The Warsaw Pact

[tenthreeleader]

Sunsets aren’t really sunsets unless you watch them from a beach, with a glass of wine in your hand.

There’s an element of peace in such a moment – in which people can forget their surroundings, enjoy what’s happening around them and use their surroundings as way to simply relax.

Others don’t see such things. Some people play football on the beach – for example, Eric Cantona made a small fortune doing exactly that after his professional playing days were done.

Yet, others don’t like to despoil what nature’s God created.

They would prefer to simply sit back and enjoy the moment when the sun disappears beyond the horizon, the sky turns purple and then bluish-black, and then the night begins.

It’s even better when a haphazard wave gently rolls onto the shore – playfully reaching for, and just failing to grasp, bare feet dug into the warm sand.

For those people, the wine seems to taste better. It’s contentment expressed in a single moment.

Christopher Gilbert was such a man.

There was a day when the simple mention of his name seemed to make goalkeepers want to hide. The six-foot pace striker was at one point in career considered to be the single fastest player in England – leading to his nickname of “The Rotherham Rocket” in honor of both his hometown and his famed propensity for self-propulsion.

A tryout with his hometown Millers resulted in schoolboy terms they moment they were possible and then it was only a matter of time before a bigger club poached the town’s native son.

Rotherham. Everton. Manchester United. Glory, glory, so to speak. If Toffees fans were disappointed when Wayne Rooney left for United at age 20, it was just as bad for them when Chris Gilbert traded blue for red at the age of 22.

He was one of the very few players who never had a falling out with Sir Alex Ferguson, who seemed to find a way to have one with just about everyone who ever mattered to his club at one point or another.

That’s because Chris Gilbert never seemed to let anything – or anyone – bother him.

His imperturbability was his hallmark. You always got the same effort out of him every day. Day in, day out – an impossibly high standard which was impossibly met. Each and every day.

He simply scored goals. He specialized in making sure that were cold, uneaten Saturday dinners on the tables of many an opposing fan during fourteen special seasons with the Red Devils.

And so it was that he retired from the game, before it took away his skills. He left still a highly useful player, not always able to go the full ninety minutes, but still always able to meet his own standard. That was enough. He was a student of the game, with an unusually bright mind for tactics that helped him put himself in good positions, but when he was done, he was done and everyone knew it.

And then, he moved on to the next thing.

Which was nothing.

At his news conference following his testimonial match against Bayern Munich, the team United had bested in two of three consecutive European Cup finals in the twilight of his great career, he had even hinted at his future plans.

He dipped into literature to make his point.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo Baggins said at his 111^th birthday party that he intended to take a long vacation.

“I don’t expect I shall return,” Gilbert had said to the press, quoting one of the literary world’s greatest shortest men at that moment, “and in fact I mean not to.”

And then, he left. Nobody should have been surprised.

Not only did he leave Manchester, he left England.

He wound up in a place few people would have ever expected to find him -- in the south of France, specifically in Marseille.

He was just down the road from the famous beaches of St. Tropez, but while an active player Chris Gilbert had never been known to either have a girlfriend or speak in the changing room about wanting one. That sort of thing didn’t seem to matter to a player to whom football seemed to mean everything.

That perception was why it was so surprising when he packed up and left. The possessor of all the money he would ever need, instead of staying in the game he went to the south of France. There he found a city whose harbor faced west, to watch the sun set and put his feet in the sand.

Chris Gilbert was content. Alone, but content.

Authors’ Notes: FM16, with Home Nations, France, Germany, Italy and Poland loaded as playable nations. Save begins with the SI official winter update in place.

# # #

[chesterfan2]

A new 10-3 story. My boots fair shiver with anticipation.

To say I am looking forward to this is like saying Ben Henegan's last minute winner against the sheepsh*gers was quite satisfying. (

)

Carry On.

[edtheguy]

Oh boy, a new 10-3 is always a good thing. I love the intro, it really puts you in the story nicely.

I can't wait to see what the south of France holds in store for The Rotherham Rocket. He's already one of my all time favorites - I'm a big fan of anyone who quotes The Hobbit.

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks, fellows. It's always good to have people following. I will simply say as a piece of foreshadowing that home isn't necessarily where an individual is located -- nor even where his heart is.

___

In that regard, he was a very happy man.

Always quiet, almost to the point of reticence, Chris spent most of his days reading, writing, dabbling in photography or working out to try to preserve his conditioning to the greatest extent he could.

