DoF 1.5 - How to Kick a Football [T1] (Patreon)

This video is referenced at the start. Feel free to watch it before reading. It is 16 seconds long.

5.

Must Smith Score?

This article first appeared on Bethany Alban's personal Substack.

"Ball played forward to Robinson. Robinson going forward strong. He's inside the Manchester United penalty area. He finds Smith, and Smith MUST score! And he hasn't scored! Bailey has saved it!"

So goes Peter Jones' iconic commentary from the 1983 FA Cup final, when in the last minute of extra time, Gordon Smith had the chance to cause one of the all-time great shocks. Smith fluffed his lines and the line became iconic, so much so that a Brighton fanzine was named And Smith Must Score.

But did he fluff his lines? Look again. The pitch is a torn-up mess - Smith's first touch eases the ball onto a smooth piece of turf. He follows that perfectly sensible choice by slamming a low shot that nearly squirms through one of the best goalies in the country. The touch is good bordering on very good, the shot accurate and powerful.

There has never been more coverage of football, never more analysis. Fifty podcasts and fan channels reviewed Chester versus Arsenal, fifty more summed up Tottenham versus Chester, and at least three covered Charlton versus Chester. (I should know, I listened to most of them). There were plenty of armchair quarterbacks saying that Pepe Salazar should have stuck with his double pivot or might have inverted a full back, while Lee Kennedy should have kept two up top and worked the channels. When detailing individual moments, people confidently claimed that Dougal Boyle should have crossed to the far post, that Moses should have passed low, that Foquita shouldn't have aimed high.

But how should those things have happened? It's not so easy to kick a ball from point A to point B while eleven opponents - and sometimes the referee - are trying to stop you.

How do you kick a football? If it was easy, we wouldn't pay young men half a million pounds a week to do it.

Why do we never talk about the fundamentals? The quality of the contact, the physics. Surely these are the moments in a match that most matter, yet they are rarely discussed.

How do you kick a football?

Or to put it another way: why must Smith score?

***

It's Monday, February 5th and I'm at Bumpers Bank, the training ground of Chester FC. There's a strange atmosphere, like everyone has woken up with a hangover. It's very possible that this feeling exists entirely in my head, not because I have a hangover and am projecting, but because I'm not exactly sure how welcome I am around these parts. When the Dear Leader speaks to the media it is to belittle and berate them. When he speaks to me... Well, he doesn't.

I press B to crouch as I sneak and snake from the car park to the main training pitch, wondering if I have been pranked. But no, there is Henri Lyons, future executive of this football club, and there is Dan Badford, future something. Henri's in a Newport County tracksuit, while Dan is in a Saltney Town hoodie.

"Bethany!" cries Henri, as he launches into an extravagant series of cheek kisses. (Dan offers a handshake and a smile.) "What a morning," declares the Frenchman, sucking in the brisk air, letting out a satisfied sigh. "Isn't it a morning?"

"It's a long time til lunch," I agree. "How's your shadowing?"

By decree of His Excellency Maximus the First, Henri will replace Brooke Star at the end of the season. The transition would be a lot simpler if any two people could agree on what Brooke's role actually is. The Venn Diagram starts with Chief Operations Officer, includes Chief Financial Officer, and contains several circles that only become visible from certain angles. Henri is unfazed. "Yes, yes, it's very good, Brooke is formidable, I am learning a lot."

"You'll want to come here quite often in the coming months if you're going to step into her shoes."

"No need," he says. "I have no intention of doing everything she does. I will cherry-pick the tasks I want and delegate the rest. It will go well. Now then, remind me what it is that you want from us."

His simple request makes me nervous, because this latest idea of mine does not even qualify as half-baked; it is merely some flour and butter that I hope will magically congeal into a cake. "Okay, so, you know that I quit my job at the Daily Mail? I got invited to join that podcast with some of the famous journos and we're building that up, slowly, but it's hard because they get, uh, high-brow."

Henri sniffs. "You mean pompous."

"Perhaps at times they get inaccessible," I say, because I don't want to be disloyal - being invited to join that group was a career lifeline. "It is gloriously uncommercial. It knows its niche."

Dan smiles. "It don't pay the bills."

"It pays some of the bills," I say. "And my personal blog and the Goalscorers podcast, I've still got those, but those also have a niche audience, by which I mean my dad, a guy in Sweden who tells me off when I write Helsingborgs, and two thirsty Australian women who like it when I describe abs and arms."

Dan whips off his top and flexes his bicep. "Write this down," he says.

Henri says, "I've seen bigger guns at a pacifist convention."

Dan tuts and jerks his head at me. "Dan Badford bulges in all the right places. Dan Badford is your main dish for the evening, your usual order of hot but safe, hold the safe."

"I'm not including any of this," I say, smiling, but I quickly change my mind. If I dangle some pink meat, maybe I can lock the Aussies in for another year. "Is it true that Max turned down a bid from Strasbourg for you in the transfer window?"

Dan pulls his top back on. "I don't think he turns down the bids, he just ignores them. If anyone persists, he sends a link to a website. It's called 'Is Dan Badford for sale' dot com. When you go there, it's just the word NO in big letters. There's a link below that which says, 'but everyone has a price' and if you click it, there's my name and a pound sign and then this massive number that's soaring higher. Apparently it's the US national debt. Pradeep takes the data from some tracker and it updates twice a second. Seems over-engineered, but that's Pradeep for you."

I nod. Max is surrounded by enablers. "Yeah, look, the reason I'm here... Let's just say there were no bids for me in the window. Quitting the Mail was a disaster, to be honest. I've got about two months left as a football writer before I have to, I don't know, get into politics."

Dan says, "You could be one of Max's MPs. Hundred grand a year and iron-clad pensions."

Henri says, "Ssshh. Go on, Bethany."

Max's MPs? Must be a private joke. "Er, yeah. I'm basically at the point where I don't care if anyone reads, if anyone subscribes. I'm just doing the stories that appeal to me, you know? It's like, I'm sick of wondering what will show up on an algorithm. I want to do something I enjoy doing. There are story ideas that are eating me from the inside and I have to get them out."

"Good for you," says Henri.

His approval makes me smile, propels me forward. "Right! So what I want to know is..." I freeze. I have been granted amazing access to important figures in our industry and the question I am about to ask is a hundred times more stupid than quitting my job on a point of principle. I continue in a slightly smaller voice. "What I want to know is how do you kick a football." They stare at me, and I can't read either expression. This is a good idea, Bethany! Believe in yourself! "I was inspired by a clip from 1983 but even in my current state I want to be slightly more commercial than that, so I thought we could take moments from yesterday against Arsenal and recreate them and you could tell me how you're doing what you're doing."

Henri says, "You mean the biomechanics, the psychological factors, the calculations of accuracy versus power... What is to be your focus?"

"If I ask ten different people I'll get ten different answers, right? Any one might not be interesting but collectively they might reveal something."

"Ah," says Henri, sagely. "Like Rashomon."

"It could be like that, yes." What the fuck is Rashomon? Henri knows that I don't know, and I can see he's thinking about teasing me, so I press forward. "I'd like to start with what I thought was the key moment in the match."

"The first goal?" says Dan. "No, the free kick. Foquita's shot?"

I bring up a clip on my phone and show it to them. Henri's eyebrows shoot up. "Bethany, you are wonderful."

***

We walk to one of Chester's smaller pitches, perfect for kids football or skill sessions. Henri and Dan pull on boots. I tip a bag of footballs onto the grass. If I'm standing at 6 o'clock, Dan stands ten yards ahead of me at 12, and Henri is a yard behind him at ten to 12.

