The Picture I Wanted Most
Regrettably, the game ended in a Detroit Pistons victory. Jordan scored a staggering forty-eight, and it still wasn't enough to break that sticky, clutching basketball Detroit played so well.
So what. I was happy enough just to have watched him in person.
We headed for a nearby restaurant to eat. Pizza, tonight. The order was in, and I had just settled back in my chair with a lighter heart when Baker spoke.
"Mr. Park, mind if I ask you one thing?"
The conversation that had broken off earlier was still eating at him.
"British fans have a reputation for being difficult. Hand their club to Asian capital? They won't agree to that gladly."
"I'm not hoping for gladly."
"...Then?"
"We put the work in. More than enough of it. Until it spills over."
Baker waited for the rest. We'd already agreed to work together, and perhaps that was why.
"Boss?"
He'd even slipped into a new way of addressing me while he waited.
"Fans want exactly one thing. Show them a footballing vision."
If that vision could tell them how serious we were about the game, they would give us their support. I was sure of it.
"I told you before, didn't I? We'll run satellite clubs, so United's young players have somewhere to play."
Brazil. Serie B in Italy. Portugal. Belgium. And on from there.
"Different teams, but they'll share one footballing philosophy."
"What do you mean by that?"
It was an unfamiliar idea in these years. Of course it was. Someday the Red Bull group would make the model famous, buying RB Leipzig and running a satellite club on every continent in Leipzig's service, every one of those clubs sharing Leipzig's football. Settle a system like that, and a player stepping up from a satellite club could fit the tactics the moment he arrived — because every club under the group had been playing toward the same game.
A structure that organized was exactly the sort of thing that made a football fanatic lose his mind. Telling the fans so in words, though, would mean very little. First we had to run a few clubs and prove it with results. It would take time. Quite a lot of it. Capsulemon alone would need three years to be made, which meant that buying Manchester United was, for me, a three-year project.
When I finished explaining, Baker was staring at me in open disbelief.
"When did you... think all of that up?"
"Watching the basketball. More timeouts than I expected."
"So in that little stretch of time, all of this..."
I could hardly tell him it was because I knew the future. Better to let it stand.
"One thing, though, Baker."
"Yes, boss?"
"You can't just sit there being amazed."
"What do you mean..."
"It's my idea. Which means you're the one who has to do all of it."
"What?"
"I'm fourteen. You don't expect me to buy a football club and run it myself, do you?"
Maybe it was the work lining up, one job after another, in his head. Right about then, Baker's face grew complicated.
"Oh — and there's something I haven't told you. The most important part, actually..."
"There's more?"
"Yes. And this one has to be done right away."
Before the ominous feeling — if that was what it was — could finish swallowing him, I went on, perfectly calm.
The next day. Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Baker could not quite make himself believe he was there.
What is happening to me?
It felt like a train already at full speed, and him only just waking up aboard it. But what was he supposed to do? If the destination was El Dorado, the land of gold, then he would hang off the railing if he had to, and go along.
Clutching the note the boss had written him, he flagged a taxi without ceremony.
"The Junior ground, please."
"Football's already finished..."
"I'm not going to watch a match."
The car roared off. This was not a country where you could take your safety for granted. The political feuds never really ended, and the trouble came around again and again.
I hope this stays simple.
How long they drove those rundown streets, he couldn't have said.
"We're here."
Baker paid and went in. They called Junior one of Brazil's great clubs. The fame had not reached the ground. A rusted iron gate, a corridor with a smell, and a guard sprawled asleep at his post — that told you most of what you needed to know.
"Excuse me."
Nothing.
"Excuse me?"
"Mmph."
The look on his face asked what anyone was doing here with the season over.
"I have an appointment with the owner."
"A hundred million dollars. I'll need that, at the least."
The owner said it like a man laying down terms. A hundred million was a quarter of Manchester United's price, and he wanted it to hand over a Brazilian club? Think what you liked. The face across the desk said he would not sell for a cent less.
"You're struggling just to pay the players' wages, aren't you? I hear the debts are considerable."
"That pittance... sell a few players and it's earned back in no time. So what of it."
He wasn't wrong. And yet.
"The players who are actually doing well these days all end up at São Paulo, Corinthians, Palmeiras, don't they? And you keep spending the club's money like it's your own pocket change..."
"You come here to threaten me?"
"Threaten you? I'm trying to negotiate properly, on the basis of the facts."
"This is why I don't mix with you damned Americans!"
