A Football Manager Career

9: The European Football Championship, 2028.

I was obviously pissed to be fired. However, it's not like it came completely out of the blue and I luckily had a summer tournament to focus all my frustrations and energy into. I didn't even look once at the job centre listings and instead funnelled all of my being into Denmark. The FA's expectations were that we reached the second round and anything worse than that would see me receive my second sacking of the year. I was confident in my team, but I was incredibly nervous as we had been given one of the toughest groups: Germany, Portugal and Poland. Thanks to our fantastic performances since I took over we had climbed to 34th in the world, but that was entirely down to beating some incredibly weak sides and whenever we had come up against a big nation we had lost.

On the 12th June we had our first game: Germany at the Renato Dall'ara stadium in front of 31,000. As we were the underdogs in the group we had spent our time focussing on fluid counter-attacking and I felt that we were as ready as we were ever going to be. Sadly, after ninety minutes the only positive I could find was that they had only won 3-0. Even that glimmer of positivity was more down to our luck than anything else however as they had had thirteen shots on target compared to our solitary one.

To my delight, Poland managed to scrape a win against an impotent Portugal and in doing so they gave me a sense of hope that we could do the same. I changed tact and focussed on a fast paced positive game plan which focussed on getting the ball quickly out wide before then pummelling their box with opportunities. I may not have had a Rial in his prime, but I did have a Dolberg at my disposal and so I made him our poacher and yelled at him to stop drifting around and to just stand in the box and smash in the chances. Everything came up roses and we saw out a 2-1 to keep our hopes alive.

While we were celebrating a narrow victory, Germany were nodding to one another in quiet satisfaction having already qualified top. That left Portugal dead and buried at the bottom and it all to play for in the deciding game between us and Poland. From the notes I had been sent about their games so far they were set-up incredibly defensively and just focussed on grabbing goals on the break. It had worked against the very open Portugal but had failed miserably against Germany. Following our success and Dolberg's form I decided we were going to attack from the off and get the win through our creativity and his finishing in front of the sell-out crowd at the 'Zebre' Stadium – whatever and wherever that is. To my shock Poland had changed their tactics and actually dominated the ball, having 58% of the possession despite our attempts to keep it ourselves. The battle was happening in the middle of the park and at half-time there had just been three shots in total. Knowing that we had to change something I told Dolberg to press aggressively while everyone else stayed disciplined behind him in order to soak up the pressure of their relentless attacks. I felt a little bit bad as I watched Dolberg completely exhaust himself as he did all the work, but it paid off because he snatched the ball off a dawdling centre back and then rounded the keeper to snatch us an incredibly needed 1-0 win.

We fortunately had a little bit of a break before the next round and this gave Dolberg a chance for a much needed break and also gave me and my coaches a chance to see what else had been going on outside of our group. This was obviously useful as scouting for the rest of the competition, but it was also so I could have a little nose around and see if any jobs at bigger nations were likely to become open soon. Unfortunately, England had qualified easily top of their group and were looking in better shape than I had ever seen them before with Slaven Bilic clearly getting the most out of his players despite a majority of them, including their captain Kane, being deep in the twilights of their careers. In fact, it seemed that ours had been the only group with any form of upset with Portugal by far the biggest nation to have been dumped out the cup. Having seen them up close and personal, however, there was no way I was going to jump off the Denmark ship for them.

I was thrilled to see that we drew arguably the weakest nation left with them only qualifying by the skin of their teeth in third: Ukraine. Whilst they were admittedly just above us in the rankings, they only had a couple of stars in their team and had done nothing so far to worry us. I knew that if we were able to retain the possession and create even just a slither of a chance for Dolberg then we could get the win. Their key player was Victor Tsygankov, who had signed for Tottenham in 2020 for 36m, and if we could stop him getting space on the wing I was confident that their entire game plan would fall apart. The plan worked, but I think that we actually ended up focussing far too much on Tsygankov as whilst we ruined his game and didn't allow him to have a single key pass, it also meant that our own flare was entirely stunted and we only created two big chances in the game ourselves. Fortunately that's all we needed however with us taking one of those chances and securing another dull 1-0 win.

Now that we had gotten so deep into the tournament anything was possible and we all watched intently to see who we would be facing in the Quarters: Poland, or Italy. Annoyingly Italy smashed the team we knew we could beat 4-1 and they were expected to now just do the same to us as well. My players were all exhausted and I wasn't even able to play Dolberg with him having picked up a knock before the game. Despite this, though, things actually looked good for us in the first-half at the San Paolo as we managed to hold onto a goalless draw. I gave one of the most complimentary and rousing speeches of my life at half-time and sent them out with clear instructions to maintain our discipline and to just patiently wait for any chances that appeared. To our delight it looked as though our prayers had been answered as on the 72nd minute their Nicola Zaniolo got himself sent off and in doing so threw the match wide open. I jumped on this beautiful opportunity and demanded passion from the lads as I unleashed the restraints and told them to push forward and attack. Italy dug deep however as only Italy can and soaked up our pressure, waiting for us to tire before attacking themselves. Attack they did and following a beautiful corner Filippo Romagna smashed the ball into the net from close range in the 84th minute.

My European Championship Dream was over and I resigned before the end of that day, despite beating the tournament targets and the FA wanting me to stay.

I was approaching my tenth year as a professional manager, ish, and I felt that I was well overdue my big break and a chance at a genuinely competitive club. Obviously this wasn't about to happen in England or Spain, but I had paid my dues in Asia and surely I could now get a job in the Chinese Super League with a competitive side? It was time for me to clunk my cojones and ego on the table and settle for nothing less than the best.