I hit a pass to Dan, who dips his shoulder to his right, aiming at about 10 o'clock. Henri moves to fight for the ball, but Dan deflects my pass left-footed towards 1 o'clock, shifts his body weight faster than Henri can rearrange himself, and accelerates past his mate.

"Nailed it," I call, but doubt floods into me. Now that it has started, this whole project feels weak. The premise is very, very flimsy. Dan has recreated something Max Best did in the match, but so what? As I walk closer, I smack the negative thoughts with a shovel. This concept is good! This idea is valid! "Dan, can you, uh, explain what you did? In words? I mean... How did you...?"

He comes back to his starting spot and thinks about it. "It's... You have to let the ball hit your foot, not the other way round."

Henri agrees. "That's right."

That seems to be that, but I've got the shovel in my hands so I might as well keep digging. "Why?"

"Well," says Henri, but he flounders. He waves his hands as if the answer is so obvious it's barely worth verbalising, and I get a tiny prickle of excitement. There's something here, after all! They know but can't explain it! Why the fuck not? Keep going, Bethany!

Dan frowns. "Because... the energy."

I say, "Energy?" like I've never heard the word before.

He exchanges a glance with Henri. Dan scratches his nose. "Like... You don't want to kick it. If you kick it, you're gonna go backwards and you don't want that."

"Why?"

"Because you're trying to score and failing that, you're making sure you keep the ball. In that clip, Max has Dougal Boyle up his arse, and Boyle wants Max to take a touch towards his own goal so he can bully him backwards ten yards. That's Arsenal's thing, isn't it? They get right up your arse and push you away from their own goal and try to get turnovers. And if you skip around them they smash into you so you can't break, because they assume the ref will be too much a coward to give them a yellow card. So they can keep doing it. They don't win by playing football, they win by killing all the football before it happens, like in a biolab."

"Tell me more about skipping around them. The mechanics. You've got your back to your opponent but if you can't kick the ball, what exactly is happening when it touches you?"

Dan inflates his cheeks and blows several loads of air through - an entire punnet of raspberries. "Erm... I mean, it's hard to explain because there's so much going on. You've got the line of your pass, right? The vector. And there's an amount of kinetic energy in the ball that you set."

"Because I kicked it to you."

"Right. So you set the tone, in a way. You've got this down as a pure Max thing but it's not just him, it's Edgar Wilde's pass that starts it all, and Foquita's movement ahead of them. If you underhit the pass to me, there's nothing I can do with it except maybe stop it dead and move it on."

Henri says, "Max likes a fizzy pass."

"Yeah, Max likes it fizzy but that's just because you're giving him more options. If there's too much juice on it, he can take it off with the first contact, but he normally wants pace on the ball so he can deflect it first-time or whatever. You can overhit a pass to Max, but with most players you've got to be more precise." Dan stands with his back to Henri. "Imagine you've got a big brutish fellow behind you."

"One who loves booting people up the arse," says Henri, giving the smaller man a shove.

"You want to concentrate on the ball as it's coming to you, of course, but this is the Premier League and you've got to be ready for that physical battle. So over here, on the right side of your body, you're crunching your abs, straining your impressive muscles, holding off the oppo." He tugs his training top. "Under this, it looks like a Greek statue. The contest is epic. Mano a mano."

Henri says, "Max calls it 'Bethany's Delight'."

Dan laughs, but I'm 88% sure Henri is teasing me, mostly because Max calls me Beth. Dan poses like he's holding up the entire planet. "Strength, competition, rugged masculinity, but over here..." He twiddles his left foot. "You're trying to be dainty. You want to caress the ball, bring it under your spell with a velvety whisper."

"White glove service," says Henri.

"Yes!" says Dan. "That's it. You give the ball the white glove service. Excuse me, madam, may I check your ticket? You're going in this carriage, miss. Have a nice day. And swoosh - the ball obeys."

It's fascinating that Dan thinks of the ball as feminine, but I don't want to go down that particular rabbit hole. "And when the ball hits your foot, what are you doing? With your foot, I mean. Because you're right-footed, Dan."

He nods. "That's part of why it's different gravy to have Max in this sitch instead of me. You can't predict what the eff he's gonna do. But what am I doing? Let me think. Can you hit another pass to me?"

As I walk to the bag of balls, Henri says, "Would sir like to have a boot inserted into sir's arse? Because that is what will happen if sir makes me look like a lumbering oaf again."

I hit a ball at Dan, who half-heartedly goes through the motions, but stops before the ball reaches him. He lets the ball hit him; it bounces away. "Okay, I've got three main options. As the ball's coming I'm taking in all the data, the angles, the positions of my teammates, the game state, all the stuff, and condensing it into three choices."

He stretches his leg out.

"I can control the ball here. If I touch the ball there, away from my body, that's probably me stopping it dead and it's probably because I don't see a future in this move. I'll kill the ball, move that way - " He takes a step away from Henri. "And the rest of the players will reorient around that move and I'll find myself someone to pass to. It's probably gonna be a backwards pass but then I'll run into position to get it again and it will be another new phase. If you do that against Arsenal you're running into phase after phase of their pressure but if you can stay calm you're gonna break out. Okay so that's option one. The ball's away from you, away from your marker.

"Option two is you let the ball come to your, er, your body. What would you call this?"

He means his feet, but it feels stupid to say it because when the ball is in motion, his feet are not static. Henri says, "You let the ball come to your perpendicularity."

Dan scoffs. "What? The ball comes to me, all right? I'm here, I'm not extending. This is good because it lets me stay aggro a tiny bit longer. I can push against the lumbering oaf right until the end. What I've been practicing for years is the touch that comes here or in the third state, which is a little bit behind me. It's kind of, whatever Henri does, I nudge the ball the opposite way. He falls over, I escape. If I sense him coming around me this side, I let the ball go behind me and just give it a feathery touch to slow it down but I'm already moving that way, already accelerating."

"Can you describe the nudge from the second option? If it was a tennis shot, what would it be?"

"Um..." Dan closes his eyes and his entire body jiggles very slightly. "Just a tiny little cushioned volley hit right in the sweet spot. Actually, sort of an inch behind the sweet spot."

"An inch behind?"

He looks uncertain. "Yeah? It's like... It's like your foot is a hoover. You're sucking energy out of the air at this angle." He shows me with his hand. "And the ball will go the other way, exactly where you want it, exactly at the speed you want it." He laughs. "It's so hard to explain! This is impossible, Bethany!"

"How do you know how much energy to take off the ball?"

"It's visual, partly, but also, your foot knows."

Your foot knows. Jonathan Wilson never wrote that in one of his pieces. Henri says, "Why did you pick this out as the key moment, Bethany?"

I bring out my phone but don't open the video. "It just set the tone, didn't it? Arsenal pushed Chester back, made it clear there would be 90 minutes of aerial bombardment, long throws, wrestling at corners, and this was the first moment of actual quality. Max sends Boyle for a hotdog, spins, attacks the space, Foquita's on the move, they're far from goal but if you know Max you know this is gonna turn into at least a shot."

"Except Boyle boots him up the arse," says Henri.

"No yellow card," says Dan.

"What will your article be called, Bethany?"

"I'm not sure yet. Either And Smith Must Score or How to Kick a Football."

Henri's face lights up. "How to Kick a Football. Brilliant! That one. Please do that one, Bethany. It's perfect and I love it. Although," he adds, darkly, "it should be called How to Kick a Footballer. That's the secret to winning. Was there another kick you wanted us to demonstrate?"

"Yes," I say. "We've done Dan's speciality, now it's yours. The dink."

Henri's smile is beatific.

