Godfather Of Champions

“…Freddy Eastwood, formerly the legendary forward of Nottingham Forest, is now an acting head coach. Currently, he’s trying to prove the media’s predictions through practical actions — the first match played by the team Coach Eastwood led has lost. Nottingham Forest has now lost four matches in a row… The whole team is in a panic and it’s rumored that Balotelli wishes to leave and has already officially submitted his transfer request to the club. And as for the rumors regarding George Wood’s retirement, the man in question has yet to step up and clarify—”

Kenny Burns’s Forest Bar had been unusually crowded and busy the moment night fell. Fans of Nottingham Forest who had been nearby always gathered in the bar after a day of hard work to discuss the recent happenings of their favorite team. If the team had achieved good results, the bar would be filled with cheers; everyone would chug pint after pint of beer with their eyebrows raised. Truly, they would leave the bar as they entered — exhilarated beyond belief. On the other hand, if the team had lost, then the bar would be filled with grief. Everyone would be sighing or complaining that their luck was bad, or they would resent some of the players for their sub-par performance during the match. It was either that or they would turn into armchair coaches and lament that the team’s tactics were wrong.

But one thing was sure — whether or not the team lost, the bar would be abuzz with energy.

However, things were different tonight.

It was so quiet that everyone could hear every single sound coming from the television.

The fans’ only reaction to the news being broadcasted on the television was a deep sigh.

What else could they do?

Wood was in a bad condition because he was worried over his mother’s critical condition, were they to curse the man out or something? Eastwood was the legendary forward of the team but he lacked experience as a coach, so the burden should not be his alone to bear. It seemed like the chairman of the club was the only person they could really rag on but they had been ragging on the man for so long that it has since lost its novelty. No matter how harshly they criticized Evan Doughty from here in the bar, there was no way they would be able to have him removed from his position. What else would they achieve other than wasting their saliva?

At the thought of this scenario, no one else was in the mood to talk. There were twenty or so men sitting there in the bar and all they could do was down glass after glass or beer and hope to drown their sorrows.

“Is there really no way for us to save our team?!” A young man stood up as he shouted, unable to bear this oppressive atmosphere any longer.

His friends who were sat beside him tilted their heads up to glance at him, then continued drinking their beer with their heads down. They were probably better off staring at the television screen and zoning out.

This was a question that had been asked repeatedly throughout the four years, and what was the result?

But today, this young man seemed to have come prepared. He stood up and realized that no one was answering him, so he cast his gaze to the other side of the bar. He then held up his glass and pushed aside his friend who was in his way to stumble over.

Twain had been drinking fruit juice at the bar and chatting idly with Kenny Burns. Shania and Teresa were still in America as of today and he did not want to stay in that enormous villa all on his own. All his time was spent in the bar if he was not already in the hospital.

Since he was no longer the head coach for the team, he intentionally kept his distance from John and the rest instead of mixing in their circle. Even if he came to the bar, he would only be there to chat with Kenny. If John or Bill were looking for him, they would come to him alone instead of pulling him to their circle.

Everyone tried their best to avoid one topic in their conversation — the head coach of Nottingham Forest.

But today, there was a young man drunk off his beer who charged towards Twain. He stopped in front of Twain and slammed his glass down heavily. He then turned his head to stare at Twain. “T-tony!”

Twain turned to stare at the unwelcomed guest.

“Come back!” The young man shouted at the top of his lungs. “Come back!”

John stood up hurriedly to restrain the impulsive young man who had had too much to drink. “Joseph, you—”

“Come back to Nottingham Forest, please! The young man was so agitated that his eyes were brimming with tears. “Please come back, and bring us—” Before he could finish his sentence, he stumbled and slipped, falling from the barstool. He had fallen.

Fat John finally made it to Twain’s side at this moment and he helped the young man up. “Joseph talks too much when he’s had too much to drink!” He explained to Twain, then forcefully dragged Joseph back to where he had been sitting.

“He didn’t say ‘Joseph talks a load of crap when he’s had too much to drink’,” Kenny Burns commented from beside him.

Twain did not express any hint of displeasure at this gesture of Burns’. He looked at the John and the young man as they walked away. The pair had returned to the center of where the fans were gathered and it seemed like not a lot of them were chiding Joseph’s impulsive actions. On the contrary, a few of them were sneaking glances at Twain to observe his reaction.

Twain felt that they could not tell anything from his face since there was no expression at all.

※※※

Eastwood did not expect to have to welcome a guest this late into the night. He had his wife, Sabina, bring the kids up to sleep and leave the living room for him to entertain this late-night guest.

