Gamechanger

by Spencer F. C.

  I know I can never get back the extra football experience other players my age have, but I know I can be fitter than them if I really put my mind to it. The way I like to see it is, given that I got into football late, it surely means that I would peak later and have a longer playing career (if that’s not too grand a term for it!), well into my thirties. This is no doubt the same physical intuition that saw me riding an exercise bike the day after a surgeon gouged a hole out of my arm …

  I smashed it on the fitness front. One of the biggest reasons it worked was because I made myself accountable by putting it up on Instagram. If I missed a day, people would ask where my post was. I won’t deny there were days I didn’t fancy it, and probably didn’t even need it, but I kept at it.

  I’ve always eaten pretty well – I’m not bothered about sweet stuff and junk food – and I’ve never been the kind of guy to have a beer and watch the football. So I quit drinking alcohol altogether, and I’ve never looked back. It all added up, and I’d now say I’m definitely one of the fittest players in the Hashtag squad. Which is just as well, because I’m never going to be the best!

  So with my fitness under control, I got together with EE and looked at how we could make this year’s Wembley Cup a day that would top everything we’d done before.

  We managed to get Wembley to agree to sell tickets for the match, which would give us a crowd of 20,000 on the day, and then we took a leaf out of the book of some of the teams I’d played against with Hashtag United and set about getting some ringers involved.

  By teaming up with EA Sports, the makers of FIFA, we were able to recruit six legends for the teams, ex-pros who would hopefully lift the day to some dizzying new heights. As before, we would be building a series around the lead-up to our return to Wembley, but this time I wouldn’t be up against MiniMinter and the Sidemen. I would be facing a team led by my former vice-captain Joe Weller. His Weller Wanderers would be taking on Spencer FC in the most spectacular Wembley Cup yet.

  In the first episode we each recruited some familiar YouTube faces. My brother, Seb, was my first pick. He was desperate to play at Wembley again after getting a taste of it with Hashtag, and his new YouTube channel Seb on Golf now qualified him as a YouTuber!

  I’ve mentioned that Seb loves his golf, but perhaps I haven’t made clear how good he is at it. He’s won the Trilby Tour – a national amateur golf tournament which is broadcast on Sky Sports – twice, the only person ever to do so. He’s a seriously tough competitor who thrives on the big occasion, and I wanted him by my side at Wembley.

  Joe Weller upped the ante by recruiting those seriously sick skillers the F2 Freestylers, as well as ChrisMD, Hurder of Buffalo and his good pal Theo Baker, while I got a freestyler of my own in the form of two-time Wembley Cup goal-scorer Daniel Cutting. I also got another very skilful player with Manny, but this time he’d be staying on my side for good!

  Joe’s team looked good but I did sense a lack of defenders in his squad, so I saw an opportunity. I got my old mates Poet and Vujanic, a defender and goalkeeper respectively, and the guys broke out into a rendition of our old Wembley Cup song in their own unique style.

  Because Joe was available to appear in every episode of the series, we were able to do what we originally planned for the first Wembley Cup and build our teams together, onscreen, by doing challenges. The winner of the challenge would get the legend that was up for grabs in that episode, while the loser would get a YouTuber chosen by the public in a poll.

  The first challenge was ‘The Flying Squad’, which would take place on the water. Vujanic was very quick to point out that, given that he wouldn’t even jump in a puddle in the first series for fear of getting wet, it probably wasn’t a wise move to have him on my team for this. That was a huge oversight on my part – I forgot that Vujanic was terrified of water and it was the production team’s idea not to tell the lads what we were doing until we got down to the location.

  Each person from the teams had to wear water-jet boots that would enable them to ‘hover’ in the middle of a lake in front of an inflatable goal and face three shots. The team who saved the most won the challenge. The prize? The legendary Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel in the winner’s team.

  George Benson, who looked pretty comfortable out there, managed to save one for their team, and we were up next. Vujanic – an actual goalkeeper – stayed true to form with his aversion to water and chickened out once again, leaving me to make a complete mug of myself as I just couldn’t get the hang of the hover boots. Unbelievably, I managed to keep one out, though it did come straight at me.

  I needn’t have worried about anyone remembering that, however, as Vujanic was eventually coerced into competing. He said no to the hover boots and instead crouched on a paddle board and tried to keep the shots out with his paddle. Poet was no better, bottling it and getting a ringer in his place – the former England goalkeeper David James, who was coaching us that day. Even his skills were of little use on the water, as Joe Weller and ChrisMD got the points to make sure Schmeichel was a Weller Wanderers player. First round to Joe.