He kept an eye on Europe’s top leagues – he was away from the game, not dead – and noted both an incredibly slow start by his beloved Red Devils under Louis van Gaal and the mounting pressure on the veteran manager from the club’s insatiable fanbase.

As November ended, Manchester United was in tenth place in the table, closer to the drop zone than to runaway leaders Manchester City at the top. That hurt to watch, but then replacing Sir Alex and rebuilding an aging squad was never going to be an easy task.

In fact, the longtime and legendary United watcher Mark Wilson referred to van Gaal as “The Dutch Disaster”, and that in itself spawned a large number of stories about a changing of the guard at Old Trafford. But Wilson always thought he could do a better job himself, and that made interesting reading too.

Another surprise of the season was Chelsea sinking to seventh place and showing manager Guus Hiddink the door – and coupling the surprise by naming David Moyes as his successor, evidently hoping that the second time running a superclub would be the charm.

But for the most part, Chris spent his days on the beach, deliberately not answering questions from reporters who thought they could get him to opine on the game he had played so well. He enjoyed not answering questions. Why did these people think they could get him to do something while retired that he had never done as an active player?

Yet there was a reason they were asking. Very quietly, within the United setup, Chris had gained his badges while still an active player and learned the tactical side of the game at the elbow of one of the greatest managers of all time.

He enjoyed a reputation within the United setup as a thinker, and that was one reason why he was an effective player. Sir Alex had said he had a natural gift for tactics and from him, that was high praise.

But that was only one surprise. Even more surprising was Germany, where Borussia Moenchengladbach zoomed to the top of the league, with mighty Bayern Munich sinking to fifth place under Pep Guardiola, one place ahead of Dortmund. And speaking of surprises, PSG trailing AS Monaco by seven points as November ended completed the trifecta of national oddities.

Yet none of that bothered Chris in the slightest – except for United of course. He would sit and watch matches when he felt like it during the evenings – or put them on his DVR when he did not – and watch the sun set.

Every night. It gave him peace.

He spent time simply walking along the beach. Enjoying life. Sometimes when he felt like enjoying life a little less, he ran instead of walked. Life was good. It was at his pace.

And he didn’t talk to anyone he didn’t want to talk to. Openings in the Premier League came up – Crystal Palace, Norwich and Sunderland, running 18^th, 19^th and 20^th respectively in the table – all sacked their bosses, but when media came calling to Chris as a UEFA Pro License holder and as yet unscarred potential manager, he simply demurred.

One time, to get a reporter off his back, he brought up the case of Tim Sherwood, who had started his managerial career with Spurs and had earned those Spurs right in the backside when he was sacked shortly after taking over.

But the folks in England sure seemed to want him home. The pull was starting to get strong.

So it was that shortly after celebrating his 37^th birthday late in December, Chris sat at his computer breaking every rule he had ever set for himself as far as interaction with others.

# # #

[EvilDave]

Another 10-3 story pleases me. The title intrigues me. And the fact you've got Chris straight into the action (or so it seems) excites me. Looking forward to seeing where you take this, I'll be following along for sure.

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks, ED! I'm experimenting on some things. It turns out that "The Americans" couldn't be continued due to problems the db had with the 16.3 update. That was too bad since I was enjoying it a lot. So this will replace it.

___

His agent had set up a Reddit AMA session. Chris wondered first off why he was there and second, why he seemed to be having so much fun while it was ongoing.

The questions poured in, especially from United fans who saw a rare opportunity to get one of the club’s former stars on the record. He had a lot of fun.

That night while walking along the beach, he thought back to the kind of interaction he had largely shunned while an active player and realized that as long as he could control the circumstances, sometimes people really weren’t so bad after all.

Of course, the talk had come in a completely controlled environment and as such unflattering or inflammatory questions were swept aside as soon as they appeared, so Chris should have felt comfortable.

Afterward, his agent, a young up-and-comer named Fletcher Bouchard, had a laugh that Chris hadn’t really contemplated.

“You should look in the personal mailbox of the account we created,” he said. He moved aside from the keyboard – he had entered Chris’ replies because he was a far better typist – and Chris noticed a series of e-mails with links inside them.

“I clicked on a few,” Bouchard said. “Let’s just say there are a number of women who e-mailed you that have some interesting pictures at those links.”

Chris indulged his curiosity and was taken aback.

“Why the hell would anyone want to do that on the internet?” he asked, and Bouchard just laughed harder.

“Maybe to get the attention of a certain former Manchester United footballer,” the agent smiled.

“Well, that’s not how to do it,” Chris replied. “For Pete’s sake, leave something to the imagination!”