***

The men gather behind me to peer at my phone. I start the clip but Henri says, "No, no, no. This is all wrong. You can't skip an hour. You can't skip the meat of the match! You're writing a sandwich consisting only of bread!"

I meet his gaze. "I'm not doing a match review, just looking at key moments. Not even key moments, necessarily, just ones that interested me on rewatch. Ones that made me think about the very point of contact between player and ball. This is the most sublime moment I can remember seeing on a football pitch."

"Yes yes yes but nothing exists in isolation. It is more sublime because the preceding 70 minutes were so ugly. So set the scene, for me and for your readers."

When Henri gets into these moods, it's quicker to play along. "It was a dark and stormy night," I begin.

"Mon dieu," laughs Henri.

I throw my hands up. "There's nothing to say! It was just what you get from Arsenal. Grinding, attritional, positional, predictable. The only interesting thing was watching to see how angry Max got when Arsenal scored and the goals weren't overturned by VAR."

"Very angry," mutters Dan. "What did you make of the adverts, Bethany?"

Alert readers will remember that Max Best detests the Arsenal manager Pepe Salazar, who chose to ignore seven accusations from four women in order to keep his preferred midfield intact. From kickoff at the Deva Stadium, every screen in the stadium read PROTECT WOMEN for one minute out of every five, and promoted a local women's shelter. When Arsenal scored their first goal, the lights in the stadium dimmed slightly and every screen turned black. White text appeared, scrolling slowly around the edge of the pitch. DO NOT GO INTO A ROOM ALONE WITH AN ARSENAL PLAYER. When they scored their second, a new message appeared: NEVER ACCEPT A DRINK FROM AN ARSENAL PLAYER.

I sigh. "It was dark, wasn't it? The atmosphere got thick, intense, edgy. The Arsenal players were seething."

"Fuck 'em," says Dan. "They supported their criminal mate and made the victims feel like shit. It's one thing to ruin football; they don't have to go round ruining lives. They can rot."

"I don't know," I say. "Max means well, obvs, but I don't know how I feel about this stunt. It was absolutely shocking, so job done, I suppose. Salazar got complacent, didn't he, because the media didn't push him about his choices because no-one wanted to talk about it, but they're talking today. Max will get in trouble again, though, won't he? I just don't know. I liked his other thing more."

"Which one?" says Henri, which makes me wonder what I missed.

"The one with the Arsenal badges."

The men laugh hard. Dan says, "That was a stone-cold classic."

Pepe Salazar doesn't like to follow the rules, and during a match he lives outside his technical area, often straying onto the pitch itself. The habit might have started out of desperation to convey messages to his players, but these days it is done purely to frustrate opposition managers, coaches, and fans, because why are they told to stay in their area but Salazar is not?

Max has taken several swipes at Salazar over these antics, but his latest jape is my favourite. He laid astroturf mats around the away team's technical area, but the mats each featured the Arsenal logo. If Salazar wanted to leave his area he had to trample on the club's crest. When he did, a photo of the incident appeared on the giant screens along with the words: DISRESPECT FOR THE BADGE. As the photos became a collage, we got: THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME, WOMEN, THE BADGE; NOTHING IS SACROSANCT.

I shake my head. "This is the problem with covering Chester. There are too many talking points! If the only stories were Max crossing the line with his antics and Salazar literally crossing the line, that's enough for a few days of hot takes and counterpoints. But then..."

"Wait," says Henri, who becomes animated and theatrical. "Not yet. We must marinate ourselves in the sourness. After the first foul, the one you correctly described as pivotal, the mood turned dark, and even I suffered. I, who has been known to enjoy a scrap, who enjoys to leave a pitch bruised, to have my father say whose blood is that and for me not to know the answer. Even I was repulsed by the negativity and spite, thinking it too much.

"In my new role I asked myself what a father bringing his child here for the first time would be saying. Papa, is football always this angry, this bitter? Is it always merely a procession of fouls and fights? Does Max Best always pick the beefiest eleven he can find, his Helges, his Magnuses, his Dumis? Is Max Best always this scowling and does he follow the referee around sniping at him, telling him that all this is his fault? Son, I don't know why it is so gloomy, so claustrophobic. Darkness, darkness everywhere, and not a dink to drop."

Dan bursts into applause. "Ten on ten, Henri. Ten on ten."

"Why thank you," says Henri, with a bow. "Bethany, your readers are now suitably primed to hear your description of what came next."

All eyes turn to hear my next turn of phrase. "Max Best," I say, "done a madness."

Dan starts a slow handclap. "Yes, mate. Yes. That kind of poetry is why our Bethany is massive in Australia."

I jab him in the ribs. "You describe it, then."

"Best takes pass, moves from zone 15 to zone 17, shoots, scores."

Henri laughs. "That's exactly it."

"Yeah," I say, faux rolling my eyes. "I can totally picture it."

"Picture this," says Dan, squeezing my forearm, getting Henri-style crazy eyes. "Arsenal have been pressing for 70 minutes, getting every decision from the cowardly ref, playing reductive football from the dark ages. We haven't made any changes, still, and Max seems to be thinking, why even bother playing hard when the ref's like this? We're just going through the motions, the clock's counting up or ticking down, however you want to put it, and we pressure Arsenal's left back, who isn't really a left back. He hoofs the ball high and hopeful, and Youngster, the shortest man on the pitch, heads the ball forward.

"Almost no-one reacts but I sit up straight thinking hey ho! I've seen this in training! Max is about to get the ball in a bit of space for the first time in Arsenal's half. He's jogging away from the D towards Youngster, with one of the centre backs loosely tracking him a few yards away. Foquita's to the right, in an offside position, but his presence has split the CBs. Everywhere I look, there's a Chester player with an Arsenal one. That's great if Arse want to stop us building from the back, but they've accidentally given us a one-v-one!

"The ball goes towards Max, and still no-one senses the danger, not even Arsenal. I can't believe my eyes. Even in training I would be bricking it. The centre backs spot that they're too far apart and they try to get back in line but while they're organising, Max is taking the ball on his left thigh, turning goalwards.

"The ball drops to the grass just as Boyle arrives on the scene. Maybe that's why the others are so casual - 9 times out of 10 Boyle will make that tackle and the situation's over. But Max speeds up his movements and he's gone! There's a puff of smoke and he's in the penalty area, attacking on the right side. Boyle is chasing him, the CBs have formed up, and Foquita's a yard to the right. Everyone thinks Max will touch the ball to Foquita and move into the middle to create space.

"The whole time, Max is waving his arms like he's going to shoot, which no-one buys, but then he uses one of these waves to get some extra balance and he goes slaloming round Boyle, slips the ball through the legs of the first defender, out comes Aliago, but without changing his stride, Max dinks the ball over him." Dan leans back, palms up. "What the fuck. What the actual fuck did I just see?"

"And now, we recreate the moment, yes, Bethany?"

"Yes, please."

Henri looks skywards, his gaze focuses on a distant cloud, and then comes a rueful smile. "Alas, no. I can do the meg, sometimes. I can do the dink. But I can't do the left-footed meg followed by the right-footed dink. And anyway, it's not even a dink. Watch."

He takes a metal mannequin and pushes it over like someone toppling a statue of Max Best in the year 2050. This is our goalkeeper. Henri kicks the ball against it, takes the rebound one step closer, and gently lifts the ball over.

"This I can do. What is the process?" He searches for words. "This one is a gentle push under the ball, almost a scoop, but with a sharp moment of contact like a golf shot. A truncated scoop with a fast flick. Do you see? One needs only to lift the ball as the keeper's momentum takes him towards your feet. He might get lucky with an outstretched arm, but the dink is deadly."

