Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs
Also by Rodge Glass
Fiction
No Fireworks
Hope for Newborns
Dougie’s War: A Soldier’s Story (co-written with Dave Turbitt)
Non-fiction
Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography
A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request
The right of Rodge Glass to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Copyright © 2012 Rodge Glass
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published in 2012 by Tindal Street Press
First published in this edition in 2013 by Tindal Street Press
an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
3A Exmouth House
Pine Street
London EC1R 0JH
ISBN 978 1 90699 445 7
eISBN 978 1 90699 487 7
Designed and typeset by Tetragon, London
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CRO 4YY
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Tim
This is a work of fiction. Although facts concerning Manchester United Football Club are used for the sake of authenticity, the names of public figures have been used throughout the story in a purely fictitious way. All other characters, incidents and dialogue are imaginary, and any reference to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
‘I do not wish to hide my origins, nor do I seek to make it a subject of conversation. I am what I am.’
Ryan Giggs
Summer 1991. July the seventeenth. The beginning.
The Great Man was well early, so when the bell went I wasn’t ready and I swear to God I went fuckin mental. I started legging it round the house, not knowing where to go. I could have run right up the wall, onto the ceiling and back down again, I had that much energy. I could have taken a bite out of the couch. I jumped over one of the chairs and jumped right back. I ran round it then round it the other way. Mum battered me with a tea towel and said, Stop it, do you want him to think you’re a hamster? But she was bouncing too. She kept staring out the window at his Merc. (We were thinking that if he left it there too long, it’d probably get nicked.) Then Mum screamed. Well get the door then! What are you waiting for? So I opened it, smiled and said, Hello, Mr Ferguson, come on in! As if that was a thing I said every day. His first words to me were, Son, if ye can get up the wing as fast as ye get round your front room, ye’ll do just fine. There’s no question aboot that. No question aboot that at all.
Ooh, hhhellooo, said Mum, showing him into the lounge where she’d laid out a plate of biscuits. Then she asked, How doo yoo like yaw tee? Like he was a lord or something, and she was his maid, at his service. While he picked up and crunched a digestive I just stood there, thinking. Thinking that he looked pretty small compared to what I expected, and then thinking that he had this funny little red nose, how it didn’t look that red on the telly interviews after the games, and then thinking fuckin hell Alex Ferguson is sitting on my mum’s couch, about to drink her tea. As I stood there, staring, staring, staring at that nose, the manager of Manchester United chatted away about the weather, smiling and nodding whenever Mum spoke. Then he said, You must be very proud of your boy, Mrs Wilson, and she laughed that bit too hard, snorting, like she’d just heard a filthy joke and forgot to pretend she didn’t think it was funny.
The whole thing was over quick. It must’ve only lasted twenty minutes and Alex Ferguson hardly touched his drink. (I gave him the United mug, the one that said European Cup Winners’ Cup 1991 on it. He smiled when he saw that.) I reckoned he’d be round ours for half the day, maybe stay for tea, watch a film with us or something. Thought he might come down the park for a bit of a kickabout and a swig from a bottle of cider. When I got the call saying he was coming over, I’d imagined us sitting up all night talking by torchlight, under the duvet, about the great United teams of the past. Eating sarnies and talking about our favourite players. Thinking up Best Ever United XIs and plotting together how we were going to – as he put it years later – knock Liverpool off their fucking perch.
But there was none of that. He just told Mum I had a very promising career in the making, Mrs Wilson, if he works hard, and I’ll make sure he does, don’t you worry about that. Well, Mum couldn’t stop herself. Could you make him tidy his room as well, Mr Ferguson? That’d be smashing. The Great Man didn’t laugh. He just turned to me, face straight like he was saying something important and told me, Son, be good to your mother. She brought ye into the world and she can take ye back out just as easy. (Was that a joke? Was he joking? Did Alexander Ferguson make jokes?) Then he thanked Mum for the tea, got up and smiled. At the door he said, I don’t usually do home visits, son. I’ve only done it once before. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. Looked out of the window. Perhaps checking his car was still there. Then he said, Have you seen Ryan Giggs play, Mike? I was too numb to answer with words so I just nodded, once, all tight. Some talent, that boy, said Alex Ferguson. Some talent. You could do worse than learn from him. Be at the Cliff for nine on Monday and we’ll see what we can do about making a player out of ye. Then he touched me softly on the shoulder and left. Didn’t ask if I had an agent. Never even mentioned City or asked me how much they’d offered. Didn’t matter, did it?
