at the airport Jörg bought Robert a copy of the Record with its headline ‘Enke signs’. Robert saw how happily he was smiling on the front-page picture. Now he had only one goal: to get away from Lisbon. He was too exhausted with fear to appreciate that someone who flies away has to arrive somewhere and keep going.
He and Teresa went on holiday. The dunes of southern Holland with their windswept scrub began just behind the kilometre-long beach at Domburg. The clouds were so low they seemed to have settled on the sand hills. Robert watched the dogs as they ran around.
Neither of them mentioned their evening in Lisbon, but there was nothing tense about their silence on the subject. It simply didn’t seem to matter here.
We have four weeks until training starts at Benfica, Teresa thought. All kinds of things can happen in four weeks.
Meanwhile, at Norbert Pflipsen’s agency they were planning the future. Flippi made a call, to Edgar Geenen, the sporting director at 1860 Munich. Would they still be interested in signing Robert? But the prospect of plunging into a legal dispute about a player who hadn’t wanted to join them a few weeks earlier and who had now signed for another club didn’t strike Geenen as very enticing.
The only way out was to persuade Robert to go to Lisbon after all.
Flippi phoned Jupp Heynckes.
‘My dear friend, all this can’t be true!’ cried the coach.
‘Tell me about it! Jupp, I understand you, I’m on your side. The boy’s just a bit rattled. The paparazzi in Lisbon intimidated him, the reception was too much for him.’
‘Can you actually still see the reality? He’s got an excellent contract, because I stood up for him!’
‘I know that, Jupp, and I’ll tell the boy that too. We’ll try and sort it out. Give him a bit of time.’
He had no time, he had a season to plan. Heynckes’s tone was close to that of a coach speaking to his team in the changing-room at half-time when they were 4–0 down.
A short time later a report came from Portugal: Heynckes had signed another new goalkeeper. Jörg entered the new man’s name in a search engine on the internet, which was then in its infancy. Carlos Bossio. Four years older than Robert, silver medal winner in the 1996 Olympic Games with Argentina, 146 games in the Argentinian top flight for Estudiantes. The accompanying photographs said the rest. ‘A huge guy, 1.94 metres, and a chin like Sylvester Stallone,’ Jörg recalls. ‘That was a goalkeeper with a top-class profile.’ Benfica were no longer counting on Robert, no longer trusted him to turn up after his hasty departure. That was the message carried by the report from Portugal.
Jörg told Robert about it as if it couldn’t have gone better for them. ‘Now you have no pressure in Lisbon – they’ve fetched a goalkeeper over from Argentina. He might play at the beginning, but that mightn’t be all that bad. You can calmly settle in.’
With his skin tanned a deep bronze and his fair hair shining after his summer holiday, Robert said of course he understood that he had to go back to Lisbon, he’d signed a contract.
Teresa organised their move out of Gierath. The day before they set off for Lisbon they watched the removal men carrying the boxes out of the attic flat; the cases and bags for the flight were kept separate, in the kitchen. After the removal van had driven off, Teresa checked the empty flat one last time in case she ’d forgotten anything. It was Saturday; the weekend silence of the village matched the emptiness of the flat.
Robert came over and stood in front of Teresa. ‘I’m not coming.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not coming. Where’s the car key?’
Teresa was too perplexed even to think, let alone do anything.
Once he’d gone, she rang his mobile. He’d turned it off. She called his parents. ‘If your son rings, try and come up with some way of calming him down. He’s just cleared off.’
She drove to Rheydt to see Jörg and Dörthe. Not
He and Teresa went on holiday. The dunes of southern Holland with their windswept scrub began just behind the kilometre-long beach at Domburg. The clouds were so low they seemed to have settled on the sand hills. Robert watched the dogs as they ran around.
Neither of them mentioned their evening in Lisbon, but there was nothing tense about their silence on the subject. It simply didn’t seem to matter here.
We have four weeks until training starts at Benfica, Teresa thought. All kinds of things can happen in four weeks.
Meanwhile, at Norbert Pflipsen’s agency they were planning the future. Flippi made a call, to Edgar Geenen, the sporting director at 1860 Munich. Would they still be interested in signing Robert? But the prospect of plunging into a legal dispute about a player who hadn’t wanted to join them a few weeks earlier and who had now signed for another club didn’t strike Geenen as very enticing.
The only way out was to persuade Robert to go to Lisbon after all.
Flippi phoned Jupp Heynckes.
‘My dear friend, all this can’t be true!’ cried the coach.
‘Tell me about it! Jupp, I understand you, I’m on your side. The boy’s just a bit rattled. The paparazzi in Lisbon intimidated him, the reception was too much for him.’
‘Can you actually still see the reality? He’s got an excellent contract, because I stood up for him!’
‘I know that, Jupp, and I’ll tell the boy that too. We’ll try and sort it out. Give him a bit of time.’
He had no time, he had a season to plan. Heynckes’s tone was close to that of a coach speaking to his team in the changing-room at half-time when they were 4–0 down.
A short time later a report came from Portugal: Heynckes had signed another new goalkeeper. Jörg entered the new man’s name in a search engine on the internet, which was then in its infancy. Carlos Bossio. Four years older than Robert, silver medal winner in the 1996 Olympic Games with Argentina, 146 games in the Argentinian top flight for Estudiantes. The accompanying photographs said the rest. ‘A huge guy, 1.94 metres, and a chin like Sylvester Stallone,’ Jörg recalls. ‘That was a goalkeeper with a top-class profile.’ Benfica were no longer counting on Robert, no longer trusted him to turn up after his hasty departure. That was the message carried by the report from Portugal.
Jörg told Robert about it as if it couldn’t have gone better for them. ‘Now you have no pressure in Lisbon – they’ve fetched a goalkeeper over from Argentina. He might play at the beginning, but that mightn’t be all that bad. You can calmly settle in.’
With his skin tanned a deep bronze and his fair hair shining after his summer holiday, Robert said of course he understood that he had to go back to Lisbon, he’d signed a contract.
Teresa organised their move out of Gierath. The day before they set off for Lisbon they watched the removal men carrying the boxes out of the attic flat; the cases and bags for the flight were kept separate, in the kitchen. After the removal van had driven off, Teresa checked the empty flat one last time in case she ’d forgotten anything. It was Saturday; the weekend silence of the village matched the emptiness of the flat.
Robert came over and stood in front of Teresa. ‘I’m not coming.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not coming. Where’s the car key?’
Teresa was too perplexed even to think, let alone do anything.
Once he’d gone, she rang his mobile. He’d turned it off. She called his parents. ‘If your son rings, try and come up with some way of calming him down. He’s just cleared off.’
She drove to Rheydt to see Jörg and Dörthe. Not
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