"Deadly dink," says Dan.

"Now," says Henri, wagging his finger, talking to himself more than anyone else. "I do not think Max dinked that ball. No."

"So what was it?" I wonder.

"He put a spell on it."

Dan smiles, affectionately. "Henriiiiii."

"I tell you! It's telekinesis. The ball floats, pauses, then Max gives it permission to descend. No! Not even that. He turns away, still moody, feeling nothing but disdain for the defence and for the goalkeeper, and when he looks away he loses control of his spell and the ball resumes its journey."

I say, "Let's see," and we huddle close to watch it on my phone. At full-speed it's impressive but in slow motion, from other angles, it's mind-boggling.

Henri says, "Ah, you need the Harper Splat version. Hang on." He unzips a pocket, takes out his phone, and calls either Harper or Sophie from Max's graphics team. Soon after, we're looking at the raw footage of that goal but made up of millions of tiny blobs of 3D colour. It's beautiful, and Henri can jab his finger on the screen and rotate the action in any direction, place the camera wherever he wants.

"Why didn't this get shown on DigiWorld?" I say.

"Arsenal don't get to look good," says Dan. "Even when they're being dunked on."

I tut. Max is such a child, sometimes. But Henri puts the camera on the goal line and we watch from behind the keeper as Max weaves through the defence and lifts the ball in our direction. Nonchalant doesn't begin to cover it; he doesn't even check the ball goes in. "Insouciant," I say.

Henri says, "Someone has a beautiful language. But look at that contact, Bethany. He doesn't touch the ball!"

"He does!" insists Dan. "It's sort of like, this bone here." He points to a spot on his foot that might be the knuckle of his big toe. "He bumps the ball upwards with this bone."

"It's not a bone!" cries Henri. "It's sorcery! Bethany, you will have seen the music video to Ma Meilleure Ennemie by Stromae and Pomme."

"Ma... How are you spelling that?"

"The usual way. Now when Pomme's haunting solo arrives, the music video shows her lifting, ascending, for that is what her voice is doing. It is ethereal, otherworldly. It cannot be numerated or dissected. For the moment you hear it, it is everything. That is what Max did. He sang to the ball."

"Yeah, nah, it's a bone," says Dan. "This one." He lifts his foot and slaps the location.

Henri's eye twitches, which I tell myself is a joke. "We can't do this. You need Meredith Ann."

***

Chester's women also played yesterday, losing 1-0 away to Manchester City, a result that has effectively ended their title hopes. They are subdued, but with this being Chester, they remain friendly.

I go to Meredith Ann and explain what I'm doing. She's interested, but when I play the clip, she gives me a regretful smile. "I'm sorry, Miss Bethany, that is not my goal. I can't do it like that. I would stab after the nutmeg, yes? The meg and in the same stride, the stab. Too quick for the keeper, too high for her. I can show you, if you like." She shakes her head. "But this way? The Max way? You need Dani."

***

Dani Smith-Smithe has spent the season playing left midfield, diligently doing her defensive duties, still very much learning the game. When it comes to Chester Women, most attention goes to their star trio of Macca Serra, Elsa Lund, and Cheeky Rabanne, but I have been following Dani's career from the start and she's the first name I look for on the team sheet. She has been quietly racking up goal contributions, a statistic for which she ranks in the top ten in the WSL.

I find her in the gym, where she's walking on a treadmill quite slowly, spaced out. Thinking about yesterday's defeat.

We usually talk via an app, and when she sees me she whips out a mini keyboard, which I take to mean she is in a loquacious mood. I tap the device. "You in the mood for a natter?"

Natter! That's a funny word. I haven't seen you around. Are you friends with Max again?

"No, he's snubbing me, but Henri's helping with my latest article. He says I'm creating football and if Max doesn't like it, Max can find a new C question mark O." Dani doesn't care about job titles or org charts, so I get to the point. I show her the video. "Can you replicate this and tell me how you make the ball pop up like that?"

Kay.

She gets off the treadmill and follows me. If only the rest of my life was so simple!

We walk to the small pitch, where Dan, Henri, and Meredith Ann are passing a ball to each other while nattering. Someone has placed two cones to represent the nutmeg part of Max's move. Dani watches the clip a couple more times, nods, then says I should throw the ball to her.

She takes it on her left thigh, waits for gravity to take hold, slams the ball down (away from the imaginary Dougal Boyle) while making sure it doesn't go out of her stride. She glides left footed, threatens to shoot, boops the ball through the cones, rounds them, dinks the ball over the prone mannequin.

It's perfect; she draws applause. She can't hear it, but she can see it.

She shakes her head and asks to see the video again. Then she goes, 'oh!' and takes her little keyboard. I read the text; the others listen.

I did it wrong. My chip went at the keeper's head, but Max was already wheeling away in celebration. (He didn't actually celebrate because he was in a mega grump, but you know what I mean!) He was wheeling away so he delayed his shot a fraction of a second. You said it was seamless, Bethany, but it wasn't. There's a very tiny hesitation. Not hesitation - delay. So he lifts the ball over the goalie's SHOULDER, so there's no chance it gets saved with the head. It's clever because it's disguised as him being cocky. Max does a lot of disguise like that.

She goes back to the start. Takes the ball on her thigh, slalom, megs, and yes! The very slightest hesitation before she lifts the ball over the mannequin.

Dani keeps running, stops, bends her knees, wobbles, does a 'walk like an Egyptian' dance move, gets onto her knees and makes the sign of the cross. When she gets up, Meredith Ann embraces her, then comes Dan, then Henri, and they bounce around.

Find a job you like and you'll never work a day in your life...

"Dani, brilliant, amazing, but I didn't ask you to celebrate like Max should have done. I asked you to tell me how you kick the ball."

You aim your foot down and the ball goes up. Use the part where your toes meet your foot. But you're interested in the wrong part of the move. You should be asking about the nutmeg.

"Teach me, sensei."

I have to wait for Dani to stop guffawing, but eventually she gets back on task.

Some of us can score this entire goal. Me, Wibbers, Meredith Ann.

Meredith interrupts. "No, I would do it like this."

She takes the ball on her thigh, does the slalom, the meg, but shoots immediately after the meg. It is, indeed, a stabbing motion, a toe-poke, but controlled, fierce, accurate, and even has what a cricketer would call late swing.

Dani applauds before typing.

Okay yes because she doesn't want to switch feet but that's what I'm saying. Most of us can do two or three parts of the goal but this is a whole string of skills that not everyone has. For example Sarah Greene would stay on her right foot. Elsa wouldn't try the meg. Macca wouldn't even go into the box, haha!

But Max can do all the moves and how he beats the second defender is amazing but he makes it look so easy you don't even notice.

"The second defender? The nutmegged guy? He's the first, no?"

No because when Max gets ahead of Boyle and shapes to shoot, he makes Boyle react. He slides to block an imaginary shot, the clown. So Max takes out one defender while he's setting up the second one. It's unbeliiiiiiievable. Watch the goal again. He doesn't meg the guy by chance, does he? Almost every player who's moving onto his left foot like that would cut in FRONT of the defender.

She demonstrates with me playing the role of the hapless defender, literally the role of a lifetime. I stand with my body angled sideways, like Arsenal's CB. Dani has the ball ahead of me with her weight on her right leg. In slow motion, she pushes onto her left, moving the ball so that it traces a path about ten inches in front of me. Instinctively, I stab out at the ball; it shoots away. None shall pass!

But Dani had been trying to show me something. Why did I do that? "Soz!"

She smiles.