  Former Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler was the next legend up for grabs in the ‘Gunk Tank’ challenge, in which a player from one team aimed three shots at targets while his opponent stood in the gunk tank. Hitting the target would gunk the opposing player. Seb and the F2’s Jeremy traded blows – and gunk – from six yards, before Joe and I proved we were both as bad as each other from 12 yards as we both exited the gunk tank without a drop of the sludgy stuff on us.

  It was left to F2’s Billy and Daniel Cutting to show us how it was done from 18 yards, and a gunk-soaked Billy won 2–1 in the battle of the freestylers, which meant Fowler would be turning out for Weller Wanderers at Wembley. And to rub salt – or at least some gunk – into my wounds, Billy and Jeremy gunked me F2-style, with an outrageous bit of skill before hitting the bull’s-eye. I was soaked as I opened the public vote for my team between Caspar Lee and Joe Sugg. Another win for Joe but I wasn’t too worried. His team might have been perfectly designed to win these YouTube challenges, but whether it would win him an 11-a-side game of football was another question indeed.

  Robert Pirès was the prize for the third challenge, in which I’d take a team onto the ‘World’s Worst Football Pitch’ against Joe’s side. We had some expert coaching from Ray Parlour about how to deal with the surface. He’d thankfully calmed down after the drubbing Hashtag had dished out to the Vauxhall team he’d played in on a significantly better surface at Wembley. He’d probably forgotten all about it, and I wasn’t going to bring it up …

  It really was the world’s worst pitch: uneven, filthy, waterlogged in parts, more like a building site than a place for football, and probably not the best to be playing on to try to remain injury-free for a big upcoming match at Wembley! Thankfully, everyone remained unscathed, even if Jeremy managed to get himself booked, and the surface, while not quite nullifying the F2 boys’ skills, at least made it a slightly more level playing field. Not literally, of course.

  We managed to handle the conditions better and won the game 2–1. My first challenge victory, and what a prize – Mr Robert Pirès. ‘Magnifique, Spencer FC,’ said the Arsenal and France legend.

  ‘Action Replay’ was a challenge in which each team had to re-create a legendary Wembley goal, namely Didier Drogba’s incredible strike for Chelsea against Tottenham in the 2012 FA Cup semi-final. Plenty of kids up and down the country would have recreated that goal in their back gardens after the game, and we just had that little bit of extra pressure of the camera and our judge, former England striker Emile Heskey, holding up his score Strictly Come Dancing-style. The prize: the legend that is five-star skiller Jay-Jay Okocha.

  It was close, but Joe Weller and the F2 Freestylers beat me, Daniel Cutting and Manny. We were disappointed but weren’t too down about it: we knew there’d be no prizes for artistic merit at Wembley, where it would be all about the scoreline.

  Seb and
I took on Joe Weller and Theo Baker in the next challenge, called ‘Strike Force’, where we dribbled around a course and had to shoot at targets on the way. It was a close contest, and Seb did himself no favours at all by stacking it on his first shot and hurting his back, but it would take more than that to keep him out of Wembley. We won the challenge, and we got a legend we really needed for our team: former Netherlands international striker Patrick Kluivert. The team was coming together nicely, and it looked like it was going to be an incredible line-up at Wembley.

  We did a poll asking the viewers which team people thought would win, and Joe was getting the backing on that – a big part of which, I assume, was because he had the F2 boys at his disposal. As the series went on, little seemed to change in the viewers’ minds, judging by the below-the-vid comments. I was happy with the underdog status, and, just as I had with Hashtag United, I felt I was building a good all-round team.

  Before the final pre-match episode, all that changed. Both the F2 boys were carrying injuries around this time. Billy was scheduled to have a hernia operation after the Wembley Cup, and Jeremy had a floating bit of bone around his ankle that needed an operation too. As they’re a double act, it made sense for them to have their operations at the same time to minimise the amount of time they’d be out of action together.

  The week before that episode, Jeremy’s ankle went and he needed to have his operation straight away, which ruled him out of the Wembley Cup. The boys were then left to make a decision about whether Billy still played in the Wembley Cup, meaning the F2 would be out of action for longer, or bringing his operation forward to minimise the amount of time they’d miss as a double act. They chose the latter, which meant they were both out of the Wembley Cup.

  We completely understood their decision, but we were gutted they wouldn’t be there, as they’re a great part of an occasion like that. They were gutted too – they love the Wembley Cup – and, given how good they are, it meant the teams had gone from Weller Wanderers looking like the better team on paper, to our side looking stronger.

