Episode 1: A New Beginning.
It’s a new era for @CMOnTheRocks. Life has got a bit in the way of late and streaming has become difficult for the next few weeks. The past few months have been an absolute blast, and I’ve done a number of things I never thought I would do. I’ve had help and interactions from around the globe — in particular from Boycie, Legends, Midlothian and Megasave — and the start of this wouldn’t be right without stating that.
One of the reasons I got dragged back into CM0102 was down to @MikePaulVox, and his Diamond Geezers series and Los Coladeros, which he published in blog form. And while I’m not available to stream at the moment, I do still occasionally have 20 minutes where I have grand ideas. I also tuned into Mike on twitch doing a Coladeros episode, showing the writing process and thought ‘Why the Shilton not?!’
So fuck it…what to do…
I’ve done the Champions League to death of late and after the ScandiNords managed to sensationally lose 3–0 to Roma in the final, I have a strong desire to lock the entire Giallorossi side in a small stadium and buy some napalm on the darkweb to vanquish them from my memory. I’m pretty sure they’d probably still beat the napalm 4–1 on aggregate. Atletigol will continue live, as its fun and I love that squad, but frankly if I don’t win the champions league in 5 seasons with them I don’t deserve to live. And I’d rather share that failure on periscope.
So…we head south….to the land of steak, red wine and exceptionally violent defensive midfielders….
Argentina.
I did my research and it turns out that the Argentine National B division was a bit shit in 2001–02. No clubs hanging off the end of the map or with particularly amusing subplots that I could find. So I picked the team that finished 2nd bottom that year in real life because bottom side Tigre had too many redeeming features.
Atletico Tucuman. El Deca. The North Giant. The other Atleti.
And as I found out as I walk through the doors of the Monumental Jose Fierro and take the walk upstairs to my office overlooking the pitch, the keepers of one of the worst squads ever assembled by a person with the power of sight.
I look at my notes and deduce that Cabrol is a passable attacking midfielder. Thumbs up. Very good. Garat has an ability to head more or less anything; balls, rocks, pint glasses of lager thrown by angry fans. The problem is with a positioning rating of 7, the chances of him being in the right place to head anything useful are around 33–1. Portugal is my most qualified goalkeeper, in the same way that I am qualified to perform open heart surgery on giraffes. I shake my head as Mario Lobo walks across to me to introduce himself. My 36 year-old striker has pace belying his latter years, and I can already tell that Mario and I will be sinking several bottles of Merlot this year as we talk about footballers that don’t have the same ability as hedgehogs on ketamine.
So we need to hit the transfer market. And hard. I have 4 foreign player slots available which is a blessed relief. But with a transfer budget of £0 and little to no knowledge of Argentina, this is a challenge. In an attempt to garner some funds to buy literally any player better than what I currently have, which would likely cost £20 and a couple of pairs of trainers, I transfer list the entire reserves and several first teamers. All of whom are furious at this rogue ousting by a supremely unqualified Scotsman who can say ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘2 beers please’ in Spanish and not much else.
I would send out scouts, but that would involve money and getting in touch with my scouting team. When I do, my conference call with the scouting team goes wrong when in dodgy Spanish I accidently say that thing about all of their mothers that Materazzi said to Zidane, meaning I have to fire them all out of embarrassment. So I settle down in my office and type ‘Argentina’…and disappear down a rabbit hole of bids, bonuses and future stars.
218 pages of Argentines and 40 hours later I emerge bleary eyed, having drunk 4 bottles of red wine and scrawling the word ‘Tevez’ onto my forearm in sharpie so many times I appear to have blood poisoning. Lobo and Garat put me in a taxi and I wake up 26 hours later with a swollen hand but a clear head.
We set about handing out trials like samples of coke zero in a shopping centre. “Your name kind of looks like Simeone if you squint, have a trial”, “a player with the name Andres Perez can’t be a bad player, have a trial” — just two examples of the scattergun transfer approach. I continue to transfer list everything that moves (or won’t) in the squad, and before you know it I have a first team squad of about 8, and an angry mob of 30 odd reserves that steal my hired club car once a week and fill it with fish guts. If I cared, I would be bothered by this, but the local wine provides an adequate solution until we get our first signing news.
Walter Pico, who looks like he has the makings of a cult hero, signs on the dotted line for an amount of money per week. I can’t remember what I offered him and I fired the entire accounting department after I caught them eating salads at lunch.
This is followed up by the arrivals of a player/coach in Navarro Montoya, a battleaxe midfielder Mancuso, Andres Perez the Colombian midfielder/professional selfish bastard, and Juan Carlos Menseguez, 1-time West Brom loanee who might develop or might not. Who cares, it’s a player who doesn’t despise me, which is a minority at the moment.
As the window opening on the 23rd of July gets closer, we continue to make deals. However I get a call from a dodgy sounding bloke who advises me that Tevez and Mascherano will both require 14 cattle to make the move to Tucuman, and that he owns 50% of them. I tell the mysterious voice he owns 50% of fuck-all, and watch as both of them reject moves to Tucuman. I would say they’ve made a powerful enemy, but this is a squad that still has a second choice goalkeeper with the footballing prowess of octopus with learning difficulties.
I even hire some support staff. An Ecuadorian goalkeeping coach flies in, along with a Dutchman and a questionable guy I found in the airport called Linton. I also appoint Stuart Beavis as my Physio. I have nothing to add to this, make your own jokes.
