Introduction
Intro | Ingolstadt 04 | FM23 Hardcore Mode
Intro
For a change, I thought I’d write my Football Manager experience up in the style of the classic Football Manager Stories message board posts. Please let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy.
The Phone Call
It all started with a phone call.
I could barely open my eyes enough to find it. I had a hard time figuring out which number was the time and which one was the phone number. One started with a 3, the other with a 4.
3 AM? 4 AM? Who would call that early? Was it an emergency? Some inconsiderate spammer? I knew I shouldn’t have left my phone in the bedroom.
“Hello?” I murmured, climbing back under the covers.
A friendly voice replied in German, with an unmistakeable southern accent:
“Herr Evensen, I’m happy to speak with you again! Do you have a moment?”
Now, I don’t know about how well you do at 3 in the morning. It’s hard for me to make myself comprehensible in English at that hour, let alone in a foreign language.
When I realized he was speaking in German, though, my mind started to race. I slipped out of the bedroom as quietly as I could and continued the conversation.
“Who is this?” I muttered, stumbling over the grammar and with a horrendous American accent.
The caller laughed. “Peter! Don’t you remember — Peter Jackwerth, of Ingolstadt.”
Ingolstadt… Ingolstadt… that did ring a bell…
Our business didn’t take long. I went back into the bedroom after 15 minutes. Charlotte was awake, of course. “Who was that?” she asked in that smooth, silky southern Chinese voice.
“Wrong number,” I muttered, figuring I’d explain things in the morning.
Job Hunt
Yeah, I lied. The call was for me after all. And our lives were about to change.
I’d been searching for a new job for about a year. Bored to tears by government work, and yet dismayed by a weakening economy and the threat of tech layoffs, I found myself in an unenviable position. I dropped off resume after resume to no avail, and eventually settled on a more networking heavy approach.
And that’s how Ingolstadt came up.
It’s been years since I was last in southern Germany — almost 20, in fact. I cherished my time there, however, and tried to keep in touch with my old friends.
One, an aging security guard working contract gigs in the Kriegshaber district of Augsburg, promised to let his friends know I was searching. Another, an engineer in Friedberg, told me he doubted he would be of any use, but he tried anyway.
Both of them came up with the same contact in Ingolstadt — Peter Jackwerth.
The job? Well, the job might not have been the best fit.
Yeah, I fibbed a little bit on the application. I put my experience down as “Sunday League Footballer,” since they didn’t have any lower option. The truth is that I don’t even have that lowly level of experience — a more accurate description would be “played goalie once during PE class in middle school.”
Peter must have known, though. Most of his questions were about my Football Manager experience anyway. Things like what mentality I preferred, what I thought about youth development, balancing offense and defense — that sort of stuff. Every serious Football Manager player has grappled with those questions before. I thought it was easy.
I must have said the right thing. I told him that I wanted to attack constantly (“immer angreifen und dominieren!”), that teams were foolish for ever signing players 22 years old, and that Ingolstadt should have stayed up in the 2.Bundesliga. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear all that or not; I simply told him what I really thought.
Well, apparently he agreed with me. Because I was now looking at a contract offer in my email, four months after that initial interview.
The Discussion
The best way to take off a bandaid is to do it all at once. Going slowly only prolongs the pain. It’s best to get it over with as quickly as you can and deal with the fallout later.
Of course, that might not be the wisest marital communication strategy.
I announced at breakfast that we were moving to southern Germany.
Charlotte gave me a bewildered look. Charlotte, née Hua Xiren (花襲人), was the belle of Suzhou in southern China and the love of my life. I still can’t get over her delicate features, beady black eyes, long ebony hair and soft voice — not even after 16 years of marriage and three children. And, Lord help me, she’s even more dazzling and mesmerising when she’s surprised.
“Are you insane?” she asked, looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.
Charlotte was the English name she adopted, a combination of interest in the E.B. White character and a name reminiscant of Margaret Mitchell’s unforgettable southern belle. Charlotte wanted to live in the Atlanta area after we married and I brought her to the United States. However, fate and the federal government brought us to northern Virginia instead, where we battled a world of aggressive drivers, hyperinflation, and horrible traffic.
I’d always wanted to take her further south and do something creative with my time. But this Ingolstadt job was not something I was going to give up lightly.
“It will be fine,” I assured her, searching for the words. We’ve spoken together in Chinese only ever since we officialy started dating. I was a poor language student in those days, and she was the undisputed beauty queen of Soochow University. I’ll save the story of how I pulled off that heist for another time.
“It will be fine,” I repeated. “I’ve lived in that area before. The food is great, the water is clean, the air is wonderful, and the football…”
“Men!” she shouted, and off she went to her room.
I respect those of you who disagree with me was the first thought that came to mind. Football Manager mode was taking over already.
Arrival
I don’t want to share all of my secrets with you. I guess I’ve just got a way with women. Either that, or my stubbornness knows no peer.
I can’t remember exactly what I told her. I think I rattled off something about how important it is for every man to pursue his dream.
I probably said something to the effect of, “Just think about Su Dongpo. He was a government official too — but his true calling in life was to compose. If he had been content with the easy government life, just think of how empty our literature would be!”
I threw in a few other literary and historical allusions as well. In fact, I was just about to mention Cleon Hobson’s criticism of Jose Mourinho’s time at United (playing not to lose instead of playing to win) when she finally agreed.
The next thing I knew, we were on a train headed for Ingolstadt.
I opened up a copy of the Süddeutsche Zeitung I found folded next to my seat. And there it was, a story about my new tenure at Ingolstadt.
It wasn’t long, and it wasn’t exactly flattering. They wondered whether I had the ability to lead the team back up given my lack of experience.
I showed it to Charlotte anyway. She can’t read German, after all. “I made the papers,” I said, smiling.
She demurred instead of showing any enthusiasm. “What does this word mean?” she asked, pointing to “verrückt” — an adjective repeated several times through the short article.
“It must be a non-related article” was my weak reply, and that was that.
I looked on out the window at the green of the Bavarian countryside. Slowly but surely, the football world started to open up to me, like the loading screens of a favorite game.
