Everyone thought that was funny.
Easy does it, I thought. Best not be too direct about this. They might be chary of dropping him in it.
‘Look, I won’t ask what he got up to when he was here. It’s none of my business. But we’re worried something might have happened to the guy. That maybe he’s done himself in. Gone on a bender. Lost more than a weekend, you might say. So when was the last time you saw him?’
‘Couple of weeks before Christmas.’
‘It’s no big secret what he did when he came here to Sevran-Beaudottes, man,’ said the leader. ‘He used to buy his weed and blow from us.’
‘I never figured him as the type to put stuff up his nose,’ I said.
‘The blow was for his ladies. You know, to get them in the mood for love, right? All he did was smoke a little bit of weed and hang out. He liked to talk politics. Like maybe he wanted to be one himself one day. He wanted to hear what we had to say about all kinds of shit. He didn’t just want to talk the talk, he wanted to walk the walk, too. I guess you could say he liked to pretend he was down with us. Which was cool because he was generous. Brought us clothes and trainers from fashion shoots he’d been on. Cash, too. Jérôme gave us money for all kinds of shit. He might have suggested that we use it to buy sports kit and shit like that but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, who would come here to play us who wasn’t soft in the head?’
‘So what did you spend it on? The cash he gave you?’
‘Food and drink. More weed. More blow. And more than that, we couldn’t possibly say. Now and again we used to arrange a big party and he’d come around and have a good time. One time he bought us all dinner at the local rotisserie. I really think he thought he could make a difference.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘Nah. Take more than a footballer with a conscience to fix things round here.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Hey, how about some free tickets?’ said the gang leader.
I smiled. ‘I was wondering when you’d remember to ask.’ I put five tickets on the table. ‘Those are for the Champions League match against Chelsea on the seventeenth.’
‘No way.’
I took out a couple of fifties and tossed them on the table.
‘And get some dinner on me, right?’
I walked back the way I’d come. Only this time the kid with the smart football was playing keepy-uppy. And I stopped to watch him.
I’d seen some great freestylers in my time. There’s an English guy called Dan Magness who’s probably the best in the world and has taught the likes of Messi and Ronaldo a thing or two. He’s known as the Keepy-Uppy King. But of course just because you can keep the ball in the air doesn’t make you a great footballer. There’s a big difference between a player and a performer. Being part of a team means letting someone else have a turn with the ball. I was at one club where the youth side had hired a good freestyler and he always took one touch too many. But this kid was good. In fact he was outstanding. And when you see someone as good as this kid was, it’s like watching an art.
The trick to good keepy-uppy is to avoid the toes and drop the ball on the laces. It’s the way I was taught to do it. That and keeping the ball close to your body. But that’s just the start. I love playing keepy-uppy myself because it’s a hell of a workout. When I was younger and fitter and playing twice a week my best was about ten minutes but I think Dan Magness once did twenty-six hours using just his feet, legs, shoulders and head, which is incredible. He’s good but he wasn’t a patch on this kid. How do I know that? I don’t for sure. But I’m almost certain that Magness hasn’t perfected the art of keeping the ball up in the air — I swear this is true — with his eyes closed. Or sprinting while juggling the ball on his knees and head. It seemed that there wasn’t anything this kid couldn’t do with a ball. It was like watching someone toy with gravity and make a monkey out of it.
What was more he did it all with such an economy of movement that he made it look really easy, which is the first principle of sporting excellence. Make it look simple.
‘How old are you, kid?’
He stopped the ball under his foot and put his hands in the pockets of his tracksuit trousers. ‘Fifteen.’
‘Does the smart ball make it any easier?’
‘No,’ said the kid. ‘The battery runs out after about two thousand kicks. But that’s better than nothing when you’ve got no one to play with. My mum bought me it, for Christmas.’
‘What about those guys in the club?’ I asked. ‘Can’t you get a kick about with them?’
He laughed and then looked away for a moment. He was about six feet tall, with dark eyes and a long face; he was handsome in an adolescent way, but none of that interested me so much as the fact that there was a black yarmulke pinned to the back of his black-haired head, which was how I hadn’t noticed it before. The kid was Jewish.
‘The sports club isn’t for anyone interested in football,’ he said. ‘And anyway, my mum told me to keep away from those guys. They’re dangerous. That’s why I told you to be careful, man. Someone was shot around here just a few weeks ago.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Not that they would ever play with me.’
‘Why not?’
The kid shrugged.
‘Because they’re Muslims and I’m a Jew. From the Lebanon. Jews aren’t very popular around here.’
‘I see. Are you in any kind of team at all?’
‘I was back home. But not since we got here to Paris.’
‘Do you want to be?’
‘More than anything.’ With his toe he flicked the ball in the air the way someone else might have shrugged or rubbed his own chin. ‘I just took up freestyling to fill in a bit, and work on my skills, until I could find someone to play with. But that’s not so easy around here, like I say. Since the Israelis started bombing Gaza it’s not so easy being a Jew in Paris.’
‘From what I’ve read, son, it was never easy being a Jew in Paris.’
‘Really?’
‘Do you ever read L’Equipe?’
‘All the time.’
‘The people who started that paper, back in the 1890s, were anti-Semitic. There was this Jew, a military officer called Captain Dreyfus who was wrongly accused of being a spy and sent to prison on Devil’s Island. Back in the day there was another sports newspaper that was for Dreyfus. But L’Equipe was formed by a bunch of businessmen and anti-Semites who thought Dreyfus was guilty. Even though he’d been fitted up for it.’
‘How do you know about it?’
‘Let’s just say that reading about miscarriages of justice used to be a special interest of mine.’
‘Shit. I’ll never read it again.’
‘No need. It isn’t like that now. It’s just football, not politics. I don’t think anyone even remembers poor old Dreyfus these days.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Tell me, how long have you been doing freestyle?’
‘About six months.’
‘Six months? Jesus.’
There was a box of matches in the pocket of Dumas’s Belstaff jacket. I tossed it to him. ‘See what you can do with those.’
The kid caught the box of matches and frowned.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Play with the box of matches instead of the ball.’
‘Oh.’
The weight shifts around inside a box of matches which makes it more difficult to juggle than a tennis ball or an orange which would have been the usual way to distinguish someone who was good from someone who was really talented.
He managed several minutes until I told him to stop. I was already thinking about giving Pierre Hélan — an old mate of mine who worked at the French Football Federation’s national academy at Clairefontaine — a call. Because despite all the bollocks in football — the diving, the mind games, the stupid money — I realised that there was a big part of me that still believed in the romance of the game. Surely every manager thinks that one day he’s going to do a Bob Bishop and discover the next George Best. Why not me? I asked myself, especially now that some of the spark had gone out of my own managerial career. I think I’ve found you a genius, Bishop had telegrammed Manchester United’s manager, Matt Busby. I figured my eye was no less sharp for talent than anyone’s.