Алексей Авдохин - The Scout or Welcome to South Bermondsey

To my son, who doesn't really like football and my wife, who hates it,and to my translator, who knew nothing about football.

All of the characters and events portrayed in this story are fictional, any similarity with real people or events is simply coincidental.

The Cameroonian was unbelievably good, incredibly quick, and tough as nails, and on the pitch a truly malevolent force against the opposition. In the first half alone, he wreaked havoc from the right flank, as their left defence failed miserably to keep up with him over and over again. The young bloke was playing his very first match for our team but played so tightly with his teammates that it truly seemed he had spent more than even one season on the team, twice he dangerously hammered the ball into the penalty area and carried out a couple of brilliant passes putting the ball right in the strike zone of the goal, all of which he did while at the same time working from behind and helping Iron Mike with defence! Then at the twenty-sixth minute he carried out such an amazing demonstration of dribbling that our manager Harris was overheard muttering to himself something like "oh, what a prick", which Old Man Harris considered to be the highest praise possible for a player.

His name was Fabrice, Fabrice Zua, and according to his passport he was only nineteen years old. However, that is not a die-hard fact, as we all know how things really are with these blokes from Cameroon, Ghana, or the Ivory Coast. Although in this case, Francis Collins, who tipped me off about the brilliant find and got his five percent cut on the deal, swore by all the gods above and even on the health of his poor elderly mother, that the bloke was in fact really and truly only nineteen.

"Bloody hell, Robbie, are you blind?!" Old Man Harris screamed as he jumped up and ran far beyond the boundaries of the technical zone. "Can't you see him for Christ’s sake?! The bloke is standing there like a lemon!!! Pass him the sodding ball, you imbecile!!!"

Davey Roberts was our main CDM and his main task was tearing the legs off of their attacking midfielders, but sometimes he also managed to make a mint pass. And Davey went too far and the pass was so perfect that even Toni Kroos would probably have envied it. Then the Cameroonian burst into the zone.

It was a pleasure watching their left fieldsman, a red-haired Scotsman, with a ponytail and beard like Alexi Lalas, trying to catch up with our Cameroonian. What a sight! The bloke flew around like a meteor. He took control of the ball and went to the right. Their midfielder tried to catch him the player in the centre left shifted their focus too, you could see their line-up bursting at the seams, and Fabrice did everything right. He didn't overdo moving around the ball and didn't give it away ahead of time, but then passed it a little diagonally, as if on a silver platter. And Alan Parker, our main striker, arrived just in time. Then it was just a matter of technique. A kick – and goal!

I automatically checked the stopwatch. It was the forty-second minute and the score was one zero. Way to go! That’s our team!

"Alex, bloody hell! Where did you find this bloody cannibal?" Johnny Martin, the assistant coach almost strangled me with his huge paws.

"Come on blokes!!! Don't let up!!! Get it together!!!" Old Harris's mug didn't move a muscle, but he looked rather pleased.

"Come on! Let's go! Come on!!!"

There was almost no time left until the break.

We were escorted to the locker room like heroes. The «Den» roared like we were winning against the Spurs or Chelsea, not some bloody Reading. However it was still nice.

We went out for the second half in a good mood and even the first-half thrashing of young Fleming by old man Harris for his error didn't serve to dampen anyone's spirits.