After he went, I danced in the kitchen. No music, no need – just danced and danced like a spastic, arms and legs everywhere, till I’d forgotten why I started. Then I fell onto the couch he had sat on with his arse – the same one he sat in the dugout with – and grinned so hard my cheek muscles ached. But Mum grabbed those cheeks, twisted the flesh with her fingers and said, Don’t you DARE fuck this up, Michael Jonathan Wilson. Promise me, okay? PROMISE. Real fuckin hairdryer treatment, pointing right at me and shaking. Like I’d already done something wrong! Mum never usually let rip, and never talked about football. Usually it was all Listen to your teachers and Revise for your exams and You’ll never get anywhere in life if you don’t do your geography homework. Then there she was, almost crying. Begging me to be a footballer. So I told her what she wanted to hear. I’ll be the BEST EVER, I said. I gave her a big wet kiss on the forehead and told her, Don’t you worry about NOTHING any more, Mum. You’re gonna live like the QUEEN from now on. The main thing was to get her to let me leave school before exams I was gonna fail anyway, but when I said that – Don’t you worry about nothing, Mum, I’m gonna look after you – I really meant it, you know?
It was already eat-your-dinner-off-it clean, but she redid the kitchen again anyway. Then she started dusting in the lounge. Then the Hoover came out. I just sat for a bit, back on that couch of ours, staring at the TV, this zoned-out half-grin on my face like I was hypnotized. I wasn’t even watching what was on. I didn’t know what was on. I just knew that somewhere in the corner of my vision there were colours moving, people moving, in the screen. The hum of the Hoover stopped. Mum pointed towards the box and said, So, you’ll be on there soon then, eh? I smiled. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose. Then I said, I wish Dad was here. He would have laughed his fuckin head off. Fergie. In our house like that. It’s mad. Mum gave me another clap across the head for swearing, but it was a soft one this time. Then she unplugged the Hoover, sat down next to me and said, with a relaxed smile, It’s okay, Mikey. It’s best your father wasn’t at home this afternoon. We can tell him all about it when he gets home.
Imagine: it starts off small. You’re three years old. The sun’s out. It’s the summer of 1978 and you start kicking a red ball around the back garden with your dad. You’re not really that interested at first but he’s noticed you, so when he rolls the round shape your way, you do it – you stick out your foot, it hits the plastic, it feels all right. The ball bobbles a few yards, then Dad claps, and he smiles a natural smile. You chase and stick out your foot again.
At your fourth birthday party the back garden is full of other kids and their parents, but instead of playing with them or joining in the games you spend most of the afternoon with Dad, Uncle Si and your big brother Guy, kicking and sliding around on the grass, lost in the game. Like you’ve never done anything else and don’t ever want to stop. Like you’ve totally forgotten it’s your birthday and it’s not supposed to be a day like any other, which is mostly spent doing EXACTLY THIS. A few months pass. Uncle Si builds you a mini net for the back garden, two fat little posts and crossbar made out of wood carved from a tree in his garden. He knows his stuff all right, he’s made that thing with care, but by the end of the summer the net looks tired and worn out. Then, in September 1979, you get sent to a big grey building called a school where you have your first knockabout in a decent playground. It’s better than sitting on your backside looking at numbers or words. It’s better than anything that happens in a classroom. Big news.
Time passes slow, and it feels like for ever until finally you turn six and then seven years old. You see that some kids are good at this magical game called football you’re learning, others are not, and you – it’s amazing – are one of the best. Unlike the boring old real world there’s pure justice in this new world of sport coz the more you practise the better you get, and after that practice comes love, from family, friends and teammates who want to pick you out of the line-up first now, instead of ignoring you or pulling your trousers down in front of girls. You join the school under-nines team. You start off as a defender. You’re a natural: composed, solid, always in control. A steady future beckons. But after a few weeks you ask the teacher if you can play up front. Why? Coz you’re pretty fast compared to the others, and even though you’re only eight you can see there’s not much glory in being a fuckin right-back.
Soon you’re playing real matches, on actual pitches, against other schools. And in your first one, after just a few minutes, this is how it begins. The ball comes to you on the edge of the box, you run with it, you thump it as hard as you can towards the goal up ahead, and even though the keeper’s the size of a hamster and the netting’s the size of an elephant and you secretly know you scuffed the shot, you score your first ever goal. You forget yourself. You feel like the Master of the Universe. You see your dad on the sidelines cheering. That day in 1984 he buys you a Manchester United replica kit – the first present you’ve ever got that wasn’t obviously bought by your mum. And there’s more to come, an extra special treat. He’s gonna take you to a match for the first time, at a proper stadium and everything.
You know what United is already. You know you’re a United fan, you always have, it’s what all good people in the world just are and always have been. You know you’re a Red just like you know you’re a human and not an alien from outer space, a boy not a girl, a Manc not a smelly Scouser (you’ve never met one of those and hope you never do) – but even though you’ve sat in your front room and watched the scores coming in every Saturday afternoon, though you’ve seen United matches on TV and had a United calendar up on your wall for the last three years, the team haven’t actually existed, have they? On the short walk from your home to the ground, surrounded by thousands of other fans, Dad puts his arm around your shoulder and he makes United, the idea of United, multicoloured and possible and real. He doesn’t usually talk much, so you pay attention when he tells you about this big stage where you’re gonna see the greatest bastard show on earth. At a set of traffic lights, waiting for green, you shut your eyes tight and try to imagine it. You can’t.
