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of a fartlek session – one man sprints two hundred metres around the track to tag his partner, who has jogged across its diameter and who now sprints again to tag the same partner, and so on – that leaves most men gasping, especially the smokers. I used to smoke, but only when I was in the nick. There’s nothing else to do when you’re in the nick. I followed paarlauf with a heads and tails routine where a player runs with the ball towards the goal as fast as he can and then shoots before immediately turning defender and trying to stop the next guy from doing the same. It sounds simple and it is, but when it’s played at speed and you’re tired it really tests your skills; it’s hard to control the ball when you’re also running flat out and knackered.
    Along the way I offered explanations for why we were doing what we were doing. A training session is easier when you know what the thinking is behind it:
    ‘If we’re fit we can open up the pitch, and create space. Making space is simply a matter of breaking the wind and the spirit of the man trying to mark you. Get eyes in the back your head and learn to see who is in space and pass the ball to him, not to the nearest man. Pass the ball quickly. Leeds will defend deep, and dirty. So above all be patient. Learn to be patient with the ball. It’s impatience that ends up giving the ball away.’
    Zarco was more involved with the training session than usual, shouting instructions from the sideline and criticising some of the players for not running quickly enough. It’s bad enough to be on the end of that when you’re out of breath; it’s something else when you’re almost puking up from exertion.
    When the drill was over Zarco walked on to the pitch and instinctively the lads gathered round to await his comments. He was a tall, thin man and still looked like the strong, fearless centre back he’d been in the 1990s for Porto, Inter Milan and then Celtic. He was handsome, too, in a rugged, unshaven kind of way, with sleepy eyes and a broken nose as thick as a goalpost. His English was good and he spoke in a weary, dark monotone but when he laughed, his was a light falsetto, almost girlish laugh that most people – myself excluded – found intimidating.
    ‘Listen to me, gentlemen,’ he said quietly. ‘My own philosophy is simple. You play the best football you can, as hard as you can. Always and forever, amen.’
    I started translating for our two Spanish players, Xavier Pepe and Juan-Luis Dominguin; I speak pretty good Spanish – and Italian – although my German is near fluent, thanks to my German mother. I could tell this was going to be a bad bollocking. Zarco’s worst bollockings were always the ones given quietly and in his saddest voice.
    ‘This kind of thinking won’t ever let you down, not like any of those other guys – Lenin or Marx, Nietzsche, or Tony Blair. But in the whole of life on earth, there is perhaps no philosophical mystery quite as profound and as inexplicable as the one of how you can manage to lose 4–3 when you were 3–0 up at half time. To fucking Newcastle.’
    The less wise started to smile at that one; big mistake.
    ‘At least I thought it was a mystery.’ He smiled a nasty little smile and wagged his finger in the air. ‘Until I saw this morning’s poor excuse for a training session – Scott, no offence to you, my friend, you tried to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as always – and it suddenly occurred to me as if an apple had fallen on my head why this had happened. You’re all a bunch of lazy assholes, that’s why. You know why a lazy asshole is called a lazy asshole? Because it’s not good for shit. And an asshole that’s not good for shit isn’t good for anything.’
    Someone sniggered.
    ‘You think that’s funny, asshole? I’m not making jokes here. You see me laughing? You think Viktor Sokolnikov pays me millions of pounds a year to make fucking jokes down here? No. The only people making