That's exactly my point. Do it again, but fast. You ready, Bethany? Think you can stop me doing that when I'm going fast? You put the no into journo. Hahahaha!

She's trash-talking me! She doesn't normally get the chance, I suppose, but I think, 'I'll show her that I can play a bit.'

Dani starts a few yards away, takes the ball on her thigh, and suddenly I'm living life on 2 times speed, like weirdos who play audiobooks sped up. I blink and Dani is already in front of me, making the move.

I stab out towards the ball and hear cheers and laughter and the sound of a ball nestling into a goal net. My brain catches up. She megged me!

"Dani the Destroyer!" cries Meredith Ann, and she has learned the sign language for that one.

Dani starts to do a goofy celebration, but cuts it short and returns to the scene of the crime.

Most players do a skill to make the oppo open their legs and THEN nutmeg them. Max does it the other way round. He megs players whose legs are in the right position and they unlock the door for him. It seems like magic but there's a process, but the process only works if you can do magic.

So to answer your original question, this one is a pushing motion. If the ball is a clock, place your little toe at 4 p.m. and push it towards 11. You're already moving so you don't need much energy. If you do too much, you'll hit the defender's ankles and then you're praying for a lucky bounce. You want the ball to travel about two lengths. Less and the defender might react, more and the goalie might get it.

I shake my head. "All that precision from your pinky toe."

That's why when people say Max has more talent in his little toe than they have in their entire body, they're right. Haaaaaa.

Henri cries out. "Santana! Come and join us!"

My pulse goes crazy. Martim Santana? Mr. Smooth himself? I turn, see him, and literally faint. He's so dreamy I have to be revived with smelling salts as he loosens the lacing around my bosom. Or if you prefer the real-world version... He approaches, with the smallest hint of a watchful, wary, smile, and we shake hands while Henri introduces me. "Delighted," mutters Santana.

I start to say, "Can I do a one-off paywalled special about your physique?"

But Henri has an idea. "Bethany is recreating goals from the Arsenal match. Let's do the second! I'll be Carvalho!"

There is some bickering about who gets to be Carvalho - it's honestly like being on a playground - but then the guys settle down and Henri says, "Before we take up our spots, Bethany, tell the story!"

Dan claps. "Yes, Bethany! Story time!"

I sigh, but make eye contact with Santana, who is very clearly wondering what kind of madhouse he has joined. The shared moment makes us smile and I think, fuck it, let's go full Chester. I declare, "It was a dark and stormy night!"

This slays. Santana's laugh is jam on toast on a lazy Sunday morning, or since he's Portuguese, marmalade on toast.

"Okay, so Arsenal bullied two goals, there was an hour of utterly dreadful bullshit, Max stops being a petulant brat for five seconds, which is long enough for him to create a moment of shared ecstasy. You know, the usual." Laughs. "Erm, then what? Oh, yeah. Then he loses his fucking mind." Another big laugh. "While the fans are bouncing and the players are trying to get him to smile or dance like an Egyptian - private joke, Santana - he's walking to Sandra Lane, and he says, I want five subs. She goes, uh, no, we're back in the game. He goes, I want the tiniest team who ever lived!"

Another big laugh. Dani's following along on her app, reacting with a very slight delay, and my latest joke - it's not even a joke - makes her slap her sides.

"Off goes Helge, Cole Adams, Magnus, Jimmy, Dumi. On goes Peter, Leo, Pascal, Wibbers, and the new kid." When I say 'the new kid', Santana's smile fades. I power on. "The new line-up is mental. Owen, Lewis, Peter, Edgar, Max. Okay. Youngster, okay. Then it's Leo, Carvalho, Pascal, and Wibbers as four CAMs? Did I get that right? And Foquita hoping to get on the end of the chances they create."

Dan says, "It was 5-0-5, yeah. Gaffer flipped aaaaaaaall the way out."

"As anyone could have predicted," I say, enjoying having some adults to talk to, "it went horribly wrong, faster than anyone could have predicted. Arsenal, under very little pressure, show that they can actually play nice footy if only their boss will let them, and they zip the ball around, create an overload, bish bash bosh, thank you and goodnight, it's 3-1, get fucked with your weird little messages.

"Except when we kick off, it's a new game. Max is on the rampage, storming everywhere, crunching into tackles, popping passes around, and then Youngster kicks up a notch and Peter's evading the press and Pascal's drawing defenders away and Wibbers is smashing long rangers that Aliago fumbles and then - " I stop myself just in time, and double finger-gun Henri.

Wordlessly, the players fan out, with Santana in the Peter Bauer role, Dan as Carvalho, Dani as Max Best.

If you haven't seen Chester's second goal against Arsenal, imagine a join-the-dots picture from when you were young. Point number one is Peter Bauer, and when you draw an almost vertical line to point number two, that's Wibbers. The ball goes to points three, four, five, and when you get to eleven you blink and realise you have created the word GOAL.

At Bumpers, as at the Deva, the ball whizzes around but so do the players, with Youngster and Max Best moving the most, but the key moment is Carvalho (Dan) intercepting a pass intended for Max, cheekily flicking it behind himself, past the bamboozled Arsenal defenders, drawing the goalie, then offloading to his left like a rugby player about to be tackled. Max (Dani) sidefoots the ball into the net, then he (she) runs at the goalpost and kicks the fucking shit out of it while roaring and crunching his (her) abs. In reality, Max was screaming 'Get fucked you fucking fucks!' or similar, which Dani replicates by showing everyone the middle fingers of both hands.

She enjoys it way too much.

"Come in, children," says Henri, as he shepherds his flock towards me. When everyone's close, he says, "Bethany wants to know how we kicked the ball. It was all side-foots, no?"

Dan says, "Yeah, except my flying, leaping, helicopter backheel. You see - "

"Never mind which bone you used," sighs Henri. "So it's 3-2 and there are 15 minutes left, which Chester spend tearing Arsenal to shreds. Sure, yes, the xG says that Arsenal also created big chances in that time but the feeling was one-way. The momentum was one-way. Santana, what did you think about Foquita's miss?"

Santana pushes a few curls away - they bounce straight back. "It looks worse than it is."

I say, "Can you explain that?"

We move towards the goal. Santana drags the goalkeeper mannequin to the left, asks me to stand in the approximate position of Foquita, just outside the six-yard box. The ball will come to me from the right. It seems that I don't want people to enjoy my company because I yell, "And Alban must score!"

Santana gives me a strange look. "Yes? But Gonzalo Aliago is one of the best goalkeepers in the league and in the world. If you shoot anywhere here - " He describes a circle with his hands. "Most likely, you will not score. So the option is to go low or to go high. You have three hundredths of a second to decide. Choose. Too late." He smiles. "Foquita is a specialist. It is one thing I note in the Chester squad. Many players can play two roles or more."

"Such as you," says Henri.

Again, Santana's expression clouds, but with an effort, the cloud is gone. "Yes. The goalkeepers are specialists, of course, and Willi Tillmann, and Foquita. He thinks about goals, goals, goals, and he chooses to shoot high. Can we disagree with his choice? What do we know? Ah," he says, turning. "Henri. Meredith. High or low?"

Meredith says, "Low."

Henri says, "High."

Santana frowns. In this world, there is no objective truth. He rolls the ball towards me - I kick it flat and score, but he shakes his head. "Saved."

"You try," I say.

We exchange positions. I kick the ball to him and he smacks it high into the roof of the net. He seems unsatisfied. "Divide the boot in half. I used a big area slightly to the left of the shoelaces. The meaty bit of the foot. This padding here," he says, rubbing his boot. I'm not into feet myself, but I note how sensually the big, tough man strokes his footwear, just in case this note causes some of my readers to re-up their subscriptions. "Foquita was unlucky, that's all. If it is saved, if he hits the crossbar, nobody says he did it wrong." He shakes his head. "These goalkeepers, the man in the street cannot comprehend how good they are. You cannot score with a gentle push."

