The Secret Footballer Access All Areas by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Autobiography, Memoirs, Non-Fiction, Football, Soccer, Biography, Sports & Outdoors
ISBN: 9781783350612
Publisher: Guardian Faber Publishing
Published: 2015-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

I’VE PLAYED AND YOU HAVEN’T

There was a guy – we’ll call him Freddie – who turned up at our training ground some time around 2005. To this day I don’t know where he came from or who brought him to the club, but I do know that my car has never looked cleaner before or since. In fact, right up until the day I left the club, my car looked a million dollars – and not just mine, but every car in the car park. The lads were only too happy to fork out £100 a week for an in-and-out detail service, and, for however many years, he carried on. Freddie made a small fortune.

During that time he also made friends with one player to such an extent that, before long, he was putting up curtain rails for him in his new house, hosing down the driveway after training or mowing his lawn. As time went by, more and more players began to ask Freddie if he would mow their lawns too, and while he was at it, perhaps paint the lounge and pick up the new sofa that had just been ordered. Soon, Freddie had become as integral to the lads’ daily needs as the player liaison officer himself – except Freddie wasn’t an official and that made him preferable. If you needed something picking up or dropping off, Freddie was your man. Need new boots sorting out? Freddie would handle it. You want a busload of girls picking up from the airport and dropped into central London and bailed out again at six in the morning? All you had to do was call Freddie. He made himself indispensable.

A couple of years after that, he began appearing in the tunnel before games, handing out drinks and energy bars as the lads were getting ready to walk on to the pitch. Then, after matches, Freddie could be seen helping the kit man to clear away the lads’ boots or picking the used towels up off the floor. It was only a matter of time before Freddie started appearing on the pitch, wearing spare kit he’d found lying around, and collecting up the balls after the warm-up, picking up spent drinks bottles and generally making himself useful. Nobody ever said a word.

About three years after that, well after I’d left the club, I was at a local non-league game. I’d been asked to attend by a friend, who was making his managerial debut with one of the teams. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one. Freddie was there too, sitting in the stand, feet up on the chair in front of him, mobile phone glued to his ear while wearing a club jacket with his initials heat-pressed on to the shoulder opposite the badge that I’d fought tooth and nail for during the best part of my career.

We saw each other at the same time, and he raised his hand in the air as if he was appealing for

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.