The two headed out on the town for dinner and when Chris returned, he headed to his desk to shut down the computer.

He noticed that Bouchard had removed the offending links but one mail had arrived while they were out to dinner. It was titled “Respectfully”, and that made Chris decide to open it.

Like the others, it too contained a link, but this picture was different.

It changed Chris Gilbert’s life.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Walking down the beach the next noontime, Chris reflected on why he was walking the beach at noontime instead of much closer to sunrise.

He hadn’t slept. That was rare enough for him, and would have been unheard of in his playing days.

The reason why would have been even more stunning to anyone who knew Chris Gilbert.

He had been online.

“Respectfully” had been a woman, and not only that, she had been of a class and character Chris had rarely encountered.

He spent fully two hours trying to figure out if the lady could in fact be real. That was what he had always been told by his buddies who had broken down and used social media to find companionship – find out if they’re real before you make an idiot out of yourself – and Chris knew that as a still-public person, a slip on his part could result in embarrassing press coverage that would remind everyone why he had been so quiet as a player.

Yet they had stayed up all night mailing back and forth.

She lived in London but her family was from Poland, she said, and the pleasantries associated with a new-found friendship – which seemed to be all she was after – were quite pleasant indeed.

She wasn’t even really a football fan, which led Chris to ask why she had mailed him in the first place.

“I said I wasn’t really a football fan,” she had written. “But I am a fan of the right people.”

She was an exceptionally beautiful woman – around Chris’ age, but a gentleman never asks – with long blond hair worn in curls to her shoulders, blue eyes that could melt hearts when happy and bend steel when not, and an expressed enjoyment of all things beautiful.

She was a consultant in London and her home town of Warsaw, and though they didn’t talk about her business, Chris got the impression that she ran in some very high-powered circles.

He realized that for the time being, he was a beach bum by comparison and even though that suited him, she had shown him there was another way.

He was more than mildly surprised to find her in the same place online the next evening. And then on his phone the next night through a text message.

Everything about it screamed “lapse in judgment” but the more he thought about it, the less he cared.

He had his agent do a little digging to find out if there really was someone in London in that business by that name – and the results came back positive. There was. Chris just didn’t know if was actually her.

She said she had emigrated to England as a teenage girl and given the deep beauty her pictures had uniformly shown, her features certainly verified her heritage. Chris enjoyed her company even though he had never talked with the woman face to face.

He decided to trust. To a point.

He screwed up the courage to ask the lady her name, and received “Anastazia” as a response.

“Just call me Ana,” she texted. “It’s the shortened form of the name.”

That sent Chris to the dictionary to find out what the name meant – it was the Polish version of the masculine name Anasatazy, which meant “resurrection”.

They became fast friends. It was a completely platonic thing from Chris’ point of view. But it was hard not to admire her beauty.

But finally, one night she asked him: Why aren’t you still in football? You are a better communicator than you give yourself credit for being.

He didn’t have an answer for her. And as he walked the beach the next morning, he still didn’t.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Did he miss the game?

Chris wasn’t sure. He knew he loved the South of France a lot more than even he had thought. The French Riviera was a delight, Marseilles was a dream place to live and there was nothing in the world that really could make him want to leave.

Except, maybe, football.

Maybe.

A warm wind pushed its way onto Chris’ face as he walked one morning, about a month after he had met the charming lady online.

They still talked every day – depending on her work, sometimes it was more often, some times it was less – and Chris was starting to feel separation anxiety when she wasn’t around, or when she didn’t answer him.

This is bloody insane, he kept telling himself. You’ll never meet this woman, you aren’t entirely sure she’s even real, and what in the hell are you thinking, anyway?

Suddenly, walking the beach was no longer for relaxation. It was for self examination and questioning, which made it a whole lot less relaxing.

He was a millionaire many times over. She was a very successful consultant by any stretch of the imAnanation. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Chris to simply invite Ana to the Riviera for a weekend. Or longer.

Only, she wouldn’t come. She couldn’t, or at least that was Chris’ understanding.

He had never been in this situation before and really didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to come right out and ask, because he didn’t think it was right, but if he didn’t, he’d never move forward.

And the thing of it was, she was right. Chris had spent virtually his entire life on a football pitch up until the last six months or so and a part of him just didn’t feel comfortable away from the game. The habits of a lifetime die hard.

The last three years of his career had been spent learning systems when he wasn’t on the training pitch himself – and taking badges, because at one point Chris thought he had wanted to become a manager. He would listen in the meetings, take excellent notes, ask good questions and learn from the staff alongside his teammate and friend, Ryan Giggs.

