I drove back to St. George's Park on Tuesday morning for the final week of the second block of the course. I was tired in a way that went deeper than sleep could fix. The double life was taking its toll.
The days in the classroom, the evenings on the phone, the weekends at the training ground. The constant switching between student and manager, between learning and deciding, between absorbing information and acting on it.
But I was also more alive than I had felt in years. Every deal that closed, every name that moved from the target list to the signed list, was a piece of the machine clicking into place.
I sat in the car park at St. George's Park for a moment before going in, the engine off, the morning quiet around me. I pulled out the list from my jacket pocket. The one I had written in that classroom at the start of the course, the one I had been working through all week. I crossed off four names.
Rúben Neves. Ibrahima Konaté. James Tarkowski. Ben Chilwell.