Dad says this place you’re getting closer to with every step is not just called Old Trafford – it’s known by right-thinking Reds all over the world as the Theatre of Dreams, and he and Uncle Si have been going there all their lives. Not only that, but their dad did the same thing for most of his life too. That’s Granddad Peter, who died before you were born, he says, eyes like cotton clouds, all soft and misty. Granddad got these tickets when the league started again after the war. Worth a bloody fortune now. And cost a bloody fortune too. You don’t know which war he means, but you don’t ask coz something strange is going on with your dad’s eyes. They look almost too big for his face. Still, you don’t wanna do anything to change them so you just hold his hand, tight, tighter. Always the same seats, says your dad. Right on the halfway line. You’ll see soon enough. Maybe he says something else after that, but it’s lost in the growing noise of the crowd.
When you get to the stadium, this Theatre of Dreams, you can’t speak. The whole thing feels like a dream. The noise. The smell. The swearing and the screaming. It’s like a different game; it has nothing in common with your crappy school games where hardly anyone watches or cares about anyone except their own kids and nobody takes it seriously except YOU. You separate as Dad goes through the turnstile first with the tickets, then you follow behind him, then the two of you lock hands again. You pass a man selling programmes (bloody rip-off, says Dad, handing over the cash), go up the steps, through the mass of supporters, out into the open, looking down onto the vast green below. And then you shuffle over to those seats your family’s been sitting in since what sounds like the beginning of time. The seats are red plastic and feel cold against your arse, but they’re a part of history. You sit down and wait. You ask, Why is it just me and you today? Dad sees you looking at the two empty seats to your left and has a sneaky look of his own. Well, he says, coz your Uncle Si’s being stubborn about, um, a financial matter to do with the family business. Fuckin Wilson Electrics, Mikey, it’s all he thinks about. And Guy? Well, he’s at drama class, or ballet, or whatever the hell your mother sends him to. The referee blows his whistle, and the action begins. Dad says, Mikey, let’s just say that some Reds are more equal than others.
After the game ends you can remember hardly any of what happened in between. No action, no chances, no nothing. Your brain is empty of memories, except for one. The feeling of being right there with Dad as the first goal goes in, when he jumps up, throws a fist into the air and shouts out, Come oooon, yoo fuckin Reeeeds! You’ve never seen him like this before. You don’t recognize him at all. Years from now you’ll still remember that strange groaning sound, from the centre of him, and the even stranger thing that happens next: his glasses falling off his nose, crashing to the ground a couple of rows ahead, down below. They might be broken, you think. They might be lost. You shout out, Dad! Dad! But he doesn’t answer. The glasses might be gone for ever, or have to be repaired. That could cost half a week’s wages. He might never be able to see again – but he doesn’t care at all. He’s in another dimension. Free.
On the way home you tell Dad you want to play for Manchester United one day. You’d give anything to play for that team, even just once. You’d saw your own arm off for just a couple of minutes on the pitch, just one kick, while he watched from the family seats, waving and cheering and shouting your name. Dad thinks about this, then in this strange faraway voice says, I could have been a pro, you know, Mikey. Even had a few trials back when I was a teenager. With Preston North End. With Blackpool. With Crewe. He tells you he got injured and had to give it up. Bad luck, that’s all. He knows what’s required. Well, short arse, you’re probably not good enough to make it, says Dad as you walk away from the ground. But if you are, I hear it’s a pretty good life. His voice changes. Goes quieter, higher. Lighter too. Never mind that all that shite, he says. Do you wanna go bowling tonight? How about it, eh? At the alley? He says, If we’re lucky, maybe your big brother will grace us with his presence. Then he flicks his fag onto the concrete in front of your toes. What’s left of the little stick burns and flickers, the smoke spiralling upwards. You step on it. Look up. Grin.
A few days after your one-on-one at Old Trafford, you ask Dad if you can join a Sunday team as well as the school one. He says YES. And – surprise, surprise – you do well in it. You’re smaller than most, but you’re the best in the squad by a mile. By so much it’s embarrassing. On your debut, you score. After a few games they make you captain, even though you’re new and more than a year younger than anyone else. You find it easy to give orders during the games, shifting players up, down, forward, back, like snakes and ladders sliding about a board. On the pitch, you don’t even have to think. Good things just happen. And you love being team cheerleader, keeping everyone up up up, always clapping, shouting, COME ON LADS WE’RE STILL IN THIS even when you’re losing 5–0, or worse. Which is most weeks. One game, Dad and Uncle Si stand on the touchline together, talking about something in low voices like they’re at a business meeting, not a footie match. Even though it’s a Sunday, Uncle Si’s got a suit and tie on. Running past them, running for the ball, you think how he’s younger than Dad by five years, so why does it always seem the other way round?