Henri says, "How do you feel, Santana my friend?"

The Portuguese hunk looks around at us, back to being wary and distant. He doesn't know us. He doesn't trust us. "I'm fine."

Henri laughs, good-naturedly. "You're not fine. You're the club's record signing, you played one half, were subbed off, and weren't even named in the squad yesterday. Look around, every one of us has been on the receiving end of Max's strangeness at some point."

"Not me," says Dan. "That's more of a you thing, I reckon."

Santana likes Henri, it's clear. "Yes, okay, I find it very strange. I wonder if I have made a big mistake."

Henri nods, turns to me. "Bethany, what is your honest opinion of Max Best right now?"

"Er, he's a generational talent?"

Henri's grin is delightful. "Bethany."

"You want me to say he's a prick?" Santana eyes me sharply, which is obviously what Henri wants. I go full Bethany. "He's usually a prick and when he isn't being a prick he's being a dick."

Henri says, "Why is he a prick?"

I shrug. "20% genetics, 20% reading Atlas Shrugged as a teenager and taking it seriously, 60% the corrosive effect of six and a half years of everyone kissing his arse."

This gets a big laugh, but Santana says, "What is the situation?"

"Er, I worked for the Daily Mail, a newspaper that was attacking Max all the time. I tried to stop them but couldn't, so Max stopped talking to me. Which is fine, I do actually understand how much I hurt him, but I quit and now I'm unemployed and my career is careening towards a cliff and Max is flying overhead in a helicopter with a big magnet and he could tell his pilot to rescue me while he was doing the crossword but he won't even look in my direction!"

Henri's eyes get wide with delight - he wants to get into that imagery, but he is trying to make a point. "Bethany is an outsider. She knows Max very well and can speak freely. Bethany, why do you think Max subbed his new player off at half time and didn't use him against Arsenal?"

"Is that a serious question? It's obvious. Max said it himself."

"It may be obvious to you but as we have learned, what appears to one person to be a delightful scoop shot to another person is a ball being trampolined into the air by a stray piece of bone."

Dan scoff-laughs. Dani brings her phone closer because she can't believe what she's reading. I look Santana in the eyes and say, "You are a prize pig and Max is fattening you up for market."

He gets brooding, intense, his pirate-like curls sway on the ocean breeze. Oh lord, he's going to plunder me! At last, he smiles. "I am a pig?"

I throw my hand up. "I thought this was why you came to Chester? Max is going to make you look good and sell you for, how did he put it? Fat stacks. You play amazing against Leicester, the points are safe, Max whips you off." Max whips him off? What a phrase. What an image.

"Bethany, come away from the light. Don't go into the light, Bethany!" 

Henri's teasing helps me to snap out of my reverie. "Where was I?" Dan mutters something that makes Meredith Ann keel over. I try to read it from Dani's screen but she won't let me. I glare at Dan - it has no effect - and continue. "Max doesn't plan to use any of the new signings against Arsenal because who plays well against them? Ender and Carvalho are on the bench but you're not even in the squad. I saw you with the Chester Chatters, right? It's typical Max. He knows you'll be the centre of attention so after posing on the pitch with a scarf and getting applauded, you go up to sit with the old people. The media are going, what's all this? Max spotlights the loneliness epidemic and what the club is trying to do to solve it.

"Would have helped if he hadn't done his other stunts, too, but he can't choose when he plays which opponents. So you're up there when Max goes nuts and changes the entire plan. I'm 100% convinced he had no plans of using Ender or Carvalho, 100%. Carvalho looks exciting and gets an assist, so that one worked out, but would you have looked good if you played? Everyone in a Chester shirt looked absolute dogshit until the last twenty minutes. I know you want to play every second of every game but you're not gonna."

Dan says, "This little piggy went to market."

"That's right," I say. I get closer to Santana. "You don't run pig marathons. You don't go to pigolition derbies. You go to the pig parade and look sexy and desirable." I remove a bit of lint from his top, which makes Dani fan herself with both hands.

Santana appears to be very comfortable with strange woman defluffing him. "I am a pig."

Ladies, I don't know what comes over me but I squeeze his cheek and say, "The most scrumptious pig!"

He locks eyes on me, unsmiling. I've gone too far. Shit, shit, shit! "Will I play against Tottenham?"

"Yeah unless you train shit. Were you planning to train shit, Santy?"

Where is this coming from?! He's still boring holes in my skull as he growls, "I always give my most."

Out of sight of Santana, Dani, Meredith Ann, and Dan are fanning themselves with both hands. In a jaunty little voice I say, "That's all right then."

There's two seconds of stillness before Henri says, "Bon. The record signing is satisfied. Henri saves the day, yet again. So, let us conclude this match. It's Chester 2, Arsenal 3, the Deva is a whirlwind of noise and passion, Pepe Salazar crushes the Arsenal crest in a futile attempt to restore order, Pascal, Wibbers, Leo, Carvalho, they abandon formations, for them it's swarmations. They craft a chance, saved, Arsenal shoot, good work Owen. They take their time over a corner, the Chester fans are driven almost berserk, we clear the danger, counter, we lose the ball, Youngster regains it, from this transition Carvalho drives, amazing, thrilling, he offloads again, Wibbers rolls it under his feet to Pascal, and then the inevitable foul!"

Dan says, "Max Best territory. Last kick of the game."

Henri says, "Who do you want, Bethany? Do you want Santana?"

His voice is supremely innocent but he's teasing me. Big time teasing but I'm a big girl. "Yes, I would like Santana to show me how to take a free kick. Yes, please."

Meredith Ann extends her arms. "Am I a joke to you?"

I kick a ball to her. "The more the merrier."

***

We set up symmetrically, with Santana taking a right-footed shot from the left of goal, about 20 yards out. Just outside the box, almost too close if you want to clear the defensive wall and have enough time for the ball to drop. Meredith Ann is the same distance but to the right of goal so she can hit it left-footed.

Santana takes two steps and floats the ball high, with curl, top bins. "Side of the big toe. Kiss the ball where it touches the grass."

Meredith Ann takes one step, floats the ball, curl, top bins. "Side of the foot, off knee bent, shoulder relaxed, twist your ankle to give it more lift and spin. French kiss, stiff tongue."

The contestants eye each other and do it again.

Dani is exasperated.

That's not what happened! Max starts like he'll hit it with his stronger foot but changes his mind. He lines up a left-footed chipped cross, then goes beep beep boop onto his right foot again and shoots.

He's like a tennis player moving around the ball to hit a forehand but he starts out on his backhand!

Santana rubs his eyebrow with his thumbnail. "Er, yeah." He chuckles. "Let's try." He shifts his position as instructed, does a couple of little skips to his left, then goes through his usual striking motion. The ball goes top bins. He gets applause but shakes his head. "I don't think Aliago is very fooled by this."

Meredith Ann steps to the right, imagines herself going through the motions, but shakes her head. "I can't do that. No-one thinks I will hit with my right, in any case." From her natural position, she curls a shot top bins.

I say, "It's fine. I think this is a good start to my article, so I'm really happy. The only thing is..." I point towards the goal. "You're supposed to hit the post!"

***

I send Henri a rough draft of what I have written so far. He chides me for waiting so long to reveal the result: 'It's a whimsical article, not a suspenseful TV thriller. Write Chester 2, Arsenal 3 at the very top.' But he urges me to keep going.

