The Scout or Welcome to South Bermondsey. Алексей Авдохин

our people I met in Bramall Lane.

      "He’s a little weak so far. How are our blokes doing?"

      "There's a warm-up session in twenty minutes and the mood after Reading is combative."

      "Well, may God grant such a mood as that…"

      Mood is very important in football but unfortunately, it is not everything. We started quite briskly, and in the first half-hour we could have opened the scoring twice but in one case the ball struck the crossbar slightly and then went out of bounds and in the second the United goalkeeper stopped the ball from going into a corner with an incredible jump. They had no mercy on us and by the time the break came we were already losing nil-two.

      I would be better not to tell you what happened in the locker room, but everyone got it, including my Cameroonian, although I think he did his best. However old man Harris needed blood and fresh meat and finally, he told everyone to get out, and promised that if we lost we would all be walking home.

      Apparently it worked as during the second half, the blokes went all out and my ward was also in top form. First during one of his attacks he almost reached the point where he could have struck from the left flank and if it had not been for their defender, who knocked the ball away at the last moment, we would have scored. Then, from one of the corners, Fleming spun the ball right into Iron Mikey's bald head, and Iron Mikey had no choice but to score. It was his first goal of the season and in fact I don't remember him scoring last season either, but Mikey is Mikey and he didn't even change the expression on his mug, as if everything was how it was supposed to be. He just tore the ball away from their defenders and took it to centre pitch.

      After that, the score stayed the same until the last minutes. United was already doing everything they could to run out the clock, old man Harris was raging on the sidelines and the referee kept checking his stopwatch, trying to decide whether to go straight to the judge room or give us a couple more minutes of stoppage time. Their fans began to sing their sad song, which they should have considered a victory song, while ours just yelled, spat at security and tossed all sorts of rubbish onto the pitch. In general, everything was going as usual, another lost cup match on the road, but then all of a sudden my cannibal did something unexpected.

      Who knows whether it was something he picked up in Belgium, or something they teach them at the Ajax school, but he suddenly abandoned his flank and went on the attack with our central defender, the big Icelander Sigurdsson, who had already been playing second striker for the last five minutes.

      You had to see it. At that moment the game was reduced to the good old "kick the ball forward and you’ll see, something good will come out of it". In fact I don't even remember which of the blokes put the ball into the penalty box. Sigurdsson was struggling, the ball somehow flew up sideways out of the havoc, where Parker also missed it, so that the ball now flew up somewhere at a level just above the waist. And then Fabrice performed a scissor kick, I don't know how he did it in the fight against their defender, but the fact remains. Our Cameroonian folded, executed the scissor kick and the ball bounced off the turf and went straight into the goal! That was it, so much for "a pinch of snuff", or "a Night Out in Sheffield".

      Most of all, however, I felt sorry for the judge. The wanker was probably already getting ready to go to the pub with his co-conspirators on the sidelines, and then bang! Added time, and then there might be a penalty. The United fans had forgotten all about their "packet of Woodbines" and were roaring and whistling and hooting, but they were nowhere near as loud as our idiots. Our people staged a real orgy in the guest sector. How little the blokes needed to be completely happy!

      "Parker! You fucking bastard!" Harris couldn't contain his excitement, either. "How could you not hit the ball, you bitch? What the fuck is this?! After every training session I'll have you hitting rugby balls for half an hour! Do you understand me, you fucking Pinocchio?"

      "I love you too, Coach!" he said, proving what a wanker he was.

      "Get it together! Focus!" The old man didn't let them rest on their laurels. "Be careful with the defence! Make them shit themselves and then squeeze the faggots!"

      And the blokes did it! We did it in extra time, so the referee and his linesmen would be happy as they didn't have to watch over a penalty shootout. They carried it off so well that it was one for the road!

      First, our left winger, Varga, made such a cross that he could at least now be sent to the Hungarian national team. Parker pushed past their defender and kicked the ball to Kenneth, who ran up, and kicked the ball so hard that it almost tore through the net of the goal. Then when the entire United team moved forward, our team ran away in a three-in-two counterattack. After that it was just a matter of technique. Fabrice, Adam Varga and Parker played the game perfectly, and my team-mates just rolled the ball into an empty net.

      Four-two. Turn out the lights, game over. Now it would be possible to get plastered on joy alone. I even wished I hadn't been driving, but I didn't want to leave my car in Sheffield.

      How the boys got home, I'm afraid to imagine that. Our next game was on Sunday, so Harris let the blokes celebrate. Anyway, Johnny Martin told me later that he didn't remember much, and to get a machine like Johnny plastered, you'd have to try hard.

* * *

      After the match, Fabrice appeared in all of the newspapers. The blokes from an online-publication did an interview with him in which he, without much hesitation, compared himself to Choupo-Moting. However in general, it all turned out quite well. For only two shitty matches, the cost of my kid on a well-known German portal jumped up one and a half times.

      On Saturday, at the pre-match press-conference, it was only the lazy who didn't ask about my Cameroonian. "Where did you get him?" Bitches, don't they know how to use the Internet? And, "Are you sure he's nineteen?" Fucking racists, and, "Have you thought about moving him to a position with the attackers?" What fools they are.

      Old Harris, of course, was as impenetrable as a fifth-grader in class, and I think that in his heart he was laughing at everyone. I must say that with journalists it is always better to behave as you would with small children. Suddenly they could all be offended again and start writing all sorts of crap. Although exhausting, this game of cat-and mouse, of course, is also great. So Harris probably got tired at the end and when some creep from a local paper asked him about rumours surrounding his resignation, he couldn't stand it any longer.

      "I'm not holding on to my seat! If the management makes such a decision, I will pack my bags and then worry about the club as a fan."

      That's exactly what he shouldn't have said. However it was clear that the fans liked that. Harris is his own man, even though he didn't play for us, and he comes from-somewhere up north, but to say what he said is to pit yourself against the Big Boss. To say it's up to him, and that you’re deeply committed to the club. Well, it was a setup of course. Something like that is not forgiven.

      It then started on all the social networks. "They're pushing out our coach!" "The money bags have completely lost their minds!" "To the club's management, this is just business!" "Honour the colours" and all kinds of stuff like that. In the evening, as Johnny later told me, old Harris was called "into the pit."

      They probably did a good job of dressing him down because in the morning at the base he was like a wet towel and the overall mood of Rovers, which had been fiery, flew all to hell. In the pre-match warm-up, the blokes were running around like sleepy fish, looking at each other in disbelief and glancing at old Harris, who kept his mouth shut.

      Our captain finally couldn't stand it any longer.

      "Coach, I'm sorry to bother you but-we need to wind up the blokes."

      "So wind them up!" Harris exploded. "You fucking idiot! Are you trying to teach me now? Come on, move your arses! All of you! What the fuck are you doing? Do I have to go round and round in circles for you?!"

      That was better and it worked. The blokes started running around and I could even see smiles appearing on their mugs.

      "Roberts! Why the hell are you grinning? That's what I got from Harris. "Where is your place?! On a bench or something?! Who the hell are you here?! A Scout?! So fuck off and watch these fuckers from Blackburn! What the hell are you doing here?"

      Johnny patted