I don't think I've ever eaten so much cheese in my life. Surprisingly, everything happened with decorum and ended up being very decent.
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