Just as you’re getting used to your new team, making a few friends, having fun, Dad moves you to a bigger, better team miles away coz he says It’s all Pakis and niggers in the first lot you played for anyway. But you know it’s coz the team was shit, he’s seen you might actually be decent and he’s had his bloody eureka moment. He’s imagining spending the rest of his days showing off, arms folded, big grin on his ugly mug, saying That’s my kid, you know! to everyone he meets. As if he’s actually done something. Coz he made you, you’re part him, and he’s part you. You hear this in his voice when he talks about the future, like it’s a bright, open field he owns. Like it’s a jackpot on the pools. He’s probably imagining how good it’d feel to quit his job, tell his boss what to do with himself. Every night, fat and snoring, dreaming about riding off into the sunset on a horse called Freedom from the Man and flicking the Vs as he goes.
You don’t exactly know when this started but one evening, lying in bed, trying to get to sleep, not sleeping (you can NEVER get to sleep), you realize that football’s changed for you, maybe for ever. Now, when Dad drives you to and from games and practices, he’s giving instructions most of the way. Poking his finger, giving orders and replaying mistakes. Saying you’ve made a lot of them. These days, when he hovers on the touchline, all itchy, hopping from foot to foot, kicking every ball in his mind, sucking hard on a cigarette like he’s taking revenge on it, you recognize the tight, tense look on his face from when he bets on the horses. He still does that, though Mum thinks he gave it up ages ago, when she told him it was me or the bloody bookmakers and didn’t let him in the house for three days. Dad pops in there on the way to your team practice sometimes, and sometimes on the way back as well. It’s your little secret, you and him.
UNITED |
0–0 |
READING |
ATTENDANCE: 75,655
GIGGSY WATCH* – MadRed4Eva666 says: Know all you haterz out there R gonna diss me for speaking da truth, and yeah he hit da beans on toast, but Giggsy let us down today. Crosses NOT GOOD ENOUGH! It’s a big season 4 him and he’s in trouble. Got 2 prove he’s not past it or else OUT THE DOOR. Like the Gaffer says, No one is bigger than the club!
Average Fan Rating: 6/10
The first game of the 2007/08 season was the most boring Mike Wilson had ever seen. Nil–nil against Reading – hardly an advert for ‘the best league in the world’ as they kept telling him every time he turned on the television. ‘The envy of the rest of Europe,’ the commentators called it. ‘The dizzying height of the beautiful game.’ But the real problem was that the vast crowd, bigger than ever, was so quiet that Mike swore he could hear the sound of Alex Ferguson’s chewing gum chattering about inside his mouth. The sound of prawn sandwiches being chomped in corporate boxes. The sound of life dying. Manchester United were supposed to be the reigning League Champions, but it felt as if the crowd wasn’t at the Theatre of Dreams at all – in their minds they were really down the road at Edgeley Park with Guy, watching eleven Stockport County donkeys hoofing it up and down a mud-soup pitch, wondering how they could be having more fun on their precious weekend afternoons. This was Mike’s first home game without his brother in years. He sniffed. Looked around. Listened hard.
The United hush was scary sometimes. Grown men sitting on their hands, worrying about how it was all going to go wrong, moaning endlessly about imaginary demons. Mike never used to notice it when he was with friends or family, but now it was all he could think of. The older men in the polite stands got used to complaining years ago and, despite more success than they could have dreamed of in the relegation days of the seventies, they were in the habit of unhappiness and could not or would not change. As for the youth, they’d never known anything else. They’d never suffered like his generation had. All they’d ever known was gold so they didn’t value it, or even recognize it. On Mike’s left, in his brother’s old seat, was a man in his thirties. Mike turned towards him.
‘All that talent on the pitch!’ he said. ‘All that ability! And where’s the passion, eh? Where is it?’
Mike didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he got up.
‘SING YER AAARTS OUT FER THE LADS!’ he screamed, standing in a sea of sitters, arms aloft, spread wide. ‘COME OOOOON, OOOZ WITH ME?’
Two men down the front shouted out, ‘We are, young man!’, raised their plastic cups of coffee to the skies, then sat down. All around, there was silence. Mike was sure people were looking at him. Then Wes Brown miskicked the ball, high, wide and very, very ugly, out for another throw-in, and the crowd groaned as one. Mike tutted. It wasn’t the same at Old Trafford since they banned alcohol in the seats.
