The Football Agent System

"Before Jay reacts to any of this, I owe you something," Garcia said. "Another European club, one playing at a considerably higher level than this, has opened a formal assessment of him in the last two weeks."

The room went quiet on the other end.

"I’m not going to name them," Garcia went on. "Jay hasn’t authorised that, and you haven’t asked me to, so I won’t. But I’m not going to sit in this meeting and let you table a written offer while pretending nobody else is looking. That’s not how I want to start a relationship with your club."

Kjetil didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

"Has he been offered a contract by them?" he asked.

"No," Garcia said. "You’re the only written offer on the table. That’s the truth, and I want it on the record. And the second truth is this — he’ll consider what you’ve put down properly. He won’t wave it off because something bigger might exist somewhere. He’s not built that way, and neither am I."

Garcia watched something settle behind Kjetil’s eyes — the look of a man doing arithmetic on his own decision, working out exactly how much three weeks of caution might end up costing.

"When do we get an answer?" Kjetil asked.

"Give me a few days," Garcia said. "Enough to go through the legal and the money with him line by line, not react to it on the spot. He deserves that. So does an offer this serious."

Kjetil looked at Vidar, then back at the camera. "You’ll have a deadline. Not a long one."

"That’s fair," Garcia said.

Nobody shouted. Nobody accused anybody of anything. It was still the only written offer in existence, and everyone in that meeting knew it.

Garcia and Jay spoke privately once the call dropped, Jay’s voice smaller down the line than it had sounded all evaluation.

"They gave me the chance," Jay said. "Nobody else did. And now I’m sat here thinking about—" He stopped. "It feels rotten. Weighing them against a club that hasn’t even properly asked for me."

"Say the rest of it," Garcia said. "All of it. Out loud. It’s easier to think when it’s out of your head."

Jay exhaled.

"I’ve got mates there now. Real ones. I fit. And Egersund’s the clearer road to actually playing — I’d play, week in, week out, not rot behind better lads on a bigger bench." He paused. "But the other one’s a level up. A proper one. And they haven’t promised me a thing."

"Right," Garcia said. "So here’s what you don’t do. You don’t turn down a real offer because a bigger name might ring back later. And you don’t sign the smaller one out of guilt before the bigger one’s finished making its mind up either."

"It’s not guilt," Jay said, too quickly, and then, quieter, "Maybe it’s a bit guilt."

"Gratitude’s real," Garcia said. "It matters. Egersund did right by you, and I’ll never tell you to forget that. But gratitude and a contract are two different things. They did you a good turn. It doesn’t mean you owe them your whole career for it."

Jay was quiet for a while.

"Okay," he said finally, and Garcia let the silence after it be enough.

Two days later, Go Ahead’s video call opened with more faces than the first — Peter and Joost joined now by a third man introduced only as part of the technical staff. This time the questions went straight at Jay.

"Tell us about Southmere," Peter said. "And why you actually left. Not the tidy version."

Jay didn’t reach for a tidy version.

"I was there two seasons. I was one of their better players, most weeks." He said it plainly, no boast in it. "I left in August because I couldn’t do all of it anymore. Café shifts, training, things at home. Something had to give, and it was the football, because the football didn’t pay the bills."

"How did you stay fit through that?"

"I didn’t have a choice not to. If I let it slip I’d never get it back." He shrugged, on camera. "So I trained around the shifts. It wasn’t a plan. It was just the only way to keep the door open a crack."

"Norway," Peter said. "You’ve picked their structure up fast. Faster than we’d expect. How?"

"I don’t fully know, if I’m honest with you." Jay didn’t dress it up into something clever. "It clicked. I watched, I listened, I tried not to make the same mistake twice. That’s all I can tell you. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve cracked some secret."

"Left wing or right — does it matter to you?"

"Left’s where I’m best. I’ll play right and not embarrass anyone. But if you’re asking what I am, I’m a left winger."

Peter leaned in slightly for the next one.

"You’d be stepping up a level, and nothing would be handed to you. No shirt, no minutes, no guarantees. Are you ready for that?"

"I’ve never had anything handed to me in my life," Jay said. "I’m not expecting it to start now. I know I’d have to earn a place. I want that more than I want it easy."

"And moving. Deventer, January. Your family — does any of that stop it?"

Jay’s jaw tightened for half a second before he answered.

"My mum’s not well. That’s why I want this to be worth something." He kept his voice level. "She wants me to go. Staying still isn’t helping her, and it’s killing me slowly. So no. It doesn’t stop it. But I need to know where I stand soon — because it isn’t fair to keep a club that’s been good to me hanging while I wait on a maybe."

Nobody in the call had a follow-up after that.

Garcia watched Peter glance sideways at the technical man beside him, and neither of them looked unconvinced. Jay hadn’t begged, and he hadn’t strutted. He’d talked like someone who knew exactly how thin the ground under him still was.

Garcia stepped in once, near the end, to nail down the shape of any deal.

"For clarity," he said. "Terms could be agreed inside his fourth week. Effective January. Conditional on the medical and the work authorisation clearing. Registered only once your winter window opens and the international paperwork lands behind it. That’s the frame, yes?"

"That’s exactly the frame our legal team drew," Peter said.

The call ended without an offer, same as the first. But something in the room’s posture had shifted by the end of it — the particular stillness of people who’d stopped debating whether and started quietly working out how.

An email from Peter landed that evening, short and formal.

Technical director has approved Jay Cole’s recruitment file. Preparing written terms for review. Will be in touch within the week.

Garcia read it twice, then set the phone down beside Egersund’s contract, still open on the desk with its own deadline ticking somewhere underneath it.

One club had already put real terms in front of Jay.

The other — the stronger one — had just decided to.

Neither decision belonged to Garcia. Both of them, very soon, would land on his desk at the same time.