Football: Salary System - Chapter 122: The Busy Fat Man (Patreon)

Zayn smiled and shook his head, not thinking much of it.

It was only a nomination.

At this point, the FIFA FIFPro World11 shortlist was still a lengthy 55-player list. It wouldn’t be until 2024 that a more refined 26-player shortlist would be announced before the awards ceremony.

Zayn gave the list a quick glance. There were fifteen forwards alone.

But the World11 used a 4-3-3 formation, meaning there were only three places up front.

To be honest, he wasn’t satisfied with merely making up the numbers. He wanted to go further.

Still, Zayn knew that with nothing more than half a season in the Championship and seven FIFA World Cup matches to his name, he had virtually no chance of displacing the stars who had excelled throughout the previous season.

So he wasn’t expecting much.

“I’m not going to London. The schedule’s too packed.” Zayn put the list back on the table.

At an awards ceremony held in the middle of the season, the people who actually showed up were usually those with a realistic chance of walking onto the stage and collecting something.

If Zayn went, he would simply spend the evening sitting in the audience applauding other people.

And if he remembered correctly, neither Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo would attend this edition anyway.

Raiola nodded, unsurprised by his decision.

“Good choice. Keep this form up for the rest of the season, and next year you’ll be standing on that stage yourself.”

Zayn smiled without responding and changed the subject.

“Mino, you’re making pretty slow progress on what you promised me.”

“What did I promise?”

“You were the one who said you’d fill my pockets with cash.”

The fixture schedule might have been packed, but Zayn certainly wasn’t so busy that he couldn’t find time to sign a contract.

Yet [Main Quest (6): Rise to Global Stardom] had been stalled for months.

A trace of embarrassment crossed Raiola’s face before he quickly covered it with a loud laugh.

“Ha! Of course I remember!”

When the laughter died down, he rubbed his chubby hands together, looking unusually guilty.

“Actually... after we signed the Jaguar Land Rover deal, I did keep working on several major sponsorships for you. There are just a few loose ends left.”

Raiola gave Zayn a sincere apology.

“I’m sorry. This one’s on me. I’ve simply had too much on my plate lately.”

Zayn raised an eyebrow, signaling for him to continue.

The portly agent sighed and began counting off his recent schedule on his fingers.

“First, there’s a kid I’ve got my eye on. He’s playing for Molde right now. A year older than you, over 1.9 meters tall, left-footed, unbelievable explosiveness...”

Before Raiola could finish, Zayn already knew who he meant.

Obviously, the player he was talking about was Erling Haaland, the same guy Zayn had once brought up to mess with Grealish.

“...I flew all the way to Norway just to watch him play. That kid is an absolute beast. The kind of damage he can do inside the box, among players his age, I’ve only seen something similar from you.”

Raiola’s eyes gleamed.

“I’ve already spoken with his father. We’ve mapped out a rough plan for his future. This winter, we’ll move him from Norway to Red Bull Salzburg in the Austrian Bundesliga. That way, he can play in the UEFA Champions League next year!”

The path matched Zayn’s memories.

With a former professional footballer for a father, Haaland’s career had been carefully mapped out long ago.

“Surely that alone didn’t keep you busy for this long?”

Raiola sighed.

“Of course that isn’t the only thing.”

“AC Milan have just changed owners. I mentioned it to you during the summer window. Yonghong is completely out now, and Elliott Management have taken over.

“I’ve spent the past few months going back and forth with Leonardo and Maldini. Donnarumma caused a huge mess last year, and both the club and the supporters were unhappy. I’ve had to try to smooth things over.”

Zayn understood immediately.

The drama surrounding Donnarumma’s contract situation certainly wasn’t limited to a single year.

Over the next few years, it would repeatedly dominate the Italian sports pages, while Milan supporters even threw fake dollar bills onto the pitch to mock the Italy goalkeeper.

Fans had already started making jokes about his supposed obsession with money, while Italian supporters twisted his surname, “Donnarumma,” into “Dollarumma.”

“And there’s another reason,” Raiola continued. “Zlatan has been thinking about going back to Milan. He’s still in very good shape, so he’s started reconsidering the idea of winding down his career in MLS. Leonardo and Maldini are interested in the possibility too.”

Once Raiola got started, there was no stopping him.

“The biggest headache is Paul. Ever since he came back from winning the FIFA World Cup, his conflict with José has been completely out in the open.”

The two men he was referring to were Pogba and Mourinho.

Now Zayn was genuinely interested.

This had been one of the biggest dramas in football at the time, and Raiola was bound to know details the public had never heard.

“With France, Deschamps gave Paul a huge amount of freedom, and he played some of the best football of his career. Then he came back to his club, and the contrast couldn’t have been bigger.”

“You must’ve seen the reports.” Raiola rubbed his temples. “After Manchester United drew 1-1 with Wolves last month, Paul told the media that at home the team should ‘attack, attack, attack.’”

Zayn nodded.

That incident had caused a huge stir.

“José blew up immediately. He saw it as a direct challenge to his authority as manager. The very next day, Paul was stripped of the vice-captaincy.”

