Chapter 1

The rain streams down his face mixing with his tears and diluting the flavour as it settles on his bottom lip. He can't help but let his head drop into his lap as the weight of his misery threatens to crush him. The unfairness of the past few years and the grief from a dead dream feels too much to bear. An unremarkable jolt in his knee while playing a casual small sized game with his friends had been the start of all of it, not that he would have known at the time. The bravado of youth had made him delay visiting the hospital, especially with a big game for the youth team, which he didn't want to miss, coming up. He had been hoping to make an impact on the senior team scouts but not in the way he eventually did when he had to be carried off the pitch on a stretcher.

A high cross had entered the box, which had been his bread and butter, so he launched himself in the air at the ball. The set piece instructions he had received in the past were followed to the letter delivering a clean connection to the ball while directing it at the ground. The moment he connected he knew the ball was going in and it was at that moment that the opposing defender collided with his body. The collision wasn't particularly tough, but it redirected his legs in the air a little which would have made his eventual landing more difficult, but at the time he didn't know how much. The moment he touched the floor, he knew something had gone completely wrong not experiencing any support in his left knee. His teammates had just begun to celebrate the goal when a heart wrenching scream punctured the atmosphere.

The next thing he remembered was the doctor telling him that his anterior cruciate ligament had torn, and it would be a long road to recover. That had been the start of the visits to specialists, physiotherapists, and the team doctors. At the time, he knew it would be a little while before he was able to come back but he didn't know that he would never return to the levels he had once been at. The resulting loss of flexibility after all the treatments, combined with his newfound tendency to protect his knee and not truly commit to any move had left him far off the pace of his contemporaries. The time he had missed out on which would have been crucial to his development only made him sink further compared to his rivals and teammates. That time had been the most difficult in his life, he struggled to understand what he was doing wrong on the pitch when he made mistakes, attempted to avoid contact as much as possible. The fog only cleared from his eye when a coach who he considered like family told him plainly that after his injury he played with fear, and this isn't a sport where you can do that. He knew it was true and wondered if he could ever get back to what he used to be like. The dream he had carried inside him since childhood wasn't one that he could give up on easily, so he kept working at it. He kept working when they dropped him from the starting line-up, he kept working when they promoted people that used to sit on the bench for him and he kept working when he looked around and realised most of the players, he had risen through the ranks with were not playing with him any longer. The faces of the fellow players in training with him got younger and younger but still he wouldn't progress. The club gave him every opportunity but the constant trips to specialists and the recurring injuries meant he had no choice. The only light he found in that time was coaching and management, the club had offered him the opportunity to undertake his badges to distract him when he was injured and keep his mind focused on the sport and he took to it like a duck to water. The chance to take his ideas to the pitch and understand the game from the side-lines felt valuable to him but he knew he couldn't do this anymore. The club didn't have to tell him, and his family didn't either, but he knew trying to take two paths would often lead to not getting very far with either. He had to give up on playing completely which was so much easier than it was said. The dream of playing professional, carrying his local side Birmingham City to glory and going down as a great in the game just meant too much to him. He had come to Cannon Hill Park alone, to make that decision once and for all. The torrential rain meant that everyone else had gone inside but he just stared out over the huge lake and allowed himself to really feel the emotion of the last few years.

The regrets filled up inside him and he decided to purge them once and for all. Taking a deep breath, he screamed his lungs out until it made him cough and he instantly felt a little relieved. He looked around to make sure no one had seen him, but he was alone apart from a few startled ducks in the lake. His phone vibrated and he looked down to see a message from his mother. The message said that a soul is not charged except that which is in its own capacity. The intention being that the challenges he is facing are ones he can overcome, and it was hearting to feel the love from his biggest supporter. He made a promise to himself then that he would become the greatest manager ever and take this local side of his to the very heights regardless of which challenges stood in front of him.