***

Tottenham 1, Chester 1

I return to Bumpers a week later. It's Monday, February 12, and because Chester played on Saturday I'm expecting to see the entire men's squad, and I'm expecting Max to spot me and kick me out. But I'm told he's moving into his new house.

He's got a new house?

I loiter in the canteen and talk to whoever's around. On Friday night, the women drew at home to Arsenal, proving that they are well ahead of their male counterparts, but no-one is happy with the score. Angel, their third-choice striker, is sitting with Jisook Kim, the Korean forward, who seems to be learning English from pop songs. In our brief chat, Angel does most of the talking. "We've slipped to third and we're looking over our shoulders. We had it easy in the first half of the season but now it's a struggle." Jisook says something I don't catch. "Hey, cheeky!" Angel nudges her. "She says it's because I'm back."

"Is it?"

Angel glares at me for a second, but relaxes. "Oh, you're doing that thing. That journalist thing. Suppose I can't blame you." She frowns. "I'm not sure what's going wrong. Maybe nothing's going wrong. We're beating the teams who are worse than us and not beating the teams better than us. I think we were second in the league for so long we assumed there weren't many of those."

Jisook again says something. I say, "Pardon?"

"She says Max told us we were second. Right. Maybe he was just saying it to motivate us. I don't know, this past week just makes me fidgety. When you fall off the bike you've got to get straight back on, right, but next up's the FA Cup, we've got a Cheshire Cup - guess I'll get some minutes there - and then it's the international break. Then it's Chelsea at home but it feels like months away. If we lose that, we're in big trouble. A lot of people want us to fail."

Jisook says, "Hating me is, like, all you do, breakfast to dinner."

"Yeah, exactly," says Angel.

I say, "It's your birthday on Wednesday. Are you having a party?"

"Nah, going to Wrexham to watch Saltney play Atletico. Supporting the boys, you know? They rescued me."

Jisook nudges Angel and says, "Back off of my fella, Gabriela."

They dissolve into fits of giggles. I think about asking them to demo some aspect of ball striking but I worry their reply will make me feel old.

***

Jari Köngäs and Ruud Berkenbosch are sitting together, and politely allow me to join them, but I quickly realise my mistake. Ruud is recovering from an ACL tear and I'm not sure if he's allowed to strike balls yet. It might be a sore topic, so I pivot to asking Jari about the Spurs match.

"Were you surprised to start?"

"Somewhat, yes," he says. "But we had the team meeting and Max explained he didn't think Spurs had much attacking potential and that we should go for the win and he thought the best formation was 4-2-3-1."

"With attacking full backs," says Ruud, delighted to be talking tactics. "Peter and Ender would be plenty to deal with Spurs's striker, plus Youngster and Santana would be the double pivot and not much is getting through that. So then who to play at CAM? Max said he would rotate through options during the match depending on how Spurs started. Their defence is very good but they keep making stupid mistakes and if we asked them different questions during the 90 minutes, at least one of their answers would be mind-blowing stupidity."

"Which is what happened," says Jari. "Wibbers, Max himself, and me, we felt like we had the whole of the Tottenham Stadium to play in. It was so easy! Wibbers scored from outside the box - "

"As the analysts told us. Spurs's keeper is very weak from long shots but they allow opponents to shoot from outside the area because it's low-percentage. That's a bad combination!"

"So it's one-nil, we're cruising, Spurs can't defend for shit. Then Foquita and that Argentine defender get into each other's faces and just like that, two red cards!"

"Crazy," says Ruud.

Jari says, "It's Peru versus Argentina, you think? Is that it?"

Ruud shrugs. "I don't know. Who likes Argentina? Not even the penguins. I heard the defender wanted a move in the January window and this is his way of protesting. After that, Spurs defended much better. They got solid, didn't they? The cliche is that it is hard to play against ten men - and it can be true. But also their player wasn't undermining them."

Jari says, "Three-match ban for our top striker. That's not good."

I say, "Was it always the plan to take you off at half time?"

"Yes but when there was the card I hoped to stay, you know? I could be the striker, perhaps. But the manager picks the team and he has the overview and everything was great until the end. Then Ruud's countryman, 70 million Euro, who had been shit the entire match, shoots from distance. Thunderbolt, top bins! Saves the day, saves his manager from being fired, and possibly he saves Spurs from relegation."

Ruud says, "Big game player. Always has been. Max doesn't like him. Not as with Salazar, where it is personal. I mean as a player. Still, he was joking with him at full time. That's the warmest I have seen Max with an opponent since I came to Chester."

I say, "I think they have the same situation with a family member."

"Yes," says Ruud, for whom something has just clicked.

I want to change the subject. "Okay so you got one point from two games. Could have been two points or even four but it was only one. For me, the situation for Chester is a little worse than a fortnight ago. Uh, that means two weeks ago. Here, I made some notes. Okay, Leeds were seven points behind, now it's five. Ipswich are still three behind. Leicester were three ahead, now that gap is six. Wolves, Spurs, and West Ham are still four ahead. It's very close and all those teams look stronger and the games are running out. If anyone wins two matches back to back, they could go clear. What do you make of it all?"

Jari says, "You make it too complicated. There are three teams ahead by four points. We only have to overtake one. Four points, you cannot do it in one game, that's the thing, but Spurs have big problems, you saw that. They can only score from wondergoals. West Ham might be the hardest to take over, but we can do it. Wolves are stronger than at the start of the year, sure, but if we beat them in two weeks - in a fortnight! - that's half our job done."

"Without Foquita," I say.

"Without Foquita," he agrees.

I strum my fingers on the tabletop, because while I'm interested in this, it doesn't fit the concept of my article. I spot Wibbers and shoot to my feet. "Good luck against Charlton!" I tell Jari and Ruud, then zoom away.

***

"You smash the ball here," says Wibbers, holding one up for me, talking like I'm a baby in a cot. "Here," he says again, pointing to a spot that, if the ball were Planet Earth, would be somewhere in the Indian Ocean. "And you use this part of your foot. This ridge here."

"Got it," I say, forcing myself to smile. Henri liked the first part of this article, but I’m more certain than ever that it will be a commercial flop. The entire football media landscape has been saturated with Spurs mania. Could Spurs go down? Could they? Their best defender will be suspended for three matches, they only have one player who looks like he might score a goal, and Chester outplayed them for 88 minutes. A megaclub could go down and no-one gives the first shit about anything else, especially my quirky articles.

Wibbers puts the ball down, eyes me like I'm in the slow class, then hits the dreamiest possible shot. It dips, veers, and swerves, and for a second I'm drunk on his sheer talent. "Soz," I croak, "I didn't quite get that. Could you go again?"

He tells me once again how to kick a football. Then he slaps one from 28 yards.

"Mmm," I say.

His girlfriend, Sarah Greene, grunts. Why can't I understand? "Bethany, look! Hit here with here." She drops a ball and copies her boyfriend. Copies? No, she has her own method. The point of contact is fractionally lower but the ball behaves wildly differently. Her shot doesn't go as high, doesn't dip as much, curls much more.

"Or you could do this," says Wibbers, who drags a ball closer, pushes it away, and twats it. It goes like an Exocet missile and crashes against the bar.

"What, like this?" says Sarah, who mimics him. Hers goes just as straight, but sails in.

"I like this one," says Wibbers, as he takes a ball, pushes it sideways, and lashes it towards the right-hand post. Almost instantly, it changes direction and speeds into the side-netting on the left.