Raiola sounded helpless.

“All I can do is tell Paul to keep his head down for now while I look for another club for him.”

It was classic Raiola.

Looking for another club served two purposes.

First, it gave Pogba an escape route.

Second, it put pressure on Manchester United’s hierarchy.

“Aren’t you worried Mourinho will get even angrier?”

“Angrier?” Raiola snorted. “He’s already angry. At this point, no matter what anyone does, he’ll find a reason to be angry.”

Zayn said nothing.

He already knew where this story was heading.

Raiola’s pressure tactics would completely infuriate Mourinho.

The Special One would become convinced that Pogba’s agent was encouraging his player to rebel behind the scenes, escalating the confrontation even further.

Manchester United’s dressing room would eventually split into two camps, while the Red Devils’ results would collapse.

And that decline would last for years.

In the end, Manchester United CEO Ed Woodward would make his choice and sack Mourinho in late December.

Raiola was still talking.

“Then there’s Balotelli. I have to keep an eye on him too. He’s fallen out with Vieira at Nice and put on quite a bit of weight...”

Zayn stared at him in disbelief.

The man’s life was ridiculously busy.

Looking more closely, Zayn noticed the dark circles under Raiola’s eyes.

He had clearly spent plenty of nights without enough sleep recently.

After thinking for a moment, Zayn offered a word of advice.

“Mino, this workload is insane. Get some rest when you need it. Your health matters more. There’s always more money to make.”

Raiola waved him off dismissively.

“Rest has never been an option for Raiola.”

Zayn shook his head and stopped trying to persuade him.

If Raiola were the kind of man who could be talked out of something that easily, he would never have become one of the most powerful super-agents in football.

The portly agent pushed aside his exhaustion and returned to the original subject.

“Don’t worry. Your earning power right now is far beyond anything you can imagine. The moment one of these deals is ready, I’ll fly over and put the contract in front of you.”

Zayn nodded.

...

On October 26, the FIFA awards ceremony was held in London as scheduled.

The results were almost exactly as Zayn remembered from his previous life.

Modrić beat Cristiano Ronaldo and Salah to be crowned The Best FIFA Men’s Player of 2018.

Even though Croatia had lost to England in the semifinal, Modrić still had his club achievements behind him. He had been a starting midfielder for Real Madrid throughout their run of three consecutive UEFA Champions League titles.

That gleaming European Cup, combined with Croatia’s resilience at the FIFA World Cup, earned him a huge number of votes.

And with that, the Croatian finally broke Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo’s decade-long monopoly on football’s highest individual honors.

Griezmann, who many had expected to challenge for the award, finished only fourth.

That was arguably the biggest surprise of the night.

France coach Deschamps lifted The Best FIFA Men’s Coach award, yet not a single French player finished in the top three for The Best FIFA Men’s Player.

Zayn could roughly guess why.

France simply had too many outstanding players, and their football was built around clearly defined roles and collective strength.

No single player had been overwhelmingly dominant within the team.

Put simply, the votes had been split.

The FIFA FIFPro World11 was announced soon afterward.

Zayn didn’t make the final eleven.

That was exactly what he had expected.

His half-season in the Championship might have looked legendary to Birmingham City supporters, but to professional players across Europe, it was still only a remarkable run in a second-tier league.

Beyond his explosive performances on the pitch, he didn’t actually have many major achievements to his name yet.

Whether in terms of individual honors or team trophies, he still had a long way to go.

The most controversial award of the night was undoubtedly the FIFA Puskás Award.

Salah’s curling effort after cutting inside in the Merseyside Derby won with 38 percent of the vote.

The result caused an uproar.

After all, Salah’s goal had been competing against spectacular FIFA World Cup strikes from Pavard and Quaresma, along with the extraordinary bicycle kicks Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale had scored for Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League.

Whether judged by spectacle or significance, Salah’s goal struggled to convince many people.

Online, some even mocked the result as the “joke of the year.”

Salah’s Liverpool teammate Milner joked:

“Congratulations, Salah. Your seventh-best goal from last season has just been named Goal of the Season.”

And it really hadn’t been Salah’s most spectacular goal of the campaign.

Even when FIFA first announced the ten nominees, its inclusion had already sparked debate.

Almost nobody expected it to actually win.

Zayn, however, wasn’t surprised at all.

That year, the FIFA Puskás Award was decided entirely by votes from fans around the world on FIFA’s website.

Salah had nearly one hundred million Egyptians behind him, along with countless Muslim supporters around the world.

For a national icon like him, the enthusiasm to vote was easy to imagine.

Zayn thought about it.

If a player with a huge fanbase ever scored a spectacular goal in the Premier League, the same kind of voting power could probably carry him to victory as well.

And it was precisely because of the enormous controversy surrounding this edition that FIFA later changed the voting system for the Puskás Award.

Starting the following year, the result would be decided jointly by fans around the world and a panel of FIFA Legends, with each group accounting for 50 percent of the vote.

Zayn switched off the television and stopped paying attention to the rest of the ceremony.

For now, those honors and controversies had nothing to do with him.

For now.