Chapter 2: Birmingham II

Nine years is a long time to spend proving yourself to people who’ve already decided not to be impressed; long enough for a boy who once startled European football by qualifying at twenty to become, simply, a man in his thirties who happened to coach for a living.

Saint Maddox was thirty-one now, and Birmingham had stopped finding him remarkable a while ago, which suited him fine. He’d rather be useful than interesting.

"Oi — Lee! Get us a look at that catch!"

Saint hadn’t planned to loiter at the Bull Ring that morning, but a delivery van had just backed up to the fish stall, and three lads were hauling crates off the back ofthevan, the lead one struggling under a bucket the size of a bin.

Danny was one of the few people who still called Saint "Lee." It was the middle name his father had given him at birth; Saint Lee Maddox, if you wanted the full version, because his dad had been the kind of Bruce Lee fan who named his only son after him without a hint of irony.

Only a handful of people from the old restaurant days still used it. Danny was one of them, because Danny’s family had supplied the restaurant with fish for years, and because Danny was, first and foremost, a football man.

"Good haul today then," Saint said, eyeing four fat lobsters among the crates, plus a decent showing of mackerel and bream.

"Told you not to bet against me," Danny said, grinning, flanked by two mates who looked just as pleased with themselves.

Danny was the one who’d made a bet with Saint over a month before the 2014 World Cup kicked off, a wager on who’d lift the trophy. Lose, and Saint would cook Danny free Chinese food for a month.

As the son of a chef, Saint had the skills to make good on it. Win, and Danny wouldn’t have to cook for himself either, he’d just supply the ingredients, whatever came off the boats.

"Absolute nightmare of a tournament," Danny muttered, shaking his head. "Suárez, man. Biting people. Actual biting. And we still couldn’t get past Uruguay."

England’s group-stage exit that summer had been miserable enough without Suárez turning the whole thing into a circus; two goals against England, then a ban a few games later for sinking his teeth into an Italian defender. Danny hadn’t forgiven him for either.

"Right, tournament’s over, mate," Saint said, steering things elsewhere before Danny could really get going. "Come round mine. Fish barbecue, my garden, tonight."

Truth was, Saint hadn’t minded losing that bet in the slightest. He’d made plenty of money that summer, just not from football.

The ten-pound contract he’d signed with Villa hadn’t been about needing the income. Carrying knowledge that belonged, by rights, to a future that hadn’t happened yet, Saint had spent the past couple of years putting it to very deliberate use.

He hadn’t kept much of the money quiet, either, once you knew things other people didn’t, it seemed almost wasteful not to act on them.

He’d missed the best window on Google, admittedly. But he’d caught the tail end of Amazon’s and Apple’s climb, and held a modest position in both; what one would call modest now, worth a fortune later, and he knew it. If he’d moved two years earlier he might have done even better, but there were other routes open to a man with foresight. Facebook, for one.

He’d met Mark Zuckerberg once, years back. A sharp, awkward kid still finding his feet, long before anyone outside his own circle had heard the name. Saint hadn’t needed to do much. A conversation here, a nudge there. The kid had the ideas already; he just needed someone to believe in the timeline a little harder than most people did.

He’d spent nearly three weeks in the US that summer, most of it in Zuckerberg’s orbit, and came away certain he’d helped tip something that was always going to happen anyway just a little further, a little faster.

Beyond that, Saint had a handful of other positions scattered around, enough that, by the time this World Cup rolled past, he judged he’d done what needed doing. He wasn’t going to be one of the richest men in the world by accident, but he also didn’t need to keep gambling to get there. Better, now, to put his attention fully into the thing that actually mattered to him.

---

After years grafting in the Villa academy, Saint finally got his move up to involvement with the first team, though his first real meeting with the new manager, two days earlier, hadn’t gone well.

The manager assumed, not unreasonably, that Saint was Sallow’s man, planted to keep an eye on him.

Villa’s boardroom had been reshuffled that summer. Years of drift with no promotion push worth the name, no real progress, had left the chairman openly questioning whether Sallow still had what it took. So a new sporting director, Mark Pedmore, had been brought in above him, splitting authority that used to sit with Sallow alone.

Pedmore’s first act had been sacking the old manager and bringing back Terry Ventham, a name with real history at the club. Ventham had led Villa up from the second tier once before, years ago, only for results to sour once they got there; he’d been let go within a season, and the club had slipped straight back down not long after.

Whatever came after, that promotion still counted for something in the fans’ memory, and Pedmore knew it. A new director needs results to justify his own position, and Ventham who was a proven man with unfinished business, was exactly the kind of appointment that could buy Pedmore time, and maybe, if it went well enough, the leverage to push Sallow out altogether.

Sallow hadn’t seen any of it coming. He’d known the chairman had doubts about him, but not that the board would move a rival into place without so much as a conversation first. Every club has its politics and its rivalries dressed up as strategy, and Sallow, caught flat-footed, had already fallen a step behind.

But that didn’t mean he intended to make life easy for either Pedmore or Ventham going forward.