Three of the groaners, who sat behind him at every home game, were, in his opinion, perfect examples of the type that had become all too common. The Three Unwise Men, Guy used to call them. All in their fifties, though they looked twice that. Obviously only let off the leash by their wives once a week, only allowed to travel to Old Trafford and back, then locked up in the doghouse again till the next home fixture. Filthy old duffel coats as miserable as their faces. Heavy creases under their eyes. Expressions that probably hadn’t changed since the glory days of Best, Law and Charlton – and even then they wouldn’t have been happy. Once, Mike had turned round just after United had scored to see the three of them, not cheering, not smiling, not even standing up. Just grumbling about how ‘we should have been given a free kick before the goal’. Complaining the defender hadn’t been sent off, saying the referee was ‘obviously a bastard Arsenal supporter’. As Mike followed the zipping ball in today’s match, focusing on the Ryan Giggs runs that almost but didn’t quite work out, the crosses that were just too long, the occasional shots – off target – the Three Unwise Men let their tongues loose.
The first one, Dave, had a high, whiny voice. Mike imagined him working in insurance, a pariah in his office block. The second was Bill: the alpha male, the loudest, the angriest. Who responded to every opposition free kick like he’d just received news of the rape and murder of his only daughter, by a City fan. To Bill, everything was a disgrace. Everything was an affront to dignity. Everything was a conspiracy. And then there was the third Unwise Man. In a lifetime of matches Mike had never heard his name spoken. He was mostly quiet, in sulky agreement with the others, nodding and grunting at what they said, no matter the topic. As far as Mike Wilson was concerned, he was the worst of the lot.
Together these three made a kind of constant, discordant hum, spreading out like a toxic spill, several rows in all directions. Mike sniffed again. He zipped up his jacket and rubbed his hands together. He said nothing. Some people were only happy when they were unhappy – but not him. Mike Wilson gloried in the glory of the team. Their joy was his joy. Their success was his success.
‘Bloody Giggs!’ said one of the Three Unwise Men, Dave this time. ‘Get him off the park. He’s past it!’
Mike felt obliged to react.
‘Er, Ryan Giggs, O-B-E, that is!’ he shouted, without turning round.
Mike did his breathing exercises. He tried to ignore the blasphemy behind, to not let it all get to him. But there should have been more tension. More passion. Yes, the game was bad, but the atmosphere had been flat since kick off, except for the occasional ‘Ooh’ or ‘For fuck’s sake!’ or ‘Pass it, you useless bastard!’ punctuating the silences. It was as if the crowd was waiting for Christmas, or even February before they were prepared to get excited about football again. The men in grey suits might have been keen to whip football fans into a round-the-calendar frenzy, but trophies were standard currency at Old Trafford these days, and no trophies were won in week one of the league season. So why bother wasting breath? Most of the time, the team were going to win anyway. The team were going to be just fine. That seemed to be the thinking. A few rows below, two regulars discussed how early they should leave in order to avoid the traffic.
No such trouble getting excited for the Reading fans. The several thousand packed into the corner of the stadium were still delirious from having earned a second season in the Holy Land of the Premier League. They sang constantly. Nothing was happening on the pitch. The Reading fans didn’t care. They were high on good fortune, and success against the odds.
As full time approached, Mike’s one pound bet on the first goal scorer – on any goal scorer – looked increasingly optimistic, and eventually he gave up, tearing his slip into quarters, eighths, sixteenths. Meanwhile, the Reading fans started making the noise he hated more than anything in the world. More than having to get up early on a Sunday. More than the thought of City actually winning something. That humiliating little sound.
‘SSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH.’
Again. Longer.
‘SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.’
Then a weak chant in response.
‘Yu-ni-ted, Yu-ni-ted, Yu-ni-ted …’
An ironic round of applause went up from the Reading contingent, thinking they’d won that particular battle. Which they had.
At that moment, Mike noticed something that made him forget the match, the Three Unwise Men, everything.
A man on the row in front was biting into a cheeseburger. Tomato ketchup leaked out of the sides. Grease oozed between the man’s fingers. He chewed enthusiastically, then less so, then spat out a mangled chunk of browny yellow-red, dropping the rest of the burger onto the floor.
‘Hey you,’ said Mike. ‘What’s up?’
The man brushed bits of burger off his tongue with a gloved finger, retching. Then he smiled.
‘Fuckin shite, mate … the scran here’s a scandal. Pricey an all!’
Mike said, ‘So what! You just chuck it? This is Old Trafford!’
The man looked at Mike. ‘Did you want it or something?’ He bent down, picked up the rest of the burger and held it out. ‘You’re bloody welcome to it.’
Mike shook his head. ‘No, no,’ he said, his voice weaker now. ‘It’s just. I dunno. Holy ground.’
The man gave a half-smile. ‘Fine. Whatever, mate,’ he said. ‘Whatever you say.’
