Cup

Pre-match Ritual

Manager

El Chubasco wakes up from a dream of playing football on the beach as a child.  In this, his dream, he’s eight; the black sand scratches between his toes and the wind blows the ball into the waves.  It’s glorious.  The August sun warms his back and his brothers and sisters are whooping and calling around him.  It will soon be dinner time and he can’t wait - there won’t be much to eat, but his mother will still manage to provide them with something good.

Sometimes, he thinks it’s not the money, but the poverty he follows.  Poverty makes him lucky – from his beginnings in a shabby, southern town, to this northern, British city. Juan Alonso Vidal or El Chubasco, as the fans call him.  El Chubasco, the wild wind.  Bringer of thunder and lightning.

God, but it’s cold here. Air with sharp teeth he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to.  The warmth of the people and his welcome at the club make up for it though.   They love him – one of the elite, up there with the Joses, Peps and Bielsas of this world.  He’s a magician to them; their very own South Yorkshire Jesus, capable of taking them to the top of the league, or turning water into wine at the very least.

Little do the fans know, he’s not on the side of the angels and El Chubasco will do whatever it takes to win.  Football is his life, his entire raison d’etre.  When he agreed to manage this team, some of his requests certainly raised eyebrows.  But a contract is a contract and if what he wanted to come here were bones, offal, sage, a goblet and a summoning circle next to the physio room, then that is what he would get.

When El Chubasco reaches the club, he takes off his puffer jacket as he walks into the changing room.  He’s unusually late this morning and the players are already waiting for him.  There’s an air of anticipation in the room – this is a make or break match.

They’re good lads, the players; only boys really, and they hang on El Chubasco’s every word.  They focus, they try to process, they barely understand a word he’s saying.  They want to win, they want a laugh.  They want some straight forward instructions to follow, not this… this weird shit.

Fan

Justin wakes up from a dream, confused and in a real sweat.  He doesn’t even remember what the dream was about, but he knows it was a bad one.

The kids and Ellie have already gone to work and to their organized Saturday, leisure activities, and he’s got a fair few hours before the match.   After breakfast and a shower, it will be time to call the home to see how his dad is.

It’s a long-held ritual, – if he’s had a good night, that overrules everything else and it’s a dead on cert they’ll win, no question.  Justin still performs other rituals, just in case – the unlacing then lacing of his trainers three times, the kissing of the dog’s head and the drinking of tea out of the pale blue cup he’s had since he was seven - but his dad’s good night is still the most reliable omen.

Since his dad’s not been able to, Justin will never go to the match with anyone else as it would cancel the power of the Good Night.  He’d considered it once and they’d lost six nil.  It’s like the passing thought had cursed them and he wasn’t going to risk that again.  No way.

Justin has a nagging sense of life passing him by – the cliched, midlife slump of the averagely comfortable man.  A sense he should be doing something else, proving himself, planning for a future he has little interest in influencing.  What Justin does know is what matters to him in a quite rigid hierarchy – going upwards from the bottom, his job, Ellie, then his kids, then football.  His love, his life, his religion.

Footballer

Briny is dreaming of shapes and colours. Undefinable things with words that escape him, but ones he thinks he used to know.

When he wakes up, he’s wet himself.  His pyjamas and sheet are soaked and he feels the usual shame and then confusion as to why he’s wet through.  Jan comes and helps clean him up.  He knows Jan - at least for now.  She’s got a lovely face, all soft and smiling.

“Come on Briny”, she says.  “Let’s get you sorted, sweetheart.”

“Thanks Jan.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  Jan, do you know why they call me Briny?”

Jan smiles patiently.  “No, darlin’, why?  Do you want to tell me?”

“Well, when I first started playing for City, I was a bit wet and a bit salty, so Charley Cook, our manager at the time, kept teasing me I was Briny.  I didn’t like it to begin with, but the name stuck and Briny I was and Briny I am.” 