The ageless Welshman had some of the same career aspirations Chris did at that time, and when Chris retired, he was pleased to see Giggs take the caretaker role in the aftermath of Moyes’ United disaster.

Giggs had stayed with United, though, while Chris had opted to follow in another Red Devil star’s footsteps, those of the immortal Cantona.

Only his footsteps had had sand between the toes, and that was enough for the first portion of Chris’ retirement.

But as the season ended, and Manchester City moved to claim the title over a shockingly good Leicester team with United sinking to sixth, the writing was on the wall.

Chris texted Giggs as the last month of the season began, asking him how he felt about his boss.

“He did everything he could,” Giggs texted back, using the past tense. That wasn’t good.

But that night, Ana had written him, changing things once again.

“Come to London,” she wrote. “Or Warsaw. The choice is yours.”

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

So it was that Christopher Gilbert, aged 37, sat at a large mahogany desk. Across it sat Steve Parish, owner of Crystal Palace Football Club.

The Eagles were in desperate trouble, having sacked their manager, club legend Alan Pardew, as the team sank into 18^th place in the table with just five matches to play.

“We have a job on,” the fifty-year old owner and principal club investor said. He wasn’t kidding.

Palace had lost their last five straight matches, including a 3-0 home humiliation by fellow relegation rival Aston Villa, to fall four points from safety. And, as the owner of a good reputation within the game, the Eagles were interested in finding out how Chris Gilbert liked to see the game played.

He was open. He was honest. The interview seemed to go well.

And when the press found out that the guy who had made a career out of being the Premier League’s marble man had left his sandy paradise to interview in South London, well, school was out, so to speak.

The press had a field day. Nobody could figure out why Chris was in London, or what had caused such a dramatic turn of events in his life.

There was one person who knew, though, and she wasn’t a football fan. At least, she said she wasn’t.

She also would not meet him. That was vexing.

“I don’t understand,” he wrote. “I came to London.”

“I’m too shy,” she said. “I just lost a long term relationship and I’m not ready yet. But I think you are a wonderful man.”

He also didn’t get the Palace job, which was bad for a variety of reasons. Now the calls were starting to come again from football media, this time with something really to ask Chris since he had applied for a Premiership job and been given serious consideration.

He was asked why. He said he had simply wanted to get back into the game. He was lying – at least, to a point – but he didn’t want to disclose the real reason. The press would have torn him to shreds.

Chris knew. He really liked Ana from the words they had shared and the time they had spent – which was real, if not in person. But she had asked him to travel and he had done so. She might have asked again, and even though it was against his better judgment, he would have honored the request.

Chris called it his Warsaw Pact. He was now looking to get back into the game.

# # #

[tenthreeleader]

Palace didn’t stay up. Chris didn’t mind reading that news.

He had also received requests for interviews which didn’t go so well at Norwich, which was a bit surprising, and at doomed Sunderland, which had given Big Sam Allardyce the heave-ho at the same time Palace had dismissed Allardyce’s fellow Newcastle alum Pardew.

So much for reputation. If Chris had any within the game, the repeated failures had destroyed it.

Things could have been worse. He could have been Tim Sherwood, for example.

But as the season wore down, trophies got decided and board chairmen made their decisions, Chris settled back into life in the south of France, content again.

He still spoke to Ana every evening when she was available, and the two had developed a fast friendship. Chris had wanted more from time to time, but every time he had tried to show affection, she had rebuffed him. He figured enough was enough with that kind of talk, so he simply enjoyed a long-distance relationship without the actual hassle of having anyone else in his life.

Jaded? Probably. But then, he had always preferred being alone.

The season finally ended, happily for some and mercifully for others, and Chris settled in for a long summer of fun and rest and relaxation. He had put on a few pounds since the end of his playing days and he resolved to take them off by more running, and spending less time online.

But as he ran the beach the day after the English season ended, his phone rang again and he noticed a familiar number on his viewscreen.

“Can’t be,” he said aloud, running along and ignoring the call.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again, from the same number. Again, Chris ignored the call.

Later that evening, Chris sat at dinner in a Marseilles restaurant and the phone rang a third time. It was the same number, and this time he decided to answer.

A familiar-sounding voice was on the other end.

“Chris, it takes a brave man to keep his club waiting,” the voice said.

The marble man finally smiled as his caller continued.

“This is Ed Woodward. We’re making a move and we want to bring you to Carrington to talk. And before you ask, yes, we are very serious.”

# # #