I composed an email to Viktor’s wife and grown-up daughter, but didn’t send it — I wasn’t sure if an email was appropriate in the circumstances; later on I wrote a letter and sent that instead — and then went down to breakfast with Charles Rivel, from PSG.
33
After breakfast I went shopping, bought some presents for Louise at Galeries Lafayette — I was feeling guilty, of course — carried them back to the Bristol Hotel and then took the Metro out to Sevran-Beaudottes to meet with the mother of John Ben Zakkai, who was the fifteen-year-old footballing wunderkind I’d first seen playing keepy-uppy on the artificial pitch near the Alain Savary Sports Centre. Since I’d met him I’d been keeping in touch with him on What’sApp and we’d become friends. I was now about to become his patron and benefactor.
I’d been thinking deeply about what Mr Jia had said, how the selfless can be fearless. I’d decided to make this my maxim in all my dealings with Madame Zakkai and her son. The truth was I might have gained something for myself if I’d obeyed my instinct, which was to take the boy and his mother to La Masia — in English, it means ‘the farmhouse’, which is the name often used to describe the youth academy for FC Barcelona — and there to introduce young John to Jordi Roura and Aureli Altimira who would undoubtedly have seen what I had seen in the boy: a prodigious footballing talent.
But there was a small part of me that would have been brokering this introduction in order to make it up to FCB for the disappointment I’d seen in Jacint’s face when I’d told him that Jérôme Dumas would not be coming to the club after all. Because that was what I’d planned to do ever since the moment I’d seen John Ben Zakkai play football and felt my heart skip a beat. Was that what it had been like when Bob Bishop went to Belfast and discovered a fifteen-year-old genius named George Best — a boy whose local club Glentoran had previously rejected as too small and light?
Sometimes the only way you can be sure that you’re doing the right thing is when your actions run against all that you hold most dear; and when you know that there are people you call good friends who might believe that what you’re doing was disloyal and an act of ungrateful treachery.
A couple of days later, and at my own expense, the three of us — Sarah Ben Zakkai, John and I — flew from Paris to Madrid, to keep an appointment I’d made for us with Real Madrid and the manager of Cadete A.
Covering approximately 1,067 hectares of land, and a short distance from Madrid-Barajas Airport, Real Madrid City is probably the most advanced sports training facility in the world. That is no exaggeration. Designed by the architect Carlos Lamela, the Valdebebas Park complex is ten times bigger than the old Real Madrid Sports City and forty times bigger than the Santiago Bernabéu. Small wonder that it cost almost half a billion euros.
From the airport we drove straight to the facility and through three levels of security, which is perhaps why it is better known to locals as the secret city. Groups of fans stood on a roundabout just off the motorway and peered into our car as we approached the main buildings, hoping to catch a glimpse of their footballing heroes. Convinced that we belonged to the club, a few of them even waved at us. John waved back.
‘They’re going to be doing that just for you, before very long,’ I told John. ‘That is if things work out the way I think they’ll work out.’
‘This is fantastic,’ said John. ‘I can’t believe we’re actually here. This place looks amazing — like a temple to football.’
‘That’s fair,’ I said. ‘But don’t ever call this place the spiritual home of football. Nor any other except London. Got that? And specifically the Freemason’s Arms which is a pub in London’s Covent Garden district. Because that’s where the rules of football were laid down by the first football association back in 1863. If there’s one thing that bugs me it’s when ignorant stupid people talk about places like Brazil, or Spain, or Italy, as the spiritual home of football. That’s just bollocks. The game we play today is an English game, and don’t you ever forget it, son.’
‘Understood, Mr Manson.’ John grinned back at me. ‘But I still can’t believe we’re here.’
‘Nor can I,’ I said, hardly wanting to explain to the fifteen-year-old just why I felt so ambivalent about being there, in Madrid. It would hardly have been fair to have told him that for me it was like changing sides in a war, or becoming a Roman Catholic after years of worshipping in a Protestant church. Not that I was changing sides — just trying to do something that was in John’s best interests rather than my own.
‘Perhaps we’ll meet Martin Ødegaard,’ said John.
‘Don’t you want to meet Cristiano Ronaldo?’ I said. ‘Or Toni Kroos?’
‘Oh, sure, but Martin is who I dream of becoming, you know? He’s only sixteen. The youngest guy ever to play for his country. He just signed for Real. And now he’s in the reserves, and being managed by Zinedine Zidane, and making fifty thousand euros a week. I mean, that’s any kid’s dream, isn’t it?’
I had to admit all this did sound pretty good and helped to persuade me that maybe Madrid was still the best choice in spite of my reservations about what I was doing.
We parked in front of the entrance hall, which was like the lobby of a very modern hotel, where we were met by some people from the youth academy who led us to ‘the white house’ — the area reserved for the youth teams. Here were several dressing rooms, and seven pitches each with their own stand and the very same natural grass as that used on the pitch in the Santiago Bernabéu, which comes from Holland. Or so we were informed.
I wished the boy luck and then left him to get changed while Raul Serrano Quevedo from the club’s public relations department gave Madame Zakkai and me a tour of the main building.
This giant, T-shaped building is huge and contains dressing rooms, gymnasiums, classrooms, conference rooms, offices, a hydrotherapy pool and medical centre, press area, etc. on both sides of the complex. There are ten grass and AstroTurf football pitches surrounded by stands with a capacity for more than 11,000 spectators.
After our tour, Raul took us to the café-restaurant called La Cantera. He was a handsome, good-humoured man wearing a blue shirt and tie, and a blue quilted jacket, and his English was impeccable. Through the enormous windows the players’ friends and families could watch training sessions on the nearby pitches; members of the public were forbidden to watch however. Everything was brushed steel and white wood. A waiter brought us coffee, fresh orange juice and some delicious, sugar-free carrot cake.
‘Frankly, this is the most amazing training facility I’ve ever seen,’ I told Raul Quevedo. ‘I’ve stayed in some five star hotels that weren’t as good as this place. In fact, I think I just did.’
Raul nodded. ‘It’s taken a long time to get here, but we like it,’ he said, modestly.
‘You must like coming to work here.’
‘I love it. Every day I arrive I tell myself I’m the luckiest guy in the world.’
For obvious reasons my arrival had been scheduled so that I wouldn’t see an actual training session. Just in case. We were watching the kitman collecting each player’s boots from where they had left them beside the door to the dressing room a little earlier.
‘But then everyone who works here thinks the same,’ said Raul. ‘Even him. The kitman. He’d probably do the job for nothing if we asked him.’ He shook his head. ‘Actually, he’d probably pay us to do the job. Lots of guys would. That’s what this team means to people.’
I nodded. ‘I get that.’
‘It’s hard to see this place and not believe that you’re not going to win an eleventh Champions League title this year.’