Philip Kerr - January Window

‘We can still win this,’ I said.

‘Did you not think you should have told them that?’

‘I did. But I did it my way. Just like Frank Sinatra.’

‘I recall the regrets and the times when he bit off more than he could chew right enough, but I don’t remember him staring down the barrel of a three-goal deficit.’

‘Simon? Shut the fuck up.’

‘Yes, boss.’

The players took their places in the centre circle; it was always my favourite moment of the game, when I had the sense that anything could happen. But for a few seconds I wasn’t paying much attention; I’d found the list of names that Maurice had sent me and was reading it again on my iPad.

All of the names on Zarco’s list of comps I was familiar with — bar one.

Somehow the crowd at Silvertown Dock had managed to lift its spirits. Hope springs eternal in the breast of any football fan. That’s the wonderful thing about football; it’s about so much more than just football. That’s what people who don’t go to football can never understand. If it wasn’t like this then no one would go. So when the Hammers fans started up with ‘Over Land and Sea’, our fans dug deep into their reserves of optimism and quickly drowned them out with a spirited rendition of ‘Sitting in Silvertown Dock’, to the tune of Otis Redding’s ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay’. It was one of those transcendent moments when you feel part of a much larger soul and realise that at the end of the day football is the only game that has ever really mattered. That will ever matter.

England has given the world a lot, but football is its greatest gift of all.

I don’t know much about schizophrenia. I once saw a film called A Beautiful Mind about a Nobel-Prize-winning economist called John Nash, who was a schizo. For half of his life he seems to have been a genius; for the other half he was barking mad. I’m not sure I’d want to make too much of a comparison between the beautiful game and A Beautiful Mind , but as soon as the second half began at Silvertown Dock it was clear to me that our team of ‘kids and half-wits’ was displaying a very different personality to the one they had exhibited during the first half. I won’t say that the team was bordering on genius, because that’s a word that gets overused in football, but, like Nash, they seemed to be greatly gifted and frankly, extraordinary.

By contrast, West Ham’s players looked like they were playing with lead in their football boots and they did not have another shot at goal until the ninetieth minute, when Kenny Traynor saved a thunderbolt from Bruno Haider with what looked more like an audition for the role of the Roman god Mercury, such was the distance he covered and the speed with which he did it.

The tenor of the new half was set immediately when Ayrton Taylor scored within twelve seconds of the game restarting, finding the back of the net with a rocketing Roy of the Rovers volley that punished a miskicked clearance by Spiegel. The crowd at the dock went wild. 3–1.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Simon after we’d finished celebrating. ‘Now that’s what I call a fucking goal. That might just be the fastest goal in Premier League history.’

‘Nope. That was Ledley King, Tottenham against Bradford in 2000. Ten seconds. Besides, this isn’t a Premier League game.’

‘You know what I mean. Top three, then.’

‘Might be.’

‘If Taylor can do it twice more I’ll lick the ball clean after the match. And his balls as well, if he asks me nicely.’

‘I’ll remind you that you said that, you big daft Yorkshireman.’

But it was Zénobe Schuermans who scored our second after fifty-eight minutes, and it was only when I’d watched the replay several times that I understood exactly what he’d done. It was the kind of something-out-of-nothing goal that you might have seen painted onto a vertical sheet of glass by Picasso in a single, simple uninterrupted line with a very fine brush. Much later on, Sky Sports showed Zénobe’s goal in slow motion, accompanied by Glenn Gould playing the first of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which only seemed to underline the perfectly sublime and almost draftsman-like quality of what was happening in the picture. (Today, it’s a goal that even professional players never get tired of watching in an attempt to deconstruct what makes a perfect footballer.) Xavier Pepe drives a long, low pass along the ground to Schuermans, who has his back to the goal. With his right foot, the young Belgian controls and flicks the ball around Chambers in one elegant pirouette, collects the ball on the other side of the defender at the same time as he blocks him with his arm and hip, and coolly opens his body to deliver a clinical finish with the toe of his left foot straight underneath Spiegel and into the far corner of the net.

There was nothing flashy about the goal, or the way Zénobe celebrated afterwards; you would have said it was a mature player’s goal but for the fact that the Belgian was just sixteen years old. He collected the ball from the back of the net and jogged quickly back to the centre spot, high-fived Jimmy Ribbans and Ayrton Taylor, and looked for all the world as if he just wanted to get on with the game as quickly as possible with the least amount of fuss. 3–2 to West Ham.

‘I don’t care if we win or draw now,’ I told Simon. ‘I’ve just witnessed one of the best goals I’ve ever seen in my life from a player in a team of which I’m the manager.’

‘I couldn’t agree more. Jesus Christ, I’m supposed to try and coach that lad on Thursday. I reckon he could teach us both a fucking thing or two, eh?’

‘That boy could play for another fifteen years and he’ll never score a better goal than that.’ I grinned as I saw a few West Ham heads fall. ‘Look at them. That’s their game plan finished. They know now they’re just hanging to the lead by some well-chewed fingernails.’

As the match restarted Sam Allardyce, West Ham’s manager, was shouting at his men — no one can shout as loud as Big Sam — to keep possession. Now that they’d lost control of the tempo of the game it was surely good advice; staying deep and passing the ball among themselves, forcing us to come and chase it, was the best way of keeping hold of their one-goal advantage. Unfortunately they hadn’t taken account of the speed of our left-winger. A simple back pass from a careless defender to Spiegel was pounced on by Jimmy Ribbans, forcing Spiegel to the ground and, on the hard, slippy surface of the dock, he came scything towards the winger like a jack-knifing articulated lorry, collecting the player’s legs and only then the ball in the process.

The referee did not hesitate and pointed to the penalty spot.

Ayrton Taylor’s penalty was a master class in how to take one: a long, fast run-up with litres of venom in the strike, like Mike Tyson punching an opponent, as if he actually hoped that the ball might strike Spiegel hard in the face and drive the bone of his nose up into his brain. The kind of penalty that makes a goalkeeper want to get out of the way of the ball. 3–3. There were just five minutes of normal time left.

I jumped out of my seat, fisted the air and walked to the edge of my technical area, applauding furiously. ‘That’s the way to take a fucking penalty,’ I yelled. ‘Well done, Ayrton. Fucking brilliant. Now let’s show these cunts what we’re made of.’

The fourth official turned to stare at me. ‘You’ve been warned about swearing before,’ he said and waved Paedo Donnelly towards us.

‘What?’ I said. ‘You’re joking.’

Donnelly listened to the fourth official for a moment and then walked over to my technical area.

‘You were told before about swearing at players,’ said the referee.