If it is possible to feel an anticlimax in your bones, i am. If it is not possible of course, then i may have some odd medical condition. I hope the former is true, because i don't have the nerves to face the latter right now.
I'm still caring too much about what happens to my team. Once again finding ourselves (ourselves??? - too much you see) cemented into the playoff positions with little expectation of advancement. My team will lose, i have no doubt of that. Most of me thinks that my team losing would be the best thing to happen for my own well being. I don't need this to be strung out for another day, another two games because then i'm still over involving myself. But that part of me that i have mentioned here before, the part of my that (belives it actually) employs Teo the poverty stricken Patalonian bell ringer desperately wants the lads to achieve something today.
I find myselt wrestling with that part of me. The scene inside my head is one i can now only describe as "Matrix-like", except with much lower stakes and no special effects. It's not like the future survival of the human race relys on it's outcome. It would be nice if it did, then maybe my players would get off their lazy rear ends and do something about it - but then, like those still plugged into the Matrix, they don't know about the outside world, about the supposed reality that is my life.
I know that the Patalonians are not real, i know Teo is a construct of my overactive imagination that has become unfortunately too engrossed in what happens in this game. I also know that caring too much about what happens between what is, when you get down to it, little more than huge amounts of 1s and 0s, has a detrimental effect on your real life relationships. I know this because this weekend i logged into managerleague three times even though i knew full well that there was:
- no new match reports to read
- no training happening
- no transfers i was involved in happening
Why did i do this? Because i had nothing better to do? On the off chance something may have happened that i could take advantage of? To make sure that my players were ok? To make sure that Eric Hawksworth's fledgling relationship with his psychologist Paul/Paolo (who may actually be the same person, i need to keep an eye on this - are they ever in the same place?) is not impacting on the rest he needed to get before the final league game? To sit in my lonely office, with its view across the dusty plains and from where, on a clear day you can see the far off snow capped mountains, drinking tequila from the bottle and having a chat with the worm (who by the way, told me that whilst he doesn't mind the taste of Tequila, his personal preference is for Sambuca, and occasionally the odd Strawberry Daquiri, but these days he doesn't get out too much) because i live a lonely manager's existence and the club is everything to me?
The real problem is that I have no idea why i logged in, i just did. It took me over, and became something more than a thing i look at when i am already at a computer. It became something i would actively take time out of my weekend to look in on, even though i know there is no reason to do so! If you extrapolate this to its logical extreme, I will become that lonely manager, spending all his time in his office (the computer?) going over and over information and reports etc that he has already read, looking for a clue or two that could come in useful. I will lose touch with my actual human to human relationships and live entirely in the fantasy would that i part construction part Massive Multiplayer Online Game. That is far too dangerous to comprehend - i like the relationships i have in the utside world. I like the climate here (mostly), i like reality a great deal.
But still there is part of me, a significant part now, growing daily, that want's this to happen, want's me to upsticks and move to Patalonia, knowing full well you can't manage a club like Banditos from abroad. That part of me sits there, looking out over the shanty town beyond the fabulously polished marble of the North Gateway, past the small boy ringing that damn bell, thinking to himself that, maybe, just maybe, this time they can do it, Banditos can get into Division 3. That part of me probably has a part of him that imagins he is sitting in an office in London, working at a computer desk. Ordinarily, that small part of him would confuse him into losing his grip on his reality and giving me back mine, but he can't concentrate on it because that damn bell is still ringing. Through my booze soaked eyes i can see that lad Teo, still in his torn replica shirt, yanking that rope for all he's worth. He's certainly got stamina as he's been at it all bloody weekend! It's doing my head in and i lurch out of my seat, sweeping the tequila bottle and my old freind the worm from my path whith a crash and a small squeaky wormlike protest, wrench open the window and fling the first thing that come to hand (a football signed by the Patalonian National team) at the little irritating monster, whilst i yell every drunken obscenity my mind will allow me to think of.
The ball loops right towards Teo, and i suddenly realise that drunkenly throwing objects at small boys is a) a really good way to lose your job, and b) a really good way to get arrested. But as i watch, the shoeless Teo takes the ball on his chest, then his knee, then lashes it right back at my window, shattering the glass and knocking The Golden Plaque to the floor. As the little lad runs off towards home, as fast as he can, afraid of what he has just done, I stand agog at the glassless frame. If he did that on purpose, he may just be what we've been waiting for...I'll have to get him into training. Maybe i can buy him off his parents...
Hold on here for a second. When exactly did "he" become "I..."
I really, really need to lose today...