And, with that, he returned to talking to his friends. The full-time whistle blew. Both men had missed the end of the match.
For Mike Wilson, it was a long walk home after the game. It always would be now. They’d argued about it for weeks during pre-season, but Guy had stated his case a hundred times: from now on, he was taking his kids to see their new local team, Stockport County. Once again, on the way home from the Reading game, Mike phoned him and, once again, Guy was firm.
‘Mikey, I’m bored with the billionaires’ playground,’ he said. ‘I’d rather spend my pay on passionate half-talents fighting it out on a crappy pitch than stick it out with the bloated, predictable big league. The players are basically whores, bruv. Know what I mean?’
Mike did not know what his brother meant. He was starting to think something was wrong.
But, despite recent changes, some things stayed comfortingly the same, no matter what. When United won a match, Mike Wilson went out to celebrate. If the team lost, people knew better than to cross him before the next game. If it was a draw, like today, he spent the night at home. It always hurt, regardless of circumstances, but Mike understood that you couldn’t let it beat you. As Giggsy always said, ‘It’s the disappointments that keep the desire going.’ And at least United hadn’t lost on opening day.
Hands deep in pockets, walking back from the ground, Mike headed for home by his usual route, sure he could sense people staring as he passed. He walked by the guys outside the ground selling the Red Issue, up Sir Matt Busby Way, then round the corner at the shops, taking in the smell of salty chips and vinegar from the Legends Takeaway and stale beer and cigarettes from outside the bookies. That mix of aromas always made Mike think of his father, and the very first game he came to as a boy. Back then, before what he called ‘the big P45’, Gregory Wilson acted like anything exciting could happen, any time. And believed it probably would.
In among that crowd of fans full of the talk of another new season, Mike hummed some of his favourite United tunes and thought about his father, these people he knew, these streets of the Republik of Mancunia where he lived, and imagined a future where anything could happen. The season was waking up. After all those long, dead summer days, finally existence had a shape again. No matter today’s score – as he reminded himself, you had to think big. Like the Gaffer did. You had to remember that life was not just about what happened on any one afternoon. Life was about the long game. And, as he’d proved over the years, that was a game Mike Wilson was pretty good at playing.
* All reports taken from randomly generated comments left at All Things Giggs, ‘The Blogosphere’s Premier and Only Site dedicated entirely to the exploits of the Premiership’s Greatest Ever Player’
It’s been said before, I know that. But here’s the filthy little secret: sometimes things are repeated coz they’re TRUE. Still, don’t believe me, sunshine, check the history books! Go online! Phone a friend! Nearly every lazy, halfwit, armchair pundit in the Western world agrees. It was the most exciting time in the club’s history for young talent – in ANY club’s history – and, suddenly, I was in the middle of it. That’s like getting odds of a hundred thousand to one and watching your horse romp home, the rest of the field little dots in the distance. It’s like getting odds of a million to one. More. I felt pretty fuckin lucky, I can tell you that, but I was burning up too, you know? Coz United could have, and should have, won the league in my first year on the books. And while the Class of 92 were being born, lifting the FA Youth Cup to the heavens in celebration with yours truly making a tasty cameo, the big boys let it slip.
Leeds weren’t even better than us. They were an average team of clunkers and thumpers in the dirty Yorkshire tradition. Most of that team have now been forgotten, except for one ex-United player on the slide (little Gordon Strachan) and one French artiste (big Eric Cantona), who was on the way to sweet redemption. He signed for them part way through the season and scored a handful of goals while we crumbled, losing three games in a row at the death. They called it the league title nobody appeared to want, which just goes to show how fuckin stupid the boys in the box really are. No clue about the real world, these fellers. Too comfy in their fuckin seats, warming themselves in TV studios and thinking about snapping the next cheque from above into their greedy beaks. Too busy filling airtime with guesswork to see the light right in front of their eyes. The point is: United wanted it more than ANYTHING. United wanted it TOO much. In 1991 and 1992 all the future legends were breaking through, knowing the club was close to something great but not quite there yet. In 1991 it was the Cup Winners’ Cup – at the time, a massive breakthrough – but the big prizes were still in the distance. That whole time, everyone was getting war-ready. I joined the club at the start of all that, a long string of names everyone remembers. Well, almost at the start.