And then the 23rd of July hits. And boy have I misjudged this.
It turns out that my squad are more or less toxic. And because no one wants the stupid bastards, I cant sign anyone. So all of the hard earned £325,000 I earned from selling awful players has to be spent on releasing players even more awful and having to compensate them feels like being kicked in the bollocks repeatedly by Daniel Andersson. I release 10 players in the end and go full Mario Balotelli to celebrate, letting off fireworks in my office and firing an air rifle at the players as they leave the gates of the Jose Fierro. If I ever see any of them again it’ll be too soon. And with that my transfer budget is gone. Again.
We pass the time before our first league game playing a couple of bounce games against Argentine pub teams. A 2–0 win over Central Ballester is followed by a game against Sarmiento — who have a more valuable squad than us and turn up wearing sunglasses and egos the size of the vineyard that me and Lobo have eyed up as an end of season purchase. We smash them 5–0 but don’t celebrate…
The night before the Sarmiento game, we managed to revive the signings of new boys Oliva and Simionato, and I took them out on the town with Lobo and Mancuso to celebrate. The night got hazy after a visit to the local nightclub ‘El Agujero Sucio’, and I wake up with a hangover the size of Maradona’s stash and a text message from Beavis to say that the new men have both suffered groin strains during the evening’s festivities. We won’t see them for a month. Or two in the case of Oliva. At least we temper things with the signings of Rodriguez and Bressan, who both look like they’ve played a bit.
So we hurtle towards the first game against San Martin (M) in the Second Division and we start with an 1000km trip to their shithole of a ground. As we reach matchday, I wake up in my hotel room half a mile from the ground to the sounds of rock music, permeated with the revving of motorcycles and chanting. I look bleary-eyed at my phone to see the time reads 03:00.
I get up, and open my window to find 500 San Martin Ultras chanting about how they are going to maul us and saying some questionable things about our sisters. I immediately throw on a t-shirt, run downstairs on the phone to Beavis (who has become my local liaison) to meet me at the back door. Beavis picks me up and at my request drops me at the ground, presumably thinking i want to take in the occasion and psyche myself up. I shimmy over the fence and find refuge in the cleaner’s office, where I sit watching repeats of Frasier, badly dubbed in Spanish whilst drinking Mezcal I found in a cupboard for a good couple of hours before I keel over.
I am woken by Beavis, slapping me and shouting ‘Boss, where have you been?! It’s 15 minutes until kick-off!’. I stumble towards the door, mumbling something about Sherlock Beavis and where I was going to stick his deerstalker, as he hands me a tracksuit and a bottle of mouthwash. I hastily change, before queuing the Rocky Music and head through to do my damndest to rev up the players ahead of the game.
I scream and shout at them for 10 minutes whilst they look on bewildered. It turns out that the vast proportion of my motivational diatribe is the Spanish ingredients section I had been memorising off the back of a shampoo bottle. They look confused at first, but eventually they get fired up and they head out to the pitch, positively feral and dandruff free — if a little unfit.
Its 28 degrees, and I’m feeling surprisingly fresh as we kick-off. I look around for the away support and see a small pocket in the corner, already bouncing and singing, unlike the San Martin Ultras, who appear to have suffered from their early start.
It’s a very cagey start, before Cabrol picks up the ball and drives forwards in the 8th minute. Slaloming between defenders he sends a rasping effort towards goal but it hits the side netting. This promising move is about the only touch of the ball we get in the next 20 minutes as San Martin force Navarro into a good save, then hit the post. We get a little more of the ball around 40 minutes in and Pico has a chance to put us ahead before half-time but the keeper saves well. We go in at 0–0 in a sea of 6s and mediocrity.
A quick tactical tweak at halftime, which mostly involves threatening Cabrol with an empty bottle and shouting more shampoo ingredients, is the only adjustment we make, but we struggle to asset ourselves again. In the 54th minute, they take a shot from outside the area which Navarro parries, but only into the path of their star man, Villalba, who knocks it in. 0–1.
We have to change it, bringing on San Roman, who has been on light injured status for about 14 years. We go to 2 up front, and immediately get a couple of free-kicks, which Cabrol can do nothing with. He is then hooked with 15 minutes left after a dreadful performance. I note this in between reading my English to Spanish dictionary and trying to frantically learn anything of tactical use, mostly leaving Milton Rodriguez, my one Spanish speaking member of staff, to shout advice at the players.
With 10 minutes to go, Navarro claims a long ball and boots it out to halfway, Where the referee blows for a freekick to San Martin. Its taken straight to Villalba, who hits it first time in an attempt to land it in the vacant stand and waste more time. Trouble is, he nails it top corner and with that our afternoon gets a little bit worse. 0–2.
We go direct in an attempt to salvage anything from the game, but we are repelled by a strong defense and our own ineptitude. Only the woodwork stops us conceding a third in the last minute.
A shite performance, only mitigated by the fact that we are about as fit as the cast of ‘My 400lb Life’. As we board the bus for the long trip back to Tucuman, I look at the players and ask them to remove their headphones by miming and shouting. Once I have their attention, Beavis hands me the Mezcal and I drink from it, before shouting at the top of my voice ‘VIVA LOS CHAMPU’. They absolutely lose their minds and drinks start popping off everywhere as we set off on the long trip back to Tucuman.
Whilst we might have lost, this could be the start of something special.
Or a breakdown.