After feeding him his breakfast, Jan wipes the crumbs of toast from Briny’s face.  He reaches his hand out for his cup of tea and she picks it up for him before he can take it.  They’ve had to give him a cup with a lid and spout recently to stop him scalding himself.  A toddler’s cup for the champion footballer.  Jan places it in his hand and wraps his fingers round the handle. 

Briny drinks noisily and slowly, but he’s looking troubled.

“When will Justin call me?  He always calls me, but he’s not this morning.  When will Justin call me?”

Jan gently takes the cup out of Briny’s hand and places it back on the table.

“He’s already called, sweetheart.  You spoke to him this morning.  He told you about the match, don’t you remember?  You bring them good luck.”

“That’s nice”, says Briny and he grins and sits back in his chair.  Jan steadies him to stop him slipping, then his face falls.

“When will Justin call me?  He always calls me, but he’s not this morning.  When will Justin call me?”

*

Match

Manager

The crowd are in full voice and it’s bitterly cold.  El Chubasco paces back and forth on the sideline before settling on the drinks’ crate he always has put out for that purpose – tiger turned to squatting Buddha.  His hood is up and all that can be seen of his face is the tip of his nose and the glint of his glasses.  The winter light is low and drab.  The game isn’t much better – dull, slow, unimaginative.

From the depths of his coat, El Chubasco feels his temperature rise and it’s not from the protection of his clothes.  His anger is building.  This team – these children – are not trying hard enough.  They do not understand the importance of this.  Yes, they think they do, or at least they want to do well enough to protect the lives winning affords them, but they can as easily shrug it off.  When it comes down to it, El Chubasco knows they just don’t care enough.

At half time, the changing room is heavy with the fug of men and failure.  El Chubasco fills the space with his incessant, calm chastisement.  They listen, and have learned good sense enough to have their faces fixed to the appropriate expressions.  El Chubaso continues, but he’s going through the motions really.  He’s thinking of spells and of the crying woman.  La Llorona, who drowned her children when her husband was unfaithful to her.  Lack of loyalty counts for a lot with El Chubasco.

When the game starts again, things don’t improve.  The fans have begun to turn – less supportive and more dismissive.  They need this win and they’re not receiving it.  The brown sky is darkening and there is a suggestion of storm in the air.  El Chubasco, the bringer of lightning and thunder.  As the light fades completely, the floodlights come on with surly resignation.

Fan

Justin walks to the game along the path of ages.  He sometimes reckons men at the dawn of time walked these same roads and that the dead will walk them when the world comes to an end.  The voices of people he passes speak an ur-language – guttural and indistinct and yet understood by all.  It is the language of football that transcends region and social class.  Justin can speak this language and his dad was a master in it.  It’s inconsequential; it’s absolutely everything.

When he gets to the ground, he walks through the metal gate with the image of his dad welded into it.  It still moves him every time he sees it, hits him right in the heart.  He wishes his dad could be preserved, like this metal version of him.  Caught in a moment in time and safe there.

The first half isn’t great with a sense of lack lustre half-arsedness from the players.  Justin sees El Chubasco in his customary squat on the drinks’ crate, feeling the huge energy emanating from him and wishing that same energy could reach the team and make them play.

At half time, he goes to the toilet and someone in the queue recognizes him as Briny’s son.  Justin used to love these moments and now mostly hates them.  The guy who recognizes him persists though.  “I’ll tell you what, mate.  If Briny was here, there’d be none of this shit.  We’d be three nil up by now, no doubt.”

As the second half starts, Justin looks at his dad’s empty seat beside him.  It’s stupid, he knows, that he still buys him a season ticket at these extortionate prices, but if his dad can’t come (and he accepts he never will again in his heart of hearts), he still wants the place he could have potentially occupied defined.