“I thought over it for a long time. Although I’ve already retired, I still keep tabs on soccer and on Nottingham Forest. I think that I can maybe help you a little, Freddy,” Twain, who had been sitting across from Eastwood, said as he stared at the man.

Eastwood said as he chuckled bitterly, “You coming back to coach the team is the greatest help you can possibly offer me… Alright, I know this is an unrealistic request. To be honest, I don’t think I suit the role of head coach… You know, head, I actually forgot to give the team the starting roster before their first match. If not for Jimmy reminding me, I might have made a fool out of myself. Thinking back, I really do suck…”

Eastwood seemed a little upset. To mess up this bad in front of his team when he was their head coach had caused him a great deal of grief in the past few days.

Twain chuckled. “That’s no big deal, Freddy. The first time I led a first-string team to a competition, my own player bumped into me so hard that I fainted. The crowd was staring down at me as I left for home. After the competition, I became the laughing stock of the whole of England. Even when I was in the bar drowning my sorrows, someone would bring up the incident to laugh at me. Don’t take something so trivial to heart. The role of a head coach is actually rather simple. Even if you forget to give your team the starting roster, that can become part of your legend as long as you lead them to victory.”

“Here’s the thing, boss. I don’t know how I’m supposed to lead them to victory. You know, when I’m looking down at them playing on the field, the urge to go help them score a goal and win is so strong. But as a head coach, I don’t know what I should do…” Eastwood was extremely upset, a rare sight for the Romani who was extremely optimistic.

“That’s because you lack experience. Also—” Twain suddenly thought of an issue. “There’s no one beside you who’s good enough to help you.” He had been a rookie back then, too, but he had Old Ian and Walker. The two of them had plenty of experience from their time as players and had spent quite some years as the coaches for the team. They then continued to flourish under several head coaches, before Twain sat at the table they had set for him. But things were different in the Nottingham Forest of today. The team was a mess; all the good coaches were leaving one after the other and being poached by other clubs. An outstanding coach like Kerslake was only fired because his results were unsatisfactory and Evan did not even let him stay on the team.

Although Eastwood had also been coaching for four years, but the difference between a manager and a coach in England was just too big.

Eastwood did not want to talk about himself any longer. He suddenly asked, “You coming to visit me this late at night tells me one thing, boss.”

“And what is that?”

“You can’t let go of Nottingham Forest.”

Twain glanced at Eastwood. “Of course I can’t, I’m a hardcore Nottingham Forest fan. I buy tickets every season.”

“Come back if you can’t let go,” Eastwood stared into Twain’s eyes as he spoke.

“I’ve retired, Freddy—”

“No one said that retirees can’t come back.”

“I have to spend time with my daughter—”

“Aren’t you in England now? And isn’t your daughter in America right now?”

Twain shook his head. “Let’s not talk about this anymore. If there’s something you don’t understand when you’re coaching, you can come to me for help and I will tell you everything I have learned from my experience—”

But it seemed like Eastwood was set on going against Twain today. He threw him another hard-to-answer question, “George is the heart of this team. If his condition never gets better, then the team’s results will never stabilize. Do you have any solutions for this, boss?”

Twain was at a loss for words. He knew why Wood was in a bad condition, but this was an issue that he could not solve. As long as Sophia was still ill, Wood would still be in a bad condition.

This was not something he could solve with tactics. It was not even something a head coach could resolve.

Twain would think about what Wood had said to him in the yard of the hospital every time someone brought up the latter. “Come back if you don’t want me to retire.”

Were the two of them in cahoots? Why was it that either of them persuaded Twain to go back every time they met him?

※※※

Actually, not many people came up to him to tell him this when he had still been the head coach of England. But now that he had retired and was lazing about in his house, this was no longer the case. He could say he was retired as many times as he wanted but other people might not be this understanding.

For example, he received a call from Tang Jing the next day, a call that was like lightning on a clear day.

The China Football Association had reached out to him through Tang Jing and were actually asking for him to coach the Chinese national team.

“I’m just the messenger, Mr Twain.”

“You can reject them directly and say you couldn’t reach me,” Twain did not want to have anything to do with the China Football Association since their reputation was a little…

“I’m also Chinese, after all, and I honestly think it’d be rather interesting if you head over to coach the Chinese team—” It was obvious that Tang Jing was laughing on the other side of the line.

“I would not. I don’t want to mess up my reputation this late in my life,” Twain rejected very curtly. Tang Jing might find this interesting as an outsider, but Twain was directly involved in this issue and he did not find this the least bit amusing.

