Philip Kerr - January Window

‘Yes, boss,’ said Ron Smythson.

‘Which is probably last week in your case, Ayrton. You play like a stupid baby. Not a man. Look at you. Bootlaces undone, socks hanging down — why don’t you suck your thumb as well, like little Jack Wilshere? You’re not even out of breath, my friend. I look at you and I see an asshole that’s not good for shit. An asshole that’s not even worth fucking. And another thing, Ayrton: playing football for the love of the game and because you once read a poem about being an English gentleman is a luxury that even Viktor Sokolnikov can’t afford. You want to play football this way you’d better go and play for Eton College or Harrow or one of those other homo schoolboy sides where they play up and play the game because they really want to win the Battle of Waterloo. But don’t do it for London City. Better still, go and suck some cock at FIFA and maybe they’ll give you a fair play award. Me, I’m not interested in that shit. If you have to get a hard-on to poke the fucking ball in the net with then you’d better do it. And I don’t care if you ruin your chances of ever having children in order to score a goal — that’s what you’d better do, my friend. That’s why you’re being paid a hundred grand a week. To win. So the next time the ball comes off your hand and goes in the net you’ll swear on a stack of Holy Bibles it came off your head or your foot or you’re out of this fucking football club. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Fuck you,’ said Taylor. ‘I don’t have to take that kind of bullshit from you or anyone.’

I closed my eyes for a moment. I knew what was coming now. I thought I did, anyway.

‘Yes you do.’ Zarco took two steps forward, stood in front of poor Taylor and shoved him. ‘Yes, you fucking do, you stupid child. My job is to talk. And part of your job is to listen. Even when it’s what you don’t want to hear. Especially when it’s what you don’t want to hear. Which in this particular case is that you’ve got to try harder.’

‘Fuck off.’

It had been a while since anyone had really seen Zarco raise his voice in what was popularly known — with apologies to Phil Spector — as the wall of sound. Possibly it really wasn’t as loud as it seemed, on account of the fact that Zarco usually spoke quietly; but it was loud enough when he was right in your face and you were close enough to see the plate on the roof of the big man’s mouth, not to mention what he’d eaten for breakfast.

‘Try harder!’ he screamed. ‘Try harder! Try harder!’

The best thing to do in these circumstances was close your eyes and take it; I’d seen some take it and cry afterwards — big men, hard men. Now Taylor was a senior player, a hard lad originally from Liverpool, and not used to people screaming in his face, so he turned and walked away, which was possibly an even worse idea than answering back.

Zarco picked up the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be a plastic training cone, and hurled it at Taylor. The cone hit Taylor between the shoulder blades and almost knocked the man off his feet, which had him coming back at Zarco with strangler’s hands and real malice in his eyes.

‘You fucking bastard,’ he screamed as some of the other players caught him by the arms and held him close. ‘I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll fucking kill that smart bastard.’

Zarco just stood there as if he hardly cared if Ayrton Taylor came at him or not and it was easy to see how, when he was a centre back at Celtic, he’d taken a punch almost without flinching from the Hibernian centre forward, Billy Gibson — a punch that had cost him two teeth. Gibson had been sent off, but not only had Zarco not retaliated, he had stayed on the pitch and even headed the winning goal. Famed for his brutal scything tackles, Zarco had put many a player back into the stands and it was no surprise that the Bleacher Report still listed ‘Butcher Zarco’ as one of the hardest men ever to play soccer, ‘because of his chops’.

‘You’re dropped,’ said Zarco. ‘Dropped for being a cunt. You’re always tweeting things to your seven thousand followers. Now tweet that, you childish cunt.’

But this wasn’t the end of it; the very same afternoon Zarco put Taylor on the January transfer list and I quickly formed the conclusion that the Machiavellian Portuguese had engineered the whole incident so that he could make an example of a senior player to encourage the others. So much for sportsmanship in the beautiful game, you might say. But Zarco was right about one thing: Ayrton was lazy — perhaps the laziest player in the team. There were quite a few who thought that Didier Cassell might not have been injured if Alex Pritchard had not been allowed the space to shoot because Taylor hadn’t tackled him the way he should have done. Besides, everyone knew we had younger strikers who were just as able as Ayrton Taylor and on less than half the money. Sometimes getting rid of one player can be as effective a way of improving the team as buying a new one.

When I got back to my office I made a note of what Zarco had said, not because I disagreed with him but because I used to jot down as much of what he said about football as I could remember — especially the more colourful stuff; one day, I was planning to write a book about the Portuguese. Most football bios are as dull as arseholes, but that was one thing you couldn’t ever say about my boss. Next to Matt Drennan, João Gonzales Zarco was easily the most fascinating figure in English football and, probably, European football too. He didn’t see that, of course, and probably he would have disapproved of me writing anything at all about him — even a note in the programme. Zarco might have been outspoken but he was also a very private man.

That night I watched MOTD2 and there he was again, outspoken as usual, only this time Zarco — who was a Jew — had been asked about the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in Qatar:

‘Speaking for myself I don’t really want to visit a country where I can’t drink a glass of wine with a friend from Israel, perhaps. Or a gay friend. Yes, I have gay friends. Who doesn’t? I am a civilised person. Being civilised requires that you are also tolerant of people who are different. And who enjoy a drink. Maybe too many drinks. That is everyone’s choice, unless you live in Qatar. Perhaps Qatar will be different in ten years’ time. But I doubt it. Meanwhile I read in the Guardian that almost a hundred Nepalese workers have already died on construction sites in Qatar. Think about that. A hundred people are dead just so one little country can host a meaningless football tournament. This is madness. It’s a meaningless tournament because it’s no longer anything to do with football and everything to do with big money and politics. To my mind the last World Cup that meant anything was won by West Germany in 1974, which was also the host country that year. Since Argentina, in 1978, everything has been one big sick joke. There should never have been a World Cup held in a country that was a dictatorship like that one and where the cup was won by cheating.

‘But everything about this host country Qatar strikes me as wrong. It’s a well-known fact that to be a woman in an Arab country is not easy. So perhaps it’s a good thing that the main stadium in Qatar looks like a giant vagina. Certainly it strikes me as ironic that the biggest vagina in the world should now be in Qatar. Personally speaking, I am in favour of vaginas. I started my life in one; we all did. And I think it’s about time that an Arab country faced up to the fact that half the world has a fanny.

‘Also, you have to wonder why a country where you can be flogged for drinking alcohol wants to play host to a lot of English, Dutch and German football fans. But am I surprised that FIFA picked Qatar? No. I’m not at all surprised. Nothing about FIFA ever surprises me. Maybe no one told them it gets very hot in Qatar. Even in winter it’s too hot to do anything very much except flog some poor man because he’s gay. Now I hear that the Qataris are planning to use solar power to cool the effect of the sun’s rays in their newly built stadia; but I don’t think solar power can cool the allegations of bribery quite so easily. Of course, it’s easy to make me shut up about all this. You just have to pay me a million dollars like some of those FIFA officials. On second thoughts, make it two million. Then you know what? I, too, think everything in 2022 will be extremely wonderful.’