ACT 3 OF VOLUME 1
Early December 2015
The victory against North Manchester Athletic was the highest of highs, a moment of pure, unadulterated footballing ecstasy. We were the talk of the city, the giant-killers, the team that had defied all odds.
The players were walking on air, their chests puffed out with a newfound, swaggering confidence. I was the Moss Side Mourinho, the tactical genius, the man who could turn water into wine. We were on top of the world.
And then, just as quickly, the world came crashing down around us.
The news came on a Tuesday evening, in the form of a crumpled, beer-stained letter that Frankie Morrison handed to me with a look of utter devastation on his face.
The Railway Arms, the pub that had been our home, our sponsor, our very identity, had been sold. The new owners, a faceless brewery corporation with no interest in grassroots football, had cut all ties with the team. We were homeless. We were sponsor-less. We were, to all intents and purposes, about to fold.
Frankie was heartbroken. The pub team had been his life's work, a forty-year labour of love. He had poured his heart, his soul, and most of his pension into keeping it afloat. To see it all end like this, with a cold, impersonal letter from a corporate suit, was a brutal, soul-crushing blow. He looked like a man who had lost a child.
"That's it, then, Gaffer," he said, his voice a hoarse, defeated whisper. "It's over. All of it."
I looked at the faces of the players, who had gathered around us in a somber, silent circle. The swagger was gone. The confidence had evaporated. In its place was a look of shock, of disbelief, of a dream being snatched away just as it was starting to come true. All that momentum, all that belief, all that hard work… it was all about to disappear.
I felt a surge of anger, a hot, defiant rage that burned away the despair. I would not let this happen. I would not let our story end like this. We had come too far. We had fought too hard. We had built something special, something real. And I would be damned if I was going to let it be destroyed by a brewery's bottom line.
"No," I said, my voice ringing with a certainty that surprised even myself. "No, it's not over. We're not giving up. We're going to find a way."
Frankie looked at me, a flicker of hope in his tired, red-rimmed eyes. "How, Danny? We've got no money, no pitch, no kit. We've got nothing."
"We've got a team," I said, looking around at the players. "We've got a team that just beat the best side in the city. We've got a reputation. We've got a story. And we're going to use it."
I spent the next forty-eight hours in a frantic, desperate whirlwind of activity. I was a man possessed, fueled by caffeine, adrenaline, and a stubborn refusal to accept defeat.
I made phone calls, I sent emails, and I knocked on doors. I called every local business, every community centre, every school in the area, begging for a pitch, for a sponsor, for a lifeline. The answer was always the same: a polite, sympathetic, but firm 'no'.
Just as I was starting to lose hope, just as the cold, hard reality of our situation was starting to sink in, I had an idea. A long shot. A wild, audacious gamble. But it was the only one I had left.
I was going to approach Terry Blackwood.
Terry Blackwood was the chairman of Moss Side Athletic, a proper, established football club that played in the Saturday County League, a full two tiers above the Sunday league we had just conquered.
They were a club with a proud history, a proper ground, and a place at the heart of the local community. They were also, as I knew from Emma's articles and my own obsessive research, a club that was struggling.
Their first team was languishing near the bottom of the County League, their crowds were dwindling, and their finances were in a precarious state. They were a sleeping giant, a club with a great past but an uncertain future. And I had a plan to wake them up.
I managed to get a meeting with him through a combination of Emma's contacts and my own sheer, bloody-minded persistence. I turned up at his office, a small, cluttered room above a builders' yard that he owned, armed with a folder full of documents and a heart full of hope.
Terry Blackwood was a man in his late fifties, with a round, friendly face, a firm handshake, and the shrewd, intelligent eyes of a man who had built a successful business from the ground up.
He was a local lad, a Moss Side man born and bred. He was a football man. But he was also a businessman. He was not a man to be swayed by sentiment or romance. He was a man who dealt in facts, in figures, in the cold, hard logic of the bottom line.
"So," he said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. "You're the Moss Side Mourinho. The kid who's been making all the noise in the Sunday league. I've read about you. What do you want?"
I took a deep breath, and I launched into my pitch. I didn't talk about dreams, or passion, or the magic of the cup. I talked about numbers. I talked about strategy. I talked about a vision.
I pulled out a document from my folder. It was a detailed, professional-looking presentation that I had spent all night creating. It was full of charts, of graphs, of data points. It was, in essence, a printout of the system's analysis of my team, translated into the language of a business proposal.
"Mr. Blackwood," I began, my voice surprisingly steady.
"My team, The Railway Arms, is about to fold. But we are not a failing team. We are a successful one. We have a win rate of over seventy percent in the last three months. We have a squad of talented, committed players, including one, JJ Johnson, who I believe has the potential to be a professional footballer. We have a growing fanbase, and a positive media profile, thanks to the work of a local journalist."
I flipped to the next page, showing him a graph of JJ's development trajectory. "Look at this player's progression. His technical ability has increased by twenty points in three months. His market value has quadrupled. He's an appreciating asset, Mr. Blackwood. An asset that is currently owned by a pub team that is about to go bust. If you take us on, you acquire that asset for free."
***
Thank you for reading; also, your boy is sick the chapters will slow down the rest of this week but I'll still be updating.