Ryan was the first. His senior debut was when he was just eighteen, in March 1991. That was a good few months before I joined, but as I’d wanted to tell the Gaffer that day at our house, I already knew who he was anyway. We were in our usual seats for his debut, Dad, Guy, Uncle Si and me. Dad said, That’ll be you soon, if you don’t fuck things up. There were plenty of reasons for me to be watching his progress. He’d even played for Salford Boys, like me, before getting signed. Giggsy had been known around Old Trafford since way back in 1987 when he got snaffled from the City youth set-up, where he didn’t have a contract yet, but they assumed he’d stay on with them anyway. (Bet they sacked the guy who made THAT mistake.) ‘New George Best’ tags had been getting glued to every half-decent spotty kid in Red since the sixties, and that label ended up crushing plenty of good souls over the years. But rumour was, this boy was once-in-a-lifetime special. Right from the off, people talked in this strange way. Like he was an angel or something. He had this sureness. One of the coaches told the Evening News years later, Know that rumble just before an earthquake hits? Everyone just sensed what was coming. Ryan was faster than anyone I’d ever seen. That lightning pace. That touch. On someone else’s team, a boy like that could ruin you. On your side, he’s an oil well. A gold mine. A retirement home in the Bahamas. And, even after all these years, Alex Ferguson still says the best thing he’s done at United was sign up young Ryan Wilson. (He changed his name later. Loyalty to his mum after his parents split up, apparently. But he’ll always be a Wilson to me.)
It’s mental how things are sometimes. In the early days I thought I could do anything, take on anyone, fear nothing and nobody. Just BEING a United player was being a God. But the first time I saw Ryan Giggs on the training ground, I couldn’t move. I just pure couldn’t believe he was there. That first training session together I hardly stopped looking the whole time, like I was waiting for him to do something, say something, slap me around the chops and tell me I wasn’t making all this up. Me, a United trainee. Him, sharing the same space. The new reality – it didn’t make sense. In the end of session kickabout I was so busy admiring the lining on his boots that I didn’t notice he’d passed me the ball. It rolled out of play and I got fifty press-ups for daydreaming. Not a great start, Wilson, said one of the coaches. I tried to answer but, again, no fuckin dice. I opened my mouth to speak, and nothing. The coach stood over me and put his foot on my back as I was finishing the press-ups. Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine – and then he pressed downwards with his studs.
So Ryan was older than everybody and he was the first to break through, coz he’d basically skipped the reserves and gone straight in with the first team. (Very rare.) He was a sensible lad, even then. Hard-working. Full of flair on the pitch, but not one of these party-all-night-long, dick-never-in-the-pants types. A real role model. Even then you could see he was gonna be around years later, a director of the club or something, you know? But not drawing attention to himself. Sitting among the real fans, in the cheap seats, instead of larging it with the suits, supping champagne and caviar. Anyone with half a brain knew he had no interest in money or women or poncing about in a sarong. Just in the beautiful game, played beautiful. So when one of the coaches called me ‘Little Giggs’ after a Ryanesque dribbling goal I scored once in training, passing five of the other team, taking it round the goalie and then tapping it in, I used it like a badge from then on. Even though I wasn’t that little, and looked nothing like Ryan Giggs. Let’s face it. I was an ugly fucker. You wouldn’t get us confused.
After him, there was a rash of kids like me. It was almost like his breakthrough was the official okay for everyone else to push for the same. Gary Neville debuted in September 1992, against Torpedo Moscow in Europe, and David Beckham got his first appearance in the same month. Nicky Butt was another local kid, the best in those days, all the midfielders said so. Scholesy was a bit behind, not in the first wave of us who won the Cup. He didn’t debut till September 1994, and neither did Phil, the younger of the two Neville sisters. (Everyone called them the Neville sisters, just not to their faces.) Ryan, David, Nicky, Gary and Phil – they were all playing in the academy or the reserves with me. All the key people were around the club, somehow, by the autumn of 1992. On the fringes, yeah, but READY. And where did it come from? This burst? Well, like Mum says, Most clean things are built out of dirt, and though the suits running the league had been too busy chasing Murdoch’s millions to notice it, the Gaffer had been carefully assembling us pawns for a long time. Christ, he’d been letting little David Beckham into the United dressing room since he was eleven, slowly seeping the Cockney out of him, hoping the boy would grow up to be worth the trouble. Then there were the Lee Sharpes of this world. He was a bit older, a smooth type who’d looked like he was gonna be a United great, then almost was, then wasn’t. Cock first, brain second, that lad – which is why he’s ended up doing reality telly and talking about the good old days. But that’s football, right? Some focus on the game, some get laid and go home for an early bath.
Still, football’s a fuckin lottery. Not all of us were lucky. Along with me and Giggs and Scholes and Beckham, there were lots of other kids you’ve never heard of who came through the ranks in the nineties. Michael Appleton (Salford lad, lifelong United fan, played twice for the first XI then got moved on). Ben Thornley (sued the player who injured him. Ended up at Salford City). Later, guys like Alex Notman (last seen playing for Wroxham FC in the Eastern Counties League). Might as well have been called Mickey Mouse or Donald Fuck-a-Duck though, coz you don’t know who any of these guys are, do you? And there were hundreds of others. During my time, whenever a lad got dropped, injured or moved on to a smaller club, I held a breath in my chest. Coz every time the knife sank into someone else, I took one step closer to the first XI. The fact that I was still there meant I was still wanted. Someone was watching me and liked what they saw. Lucky, lucky me.