"Then why did you agree to meet me?"
The owner said nothing.
"There must be a reason you sat down with an American you want nothing to do with."
Still nothing.
"An investigation's about to open. You're looking to cash out and walk away clean. Am I wrong?"
The owner's face tightened. How far had this man already dug? That was the look.
"Shall we talk like people with nothing left to hide?"
A steal. An absolute steal.
Baker left the owner's office in excellent spirits, and went next to Junior's administrative staff.
"This player. He's in the youth team here, correct?"
"What?"
"I'd like his address."
"Who are you?"
For an answer, Baker set down the contract bearing the owner's signature.
"I—I'm sorry. I didn't recognize you."
The clerk scrambled through the files and wrote the address down. Perhaps he wanted to undo the slight. He even sketched a little map by hand. Baker looked at the paper.
"First time here. Is it far?"
"Ah. It's... not far. But..."
Baker waited.
"It's a bit dangerous. A favela. If you can, you'd be better off taking a private bodyguard..."
Dangerous enough to need a bodyguard? He had his doubts, but he took the advice. The boss had given him plenty of money. There was no sense showing off.
The place he reached was worse than he had pictured. People lay sprawled in the street as if drink or drugs had put them down, and children wove around the bodies, kicking a ball.
Well. Look closer, and it was a shame to call it a ball — a lump of leather. They kicked it barefoot anyway, and burst out laughing, delighted.
Good thing I brought the bodyguard. That could have gone badly.
"You'll have to walk from here."
The number was written plainly enough. He had wondered why anyone bothered with a map, and then he saw. Damn it. Most of the buildings were illegal, and it showed. Forget nameplates. You couldn't even read the numbers.
Not one thing here works the way it should.
So he knocked on doors, because there was nothing else to do. How many houses he went in and out of, he lost count.
"Waaaa!"
Children, shouting, from the end of the alley. He turned his head, and a buzz-cut boy was already off, dribbling down the narrow lane. Older boys, bigger than he was, stuck to him, and still, with nothing but his feet, the child skinned two defenders and then a third as if the whole thing were a joke. He wasn't finished. A flick sent the ball up over a head; his feet pattered, and in a blink he was on the other boy's back, killing the ball dead with his trailing foot. The defender spun in surprise. By then the ball had already gone through his legs.
"Waaaaah!"
So that was the cheering. All of it for the little boy. And then a possibility arrived.
They said he was youth team. At a big club.
Baker broke into a run toward him. A grown man charging over, the boy startled and made to flee.
"You're Ronaldo, aren't you?"
"...Yes?"
"Ronaldo, of Junior. It is you."
Meanwhile, in Chicago.
I was running through a park. Maybe it was having just watched a game played by men at the far end of what a body could do. For no good reason, I wanted to move.
Well. My last life had been spent glued to a desk. A little longing for the physical was probably only fair.
Fortunately, the DNA I'd inherited didn't seem bad. Ten minutes without a rest, and my breathing still felt steady.
Faster?
I gave it another five.
"Hoo. Hooo."
I dropped onto a bench and got my breath back. No music. Just running. A little dull, admittedly, but the feeling was clean, and I liked it.
While I was at it, should I put a real body together? Yes. A second life. This time I could live a little differently, and that wouldn't be so bad. Heh.
I let the thoughts wander while my breathing settled.
Anyway. Was Baker managing all right?
What I'd left in his hands came down to two things. Acquire Junior. And take real care of one player in the youth team.
Give a boy raised in hard circumstances a new house, for instance, right beside the ground. Have the club pay a monthly stipend, so the family could live with a little room to breathe. Build him a life in which all he had to think about was football.
Why go that far?
The answer was simple. Because the boy had the greatest talent in the history of the game.
On raw gift alone he would succeed... but perhaps it was that unhappy childhood. A dissolute private life would clip his wings, and the prime would be cruelly short. A genius with bad luck.
What if someone kept watch over him?
What if he lasted, the way Messi would, or Cristiano Ronaldo? And more than that — the man who would drift through Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, AC Milan, and everywhere else. What if he settled at Manchester United from the very start, a one-club man, and played with a steady brilliance?
Of every picture the United purchase might give me, that's the one I most want to see.
Just imagining it made me happy.
Ronaldo Gaúcho. The name we knew him by was Jinu Gaúcho. The moment I pictured him running in Manchester United's number ten, it started again.
Thump. Thump.
The heart that had only just gone quiet broke into a run all over again.