"Wiiiillllll," complains Sarah. "With those you need to start higher, like this." She copies her boyfriend but leans away as she hits the ball. Leans away but also... forward? I would need specialist cameras to understand, but anyway, I'm following the flight of the ball and yes, it starts higher and also winds up in the left of the goal.

I could stay here for hours, watching these two talents hit dreamy shots at an unguarded goal. It's like a spa for the football-loving mind, yet it is interrupted in the most delightful way. "Bethany?"

His Royal Sighness himself, Martim Santana, has come to see what we're doing. "You played against Spurs," I say. "Apparently you trained well. Good job."

He's ten times calmer now than last week. He understands that when Max says he plans to make Santana look good, he means it, with all that entails. "Thank you, Bethany. How is your article coming along?"

"Great," I lie. "There's just one type of ball striking I need a top professional to model. Would you be my, er, guinea pig?"

"I am a pig," he says, twinkling, and it takes all my self control not to throw myself at him right then and there.

I get my phone and go to a video. The three pros gather round. One stands much closer than the others, according to my imagination.

The video shows the warm-up from a Sunday League match. The kits are muddy, the pitch is crap, the ball looks ancient, but the players have unusually good technique. One does mad tekkers, catches the ball on the back of his neck, somehow flicks it two yards to his mate, who also catches it on his neck, does some tekkers himself, then flicks the ball to a large man who boots the ball about a mile away into a nearby back garden. The large man says, "Have it!" and looks very satisfied with himself.

Wibbers and Sarah collapse laughing, but Santana is utterly perplexed. "What? What is this?"

I don't tell him it's a classic advert for a 'no-nonsense' brand of beer. Instead I say, "I need you to kick the ball as far as you can and say 'have it'. It's for science."

The word science sends Wibbers and Sarah into more fits, but Santana simply does a quizzical smile, tosses a ball up, boots it inelegantly. It has to be the first time in 20 years he has actively tried to look ugly on a football pitch, and it brings him great joy. "Have that!" he cries.

Wibbers dries his eyes and gives his new team mate a hug.

Max Best should hire me as a sort of court jester. No-one improves morale around this place better than me.

***

Over the next week, much happens.

Saltney defend for their lives and only lose 2-0 to Atletico Madrid in a packed, music-filled Racecourse. Ryan Reynolds beams down like the Pope of Football and for the tenth Saltney match in a row begs to be allowed into the dressing room. He owns it! The answer is no. For the tenth time in a row, he accepts the knockback with good grace, so Max relents and lets him in.

Pascal Bochum and Max Best confer as Chester's under 18s thrash Sunderland 4-2 in the Youth Cup. (The away team score twice late on as the co-managers throw on one too many toddlers. They will vow not to do that again, but will do it again in the very next round. It's the Chester way.)

Chester travel to London again to play the FA Cup Fourth Round against Charlton. Max picks his three big-money signings. Ender, Santana, and Carvalho start, as do Marek, Cole Adams, and Roddy Jones. Max leaves himself out of the starting eleven but is stripped and ready to go the moment things turn sour. This is the FA Cup and it means a lot to him. Gabby struggles in attack and the midfield is strangely disjointed, but Chester see out a somewhat scrappy 1-0 win. Chester will play Wolves in the next round, at the Deva. It could have been worse, and as Max says, if Vincent Addo had been allowed to play for Charlton against his parent club, it could have been a LOT worse.

The next day, the women return to sparkling form, winning their own FA Cup match against London City, 3-0. Sarah Greene scores one of her trademark long-range blockbusters. The women will play Chelsea at home in the quarter finals. It's the worst possible draw. There is literally no-one tougher. Max squints and says, 'We'll win that.'

For the third Monday in a row I travel to Bumpers, this time with a new draft of this article. Version one ends with Santana booting the ball away. It seems like a decent conclusion but I want to discuss it with Henri over a free lunch.

But Max spots me and drags me into a media room to explain why I'm lollygagging, why I'm walking around like I own the place, why I'm malingering. I start to explain that the last word doesn't mean what he thinks it means but eventually I have no choice but to tell him why I'm there. His face lights up and he demands to read the article while I sit quietly. 

As any writer will tell you, watching someone read your text is excruciating.

I bite my nails.

***

"Holy shit," he says, eyes wide, and that's just him reading the title.

***

"Don't listen to Henriiiiii," he wails. "And Smith Must Score is a way better angle. Don't let him botch your ideas."

***

"You're gonna fix all these typos, right?"

***

He's silent for two solid minutes. Absorbed. Is he enjoying this?

He cackles. "What a little scamp," he says. He could be talking about any of ten people.

***

"Bosh!" he declares, suddenly, after what felt to me like a long, frosty silence. "That was great. We're friends again. Do you need money?"

I don't know whether to burst into tears or kick him to death with his own football boots. I need money but there's one thing I need more. "Did you really like it?"

He leans back and clicks his tongue a few times - he has already transported himself somewhere else. "You're right about me doing so many things the media can't focus on a single one but different people take different messages, don't they? Pepe Salazar gets the message that I think he's a piece of shit, the Chester Chatters get the message that I haven't forgotten them, and so on." He closes his eyes and drums the top of the seat next to him. "Should this be called And Smith-Smithe Must Score? Nah, that's terrible, isn't it? Too clever by half. So clever it loses all meaning."

"You mentioned money?"

He scrolls all the way up. "You know, there's something in here that you haven't paid off. The 1983 shot. I would have enjoyed getting everyone's thoughts on it. Yeah it's old but so what? It's timeless, isn't it? But I can answer your question."

"Which question?"

"You wrote, why must Smith score? It's nothing to do with technique or even how amazing the opportunity seems to be. (I think we can both agree that it's not what it looks like and the guy's utterly exhausted after running around Wembley for 120 minutes. That was before nutrition, before sport science, before everything.) When we hear those words, 'and Smith must score', we're hearing a TV commentator. He works in the media and he knows about narratives.

"Smith must score because if he does, it's the biggest story of the year, maybe the decade. United won the replay 4-0 and Brighton got nowhere near a cup final for 40 years. Smith must score because the alternative is so grisly. The alternative is the future that Brighton fans actually got, which was incredibly painful for a long, long time. I think they nearly dropped to non-league at one point. That's why Smith must score.

"I haven't heard DigiWorld or Boggy's coverage of the Arsenal match - doubt I would enjoy it much - so I don't know if someone said 'And Best must score!' as I was stepping up to that free kick." Max shakes his head, doing a thousand-yard stare. "It's not a gimme, is it? There's a massive wall and a top goalie. But if we get relegated by one point, maybe that was the moment. Best must score! Not because it's easy, but because the alternative is so grim."

We sit in a silent room, which gets darker by the second. "I don't want to end on a low note," I say.

"What low note?" he says, amazed. "We're not going down, Beth. Haven’t you been watching us? We're fucking mint! And the Newcastle game is getting rearranged because we're playing in the FA Cup that weekend. A hard game getting moved to the end of the season? It's just like the old days, the first Maxterplan! Relegation? Fuh-gedda-boudit!" He takes his phone and swipes madly. "I had one note for you. Should have taken a screenshot. Where is it? Ah, here we go.

"It's you lusting over one of my unsuspecting players, as usual. Change this to 'His Royal Thighness'. What do you think? Because he uses his chunky thighs when he's kicking the ball. Yeah? It's horny yet thematic. Great." He stands and moves towards the door. He looks back. "I need to work on my free kick game, so I'm gonna smash shots at a series of increasingly rugged goalkeepers. Want to come and watch?"

...

Thanks for your support!

No-nonsense defending video.

How Max chips a goalie, according to Henri.

Tomorrow is the last scheduled day of heat hell. The rest of the forecast looks normal. Rejoice!