And do I feel like I’ve been lucky in my life? Well, I’ve been fuckin BLESSED. Wouldn’t you say so? Born with talent like that?
You’re growing up fast, Mikey Wilson!
You turn ten years old, your head all football stickers and football magazines and football posters going up on your walls. You sleep think talk United. Jab at the patience of adults with your ball-by-ball description of how Norman Whiteside scored that curler to win United the 1985 FA Cup final, which you saw on the big telly in Uncle Si’s lounge and WILL NEVER FORGET. You tell anyone who’ll listen that Whiteside’s only a few years older than you really and that YOU’LL be doing that soon. You talk about this for MONTHS. Other kids get tired of you going on, but who cares? Coz if you’re gonna get to play in that Theatre of Dreams then you have to be, like Dad says, Dedicated, focused, and prepared to leave ordinary mortals behind.
So you shed friends like old skin. They’re gone and forgotten. You’re making the sacrifices, readying yourself for tougher battles ahead. You have to want it more than anyone else, Mikey, says Dad. Want that ball. Make like it’s the end of the world, everyone’s starving, and the ball’s the last pig on earth. You prove you’re worth investing in. You listen hard to Dad’s speeches. The best players, he says, sparking up another fag, eyes alight, the immortals – the Bests and Pelés and Maradonas of this world – they’re consumed by the game. They live it, every second. It’s all they see. It’s all they think about. When Dad’s talking it’s like he’s talking to himself. Sometimes he doesn’t even look at you. And most of the time when you say something, he doesn’t answer back. Why not? Sometimes you get your drills wrong, and notice his temper is getting worse.
You’re expanding by the day. You can almost feel your muscles strengthening, tightening, your legs stretching and neck thickening with every passing second. And in games, you see that not everyone acts like you do on a football pitch. The world’s full of kids who don’t mind giving eighty, fifty, thirty per cent. Kids who aren’t consumed: kids who, though their bodies are on the pitch, have minds that are thinking about school, about computer games, about the legs of the girls at the desk in front. But Dad says you’re BLESSED BY THE BIG KIND HANDS OF GOD coz you don’t even SEE the girls’ legs. You only know one way, which is to give everything, all the time, no matter what. In matches, in training, in the playground or the street. Always committed, always consumed. Blinkers on, ready for the next test. This sets you apart. Everyone knows it.
Fast action needs to be taken to rescue Mikey Wilson from an ordinary existence. So when you leave your local primary school, age eleven, you get a place at a secondary miles away with a good sports record and a rubbish everything else record – it was ALWAYS GONNA HAPPEN, but Mum and Dad fight about it at the top of the stairs while you hover at the bottom, clutching the banister, wondering how you’re gonna get into your room. Her saying, You’re taking away his education! Him saying, This IS his education! and You wouldn’t understand! and I hate you! Like Dad is the kid, kicking and screaming till the tantrum pays off. Nobody admits it’s weird. Not even Guy, who’s a pro when it comes to saying stuff you’re not supposed to. He’s just turned sixteen, he’s five whole years older and knows everything about everything, but Dad spends most of his time concentrating on you. Coz he knows that if Guy was gonna be a jackpot on the pools, it’d be obvious by now. He’d already be on his way, and Dad would be halfway to that beach house he talks about like it’s a real thing, in a real place, in the actual real world.
Another year and you’re not a short arse any more. Nice one! You’ve shot up towards the sky, you need a whole new wardrobe (Mum not happy – clothes are pricey), and your feet now creep over the end of the bunk bed you and Guy have always shared, you on the bottom, him on the top, always together. United posters are on all the walls of the bedroom now, every white space covered in goal celebrations and action shots and team photos. All except for the bit by Guy’s pillow where there’s something else. It’s a magazine centrefold of the top half of a naked blonde, close up, ever-so-lightly pressing in her huge breasts with two fingers of each hand, covering just the nipples, looking into the camera and licking her lips as if she’s very, very thirsty.
Something about that picture bothers you.
Over the next few months hair sprouts from under arms and between legs, you start to stink, you grow even taller, you wake up every morning with an aching hard-on and believe you can run past any defender, beat any goalkeeper in the world. School is just a place to play at break, lunchtime, after hours, and a place to plan futures. You’re chasing real life while the other robot kids follow orders and programme themselves for test after test. These come round all the time and everyone’s always pretending the next ones are even more crucial than the last when they can’t be, can they? Not EVERYTHING can be more important than everything else, can it? You ignore your school reports. They say things like Lots of ability, no application and What a shame Michael doesn’t appear to want to learn and An intelligent boy who seems determined to fail.