The Football Agent System

Jay let a breath out he hadn’t noticed holding.

"And your cut," he said. "When do you actually get paid?"

"Five percent of the fixed wages that actually get paid to you. Seven hundred a month, once your salary starts. Neither of us sees a penny from this before January." Garcia said it flatly, no dressing on it. "I don’t earn until you earn. That’s how it should be."

"Right."

"Go home, Jay. Go and see your mum. Leave the football admin to me for the rest of today, the club’s performance and relocation people will contact you separately about the rest." Garcia’s voice eased half a degree. "You did the hard part. Let me do mine."

Jay’s case came round the belt a moment later, and he grabbed it and went.

He didn’t go home first. He went straight to the hospital.

The whole way there his phone kept vibrating in his pocket, against his leg, in the taxi, on the walk in from the drop-off, a steady pulse of people who suddenly wanted a piece of him.

At the ward doors he took it out and held the button until the screen went dark, then slid it away, and the silence after all that buzzing felt louder than the buzzing had.

His father was waiting near the entrance to the ward.

He looked at Jay first, at his face, then down at the Go Ahead bag on his shoulder and the contract folder held flat against his side.

He didn’t ask any of the questions that had already been answered before Jay chose the Dutch offer. They all knew Jay was in England until January, that the money started then, that he’d prepare from home.

"Medical," his father said instead. "It came back completely clear?"

"Nothing that touched the contract," Jay said. "They flagged a couple of fitness things I need to work on before January. That’s going into my programme, that’s all. Nothing wrong with me."

His father nodded, and some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders.

Jay slowed as they reached the door of the room.

For days now the trial and the offers and the negotiation and the medical had crowded everything else out of his head. Then the smell of the ward hit him, that scrubbed, tired cleanness, and the low patient hum of the machines, and it all came back at once.

This was the reason his career had stalled in the first place. This room, and the person in it.

His steps got shorter. His hand tightened on the folder. He stood at the door a second longer than he needed to before he made himself go through it.

His mother had already seen the announcement.

Her phone was propped against the blanket, Jay’s photo zoomed in until his face filled most of the screen, and she looked from the picture on the phone to the actual son standing in the doorway.

She didn’t cry, and she didn’t launch into anything about always knowing.

Her hand just went still where it rested against the phone. The tight line at the corner of her mouth eased. She shifted herself against the pillow, a small effort that clearly cost her something, to make a space beside the bed.

Jay sat down and took the Go Ahead shirt out of his bag.

She ran her fingers over the badge on the chest, slow, then turned the shirt to check the name printed across the back, as if she half expected the club to have spelled it wrong or signed the wrong boy entirely.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. The shirt did most of it.

"Was it frightening?" she asked eventually. "In there. The medical."

"A bit," Jay admitted, because lying to her had never once worked. "The worst part was after. They finished, then they all went off and left me sitting there while they talked about me, and nobody said anything for a while. That’s when it got in my head."

His father, from the chair on the other side, asked the practical one.

"That fourteen thousand. Is that what actually lands, after tax?"

"No. That’s the gross, before anything comes out." Jay had asked Garcia the same thing. "Gabriel’s sorting an accountant, someone to help me work out tax and what I put in at home and the moving costs, before the first payment even comes in. So I know what’s real and what isn’t."

"And when you move over. What do the club cover?"

"They put me up to start with, and they help with the move itself. The proper long-term stuff gets sorted nearer January."

His father was quiet for a beat, then: "Between now and then. Do you have to lay out much yourself?"

"The club pays for the training gear and the football side," Jay said. "My own living, what I put in here, that’s still on me till January."

That answer landed in a short silence.

Nobody looked at him like he’d let them down. It was just that everyone in the room understood the same thing at the same time, that the hospital bills and the house didn’t pause for an announcement, and a signed contract that paid in January didn’t help with a gas bill in November.

"It’ll all be different in January," Jay started. "Once the—"

He stopped himself.

Different once a gross wage he hadn’t been paid yet turned into a net wage he hadn’t worked out yet. He wasn’t going to make a promise built on money that only existed on paper.

His mother saw the sentence die and steered them off it.

"That photo," she said. "You look furious in it. Like the club’s done something to upset you."

"He looks scared," his father said.

"I don’t look scared," Jay said, too fast, and his mum laughed at how fast, a real laugh that turned halfway into a short, dry cough.

Jay had the plastic cup of water in his hand before he’d thought about it, and he waited, not fussing, just there, until her breathing settled back down on its own.

It wasn’t a crisis. It passed in a few seconds. But it sat him back down inside the truth of it, that she was still in this bed, still on treatment, and none of that had changed because a Dutch club liked his left foot.

"I might pick up a few café shifts," he said, when she was steady. "Before I go. Bit of money coming in."

"Have you asked the club?" his mother said. "Or Gabriel. Whether that even fits with the training they want you doing."

Jay opened his mouth, and realised he hadn’t.

His father didn’t tell him not to work. "We look at the football schedule first," he said. "Then we see what fits round it without running you into the ground. In that order."

Before Jay left, his mother asked him to leave the shirt in the room overnight.

He hung it over the back of the visitor’s chair, angled so the badge faced the bed, where she could see it without turning her head.

Then he kissed the top of her head and went home.

He didn’t open the club email until late that evening, at the kitchen table, with a cup of tea going cold beside him.

There were two parts to it.

The first was from the player-liaison side, and it was the boring, necessary half. Updated passport copies. Confirmation of his address. Emergency contacts. A provisional January reporting date. Accommodation preferences to fill in. Scheduled check-ins about the work-authorisation process as it moved along.

None of it was dramatic. All of it needed doing, by him, this week.

The second part was the performance department’s pre-commencement plan, and it stopped him for a second.

He read the top line carefully, because Garcia had drummed it into him. This was not employment before the first of January. The contract he’d fought over specifically stopped the club treating him as an active employee before the commencement date, and nothing in the email crossed that line.

It was a programme he was choosing to follow, because both he and the club wanted him turning up in January already first-team ready rather than three weeks behind.

They’d supply a GPS tracker, a heart-rate monitor, help arranging gym access, and weekly video reviews. Organising the actual work in England, though, was on him.

Pitch conditioning. Strength and power. Repeat-sprint work. Football sessions, which meant Rafi. Recovery targets. Data uploads on a set rhythm.

He’d signed a contract that morning and been handed a full second job by the evening, and the job started now while the wage still didn’t.

There were two more things folded into the plan.