  Something needed to be done, but first there was the not-insignificant matter of the last legend to play for, and this was a particularly special one for a defensive player like me: Jamie Carragher, the absolute rock at the heart of Liverpool’s defence for so many years and now popular pundit on Sky’s football coverage.

  I really wanted this one, not least because I knew getting Carragher in to play centre-back alongside Poet would free me up to play in a different position at Wembley, and when I learned that the challenge would be a FIFA match, I thought I had this one in the bag. Joe had never beaten me at FIFA. But then True Geordie, our presenter throughout the series, had a surprise for us. In shades of some of my early videos on my channel, it was to be a battle of the mums: Joe’s vs my mum in a winner-takes-Carragher penalty shootout. The tension was unbearable …

  Or at least it would have been if either of them could have figured out how to hit a penalty anywhere other than straight down the middle. It wasn’t exactly YouTube gold, but Joe’s mum, who was an utter legend by the way, eventually succumbed to the might that is Sindy CB, and Carragher would be starting at Wembley for Spencer FC.

  All of which stacked the odds against Weller Wanderers still further for the final, but he had some surprise reserve players ready for his team to make things fairer. My mate Jimmy Conrad, former captain of the USA national team, would tighten things up at the heart of the Weller Wanderers defence and effectively provide a fourth ex-pro for him, and YouTuber Elliot Crawford, who is a decent centre-back, would join his team too.

  Now, you can’t replace the F2 Freestylers in any YouTube team, sure, but in a way these changes were of benefit to Joe’s team. He didn’t have much of a defence before, and with us having players like Robert Pirès and Patrick Kluivert up against them we could have run riot. At least with Jimmy now marshalling his defence they’d have a more solid base.

  But it was all just speculation by this point anyway. It was time to play the match.

  I was determined to do everything I could to give our team the edge. Joe is a good mate and a great player, a lead-by-example type of captain, whereas I’m definitely not one of the best players in the team, so I have to make up for that in other ways – like trying to get the psychological edge.

  On the day of the match our team were having lunch at one table in the hotel, while Joe and his team were sitting at another table. I decided to get up in the middle of eating and give a little speech to the team, firstly to bring everyone on my side together and feel included, because not everyone knew each other that well, and secondly because I knew Joe’s team would be watching and thinking, Hang on, why hasn’t Joe done that for us?

  I even commented on the fact that they were watching us, and they’d be watching us on the pitch later winning the trophy, all as a bit of fun, really, but also all’s fair in love and war and we were there to win. This kind of thing went on all day, but it was in the dressing room before the match that I delivered my most important words.

  We had Patrick Kluivert, Jamie Carragher and Robert Pirès there for our pre-match talk. These guys have won all there is to win in football between them. I knew from experience that these games didn’t mean an awful lot to players who had seen and done it all at the highest level. Playing at Wembley in front of 20,000 people just wasn’t a big deal to them.

  I wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t just a corporate day out. This was the biggest game of our lives, and I wanted them to be motivated to play as well as they could because if they did, they’d be our heroes for ever.

  So I said to them, ‘It’s an absolute privilege to be playing alongside World Cup winners, Champions League winners. It means a lot to us. Just to give you a little bit of context. This is our Champions League final. This is our World Cup final. It doesn’t get bigger than this for us boys. So anything you can do to help us, use your skill, use your technique to help us get to the next level, we’ll be eternally grateful. Let’s get out there and let’s win this!’

  We all cheered. Maybe I was just imagining it from one defensive player to another, but I really felt like I might have got through to Jamie Carragher. Then again, it might just have been the pre-match adrenaline playing a few games with my own mind.

  Walking out to a crowd of 20,000 people who would usually be separated from us by a computer screen or a phone was just incredible. Millions more were watching on YouTube too – more, in fact, than watched the Champions League final live on YouTube in the UK. This felt like a moment.

  The match kicked off, and Seb and Manny combined well early on, with Manny flashing his shot just wide. Perhaps the indomitable presence of Manchester United legend Peter Schmeichel in bright-pink kit in the goal was enough to put him off.

  Jamie Carragher made himself known to Joe Weller with the kind of strong challenge that had secured him legendary status at Anfield, but Joe wasn’t the type to be subdued by that, and he started mouthing off at Carragher. All good-natured banter, of course. In fact, Joe had even indicated to me before the game that his game plan was to try to get in Carragher’s head, something I felt might be a