His name was Fabrice, Fabrice Zua, and according to his passport he was only nineteen years old. However, that is not a die-hard fact, as we all know how things really are with these blokes from Cameroon, Ghana, or the Ivory Coast. Although in this case, Francis Collins, who tipped me off about the brilliant find and got his five percent cut on the deal, swore by all the gods above and even on the health of his poor elderly mother, that the bloke was in fact really and truly only nineteen.
"Bloody hell, Robbie, are you blind?!" Old Man Harris screamed as he jumped up and ran far beyond the boundaries of the technical zone. "Can't you see him for Christ’s sake?! The bloke is standing there like a lemon!!! Pass him the sodding ball, you imbecile!!!"
Davey Roberts was our main CDM and his main task was tearing the legs off of their attacking midfielders, but sometimes he also managed to make a mint pass. And Davey went too far and the pass was so perfect that even Toni Kroos would probably have envied it. Then the Cameroonian burst into the zone.
It was a pleasure watching their left fieldsman, a red-haired Scotsman, with a ponytail and beard like Alexi Lalas, trying to catch up with our Cameroonian. What a sight! The bloke flew around like a meteor. He took control of the ball and went to the right. Their midfielder tried to catch him the player in the centre left shifted their focus too, you could see their line-up bursting at the seams, and Fabrice did everything right. He didn't overdo moving around the ball and didn't give it away ahead of time, but then passed it a little diagonally, as if on a silver platter. And Alan Parker, our main striker, arrived just in time. Then it was just a matter of technique. A kick – and goal!
I automatically checked the stopwatch. It was the forty-second minute and the score was one zero. Way to go! That’s our team!
"Alex, bloody hell! Where did you find this bloody cannibal?" Johnny Martin, the assistant coach almost strangled me with his huge paws.
"Come on blokes!!! Don't let up!!! Get it together!!!" Old Harris's mug didn't move a muscle, but he looked rather pleased.
"Come on! Let's go! Come on!!!"
There was almost no time left until the break.
We were escorted to the locker room like heroes. The «Den» roared like we were winning against the Spurs or Chelsea, not some bloody Reading. However it was still nice.
We went out for the second half in a good mood and even the first-half thrashing of young Fleming by old man Harris for his error didn't serve to dampen anyone's spirits.
"No one likes us!"
"No one likes us!"
"No one likes us! We don't care!" roared the stands.
"Come on, lads!!! Old Harris was clapping his hands like he was cracking nuts. "Be careful with the defence! Pass the ball faster! And put them under more pressure! Pressure!! Pressure!!!"
You couldn't say that the boys from Reading were playing that bad today. They honestly tried to turn the game around and from the very beginning of the second half they drove forward like madmen, but in the end that's what killed them.
In the first counterattack, young Fleming found Parker's pass and their defender had no choice but to foul and for him it was already his second yellow card. After that, they continued to attempt to pull something off but their efforts were no longer serious.
The Cameroonian was still running around like a bloody cheetah, and even the fact that the manager of the Reading team replaced the Scot, who was completely exhausted, for a fresh defender, it didn't help them much.
In the seventy-third minute, our «Novichok» moved to the centre and suddenly shot from the left. If the rascal Collins had seen the bloke kick with his left, even though all the documents said that he was right-footed, he would have asked not for five but probably for ten percent. Their goalkeeper jumped into the corner as if he was remembering his time playing for the Gunners but even that didn't save him.
Then there was also a pass from the corner to our centre-back Evans who headed it into the crossbar. After that in added time, our prize player again ran along the edge and shot one off right at Parker's head. The result was a goal and a total of three to zero which was now on the scoreboard.
"Man-eating cannibal! Cameroonian cannibal!" Yes, you can't deny that our fans have a sense of humour. That was probably the most innocuous and least racist thing that they had shouted all evening.
The bloke was all right, job well done. He simply smiled and walked up to the stand behind the goal and thanked everyone! Many newcomers have to be told that thanking the fans is also part of the game. He thanked them and they clapped. It was all very grown-up.
I didn't go into the locker room. It's not the job of a scout or an agent to shout out victory songs with the blokes and appear in collective photos. However listening to what journalists are going to say in the mixed-zone and then at the press-conference are things that are always important for an agent to know so that they know in advance what the newspapers will write about in the morning. This is especially important when your ward played his first match for a new club.
"Hey, Alex!" the Daily Mail sports columnist Sean O’Grady was the first to intercept me in the mixed-zone, "Tell me about this new bloke!"
"Hey, Sean."
"Hi, there."
"So, what do you want to know?"
"Me?" he laughed. "Don't spin things around! What do you want me to write about him?"
Oh, these journalists. They understand everything. I smiled.
"Write that he's nineteen years old. That he is very fond of children and his mother. That he has a brother in Montpellier, and then of course add that he's the new Gareth Bale."
"A little dark for a Welshman. No? Where did you get him from?"
"He was in Ajax, on the second team. However it’s true, he spent last year on loan in Belgium, in Mouscron."
"Does he even speak English?"
"Well, he can say a few words. But for a full-fledged interview, it would be better to get a French translator."
"He’s as far away from a full-fledged interview, as you are from the Premier League."
These journalists are really able to besiege one of course, nothing to say there. They know their own worth.
"Okay Sean," I shook his hand, "if you write a few decent lines about my ward you know what's coming from me."
"Noted!" He said and sauntered into the press-conference room.
During the press-conference itself, as usual the questions were about tactics, plans for the end of the season, refereeing, and so on. Only one of the reporters, a simple-looking bloke from some small newspaper, finally asked the old man what he thought about the new winger.
"It's too early to draw conclusions. He wasn't bad today. We'll be watching him during the next few games," which was all you could expect from old man Harris.
I did not get home right away that night. In the parking lot, as I sat down to warm up my old Range Rover, Johnny Martin came up to the car.
"Hey, Alex! Want to go missing for a little while?"
"Why aren't you with our people?" I was surprised, because usually Johnny would not miss an occasion to celebrate our success with the blokes, especially since this season we didn’t have enough special successes, only once or twice.
"Balls to them!" Johnny laughed. "We have a cup match this Tuesday, you know. That means that the victory will be celebrated in old non-alcoholic beer style. I'm a little old for that, you know. I want to get pissed."
"I am not