Tang Jing was, as she said, just a messenger. She did not try to persuade Twain to change his mind after he rejected her and cheerfully promised to relay the message to the association. As for the reason, it was because Twain had not had enough rest yet and did not want to leave retirement to teach.

The thing was, the Chinese media found out through Tang Jing that the China Football Association had reached out to Twain to have him coach the national team and had rather mercilessly mocked the association for punching above their weight. They had basically called the association shameless and immoral, just not in those exact words, but what they had said more or less meant the same thing. Unfortunately, the China Football Association was probably the only government organization they could curse out as much as they wanted without having to bear any responsibility for their words. Although the FIFA had made it a rule for the football association in every country to be non-governmental organization, China was a special case and its football association was a government organization.

The issue of the China Football Association seeking Twain out to coach their team was over on Twain’s end, but he did not expect to have caused such a stir over in China. The people there were focused on whether the association should have looked for Twain to coach and whether Twain should be coaching in China, et cetera. Whether it was mass media or online forums, the discussions were unceasing and heated. Some people thought that they should be inviting top-grade coaches like Twain to coach the team or China’s football would never improve, while others thought that the association should not be inviting Twain over with that reputation of theirs since the man could run the risk of damaging his reputation if he really did end up coaching the team. There were also people saying that the association had lost its mind, thinking they could control Tony Twain even if they did manage to get him on board. The association delegating their authority to Twain was completely out of the question, unless their men’s national team ended up clinching the World Cup……But this would just be an endless loop. Long story short, it was a meaningless and futile effort.

Actually, it was Tang Jing who leaked the news intentionally in hopes of disgracing the association yet again. China’s football had not made any progress over the years despite the numerous changes in leadership since every new leader was more concerned with keeping their post than they were with football as a sport. It was inevitable that China’s football had come to a standstill — regressing, even. Tang Jing had long since left the media industry and left to start a family in England where she could focus on her husband and children, but any mention of China’s football would make her blood boil in an instant. She was not a bigwig and her words did not carry much weight, so there was little she could do to vent her anger aside from such methods.

※※※

Twain had little concern for the chaos he caused in China with his rejection of the association’s offer. His mind was on Nottingham Forest.

Eastwood had mentioned that the greatest help Twain could possibly offer was to return to coach the team with the former returning to his role as a trainer, but this was obviously not possible, so Twain offered his help in another way. He analysed the problems that Nottingham Forest was encountering together with Eastwood so they could try to find a solution.

Twain told Eastwood that he should just bite the bullet and remove Wood and Balotelli from the starting lineup if both of them were unreliable, swapping them out for members from the youth team or second-string members. It was obvious that these players had much more fighting spirit than the first-string players. Nottingham Forest’s problem now lay not in their tactics — or, at the very least, this was not the biggest issue — but in their fighting spirit and mental state.

He was completely invested in helping Eastwood that he did not notice the look the latter threw at him. There was also something else he did not think about, which was whether or not it was appropriate for a retiree like him to be so heavily involved in someone else’s job. All he hoped for was for Nottingham Forest to perform better so a soccer fan like him would not be this worried.

After Eastwood did as Twain said and switched out half of the first-string members from the lineup, he managed to stop the downward spiral in the second match. During this away match, they relied on a tenacious defence and overall attack through the match and tied at no goals with the powerful Manchester United. Although it was a messy match with no goals to speak of, they ultimately managed to stop losing. On top of that, it was the mighty Manchester United they were going against, which made the result all the more precious. As such, much of the media was shocked at the results when it was released. Before the match, they had predicted that Nottingham Forest would be humiliated by Manchester United in Old Trafford, just like Liverpool.

Neither Wood nor Balotelli were in the starting lineup for that match and the former had only been substituted in during the last ten minutes. This was fodder for the media to bring up old debts. They dug up past incidents were Wood and Eastwood had been at odds with each other to spark some discourse. In their analyses, they said that Eastwood had been aggressively suppressing Wood every since he stepped up. On top of the previous rumors of Wood’s retirement, it seemed like what used to rumors would very soon become fact…

Of course, all of this was just mindless drivel. Eastwood was not the kind to mix his personal affairs with business. Besides, whatever tension had been between the two of them no longer existed, and it was Twain’s idea to remove Wood from the starting lineup. In fact, Twain did not even want to let Wood step out on the field for even a minute. He wanted to let the man cool down completely, but it was Eastwood who felt that it was better for Wood to go out there so he could maintain his state.

But the media was really running their mouth this time…

The team returned from Manchester United to Nottingham after preventing a fourth consecutive loss, their hearts heavy with doubt. Just then, Wood had been moving with the team when he received a call from the hospital.

His mother was in critical condition.