Justin watches what’s happening on the pitch and is grateful for the sound of the crowd.  The chants – the noise and humanity – fill the silence in his head.  The interplay between the team and El Chubasco feels odd to him and not necessarily healthy.  What he knows for sure is the cup is slipping out of their hands.  It’s begun to rain in angry, little squalls and Justin puts his hood up against their attack.

Footballer

In the home’s TV room, Briny is dreaming again.  His body, present and nodding in front of the screen, his mind somewhere else he doesn’t remember. 

He’d asked if he could watch the match and they’d said he could, but then Mrs. Oliver, the old cow, had come in and switched channels.  Briny had felt so angry and had begun shouting.  By the time Jan had come into the room to see what the matter was, he had no idea why she was asking him what was wrong.

Jan has switched the TV back to the match and she stays to check he’s calm.  “I bet you remember days like these, don’t you Briny?  I bet you were a looker in your time as well.  You’ve still got the footballer’s legs, you know?”

Briny bends to feel the shape of his calves and Jan holds his shoulders to support him.  This has happened before and it never fails to both touch and frighten her.  His legs begin to move up and down quickly, his arms at his side become pistons to aid faster running.  His head jerks upwards in jabbing motions left and right.  Briny’s body has come alive again.  Once a footballer, always a footballer - this wreck that contains the ultimate muscle memory.

When he tries to actually stand, Jan gently holds him in his chair and all movement vanishes.  “Oh look, darlin’, you’ve spilled your drink all over you”, Jan says.  “Let’s get you cleaned up before Justin comes.”

After Jan’s left, Briny is dreaming again and in this dream, he knows exactly where he is.  On the pitch, on an early spring day towards the end of another hard, training session.  The voice of the manager persists in his head.  Head the ball, now head it again.  Head the ball, now head it again.  Head the ball, now head it again.

*

Post-match Analysis

Manager

It’s safe to say that in the changing room, El Chubasco is not a happy man.  Everyone is knackered and stinking and somehow physically smaller.  The players sit there, faces glistening, diaphragms still moving in and out at a pace.  They’d tried harder in the second half, they really had, but to no avail.  Now they know what’s coming, so they may as well sit there and take it.  El Chubasco begins.

“Who didn’t drink from the goblet?  Well, who didn’t?  As I thought, not one of you is going to admit to that, are you?  What about the incantation?  No?  Who didn’t say the words?

We've dropped to fourth place and the cup is a memory of a memory.  We are fucked, guys, we are fucked.  I demand nothing less than everything from you.  I require it.  We are not losers and yet that is what we have become.

What you have to give this team, these fans – this city - and most importantly me, is your tears and blood.  No really, I’m not joking.  Start rolling your sleeves up and hold out your arms.”

The guys are thinking of family and play stations and some chill time.  They recall that one day Vincento had questioned El Chubasco and none of them want to revisit how that had turned out… God, they just want out of here.  They just want to go home.

Footballer and Fan

Justin brings the cold with him into the home and grimaces at the over-cooked vegetable stink that haunts the place. It’s a smell he’ll never get used to.

His dad is sat in front of the TV, but his head is slumped on to his chest and it’s clear he’s sleeping.  Justin whispers his name and gently takes hold of his hand.  Briny opens his eyes and there’s no recognition of Justin in them at first, but then they clear a little and he smiles.

“How did we do, son?”  Briny says.  “Did we win?  I do hope we won.”

Justin talks him through the game, telling him like it’s a bedtime story for a child.  He gives the story a happy ending though – in his version, they win four nil.

Briny keeps hold of Justin’s hand and he moves his head to look into Justin’s face.  “You know son, I loved the football, it was my life, you know?  But I always loved you more.  When you were born, that moment, there was never anything more important to me.  Nothing, not ever.  Nothing else ever came close.”

Justin gets up as he doesn’t want to upset or confuse Briny by him seeing the cold tears that are welling in his eyes.  He takes off his scarf and carefully drapes it round Briny’s thin neck.

“How did we do, son?”  Briny says.  “Did we win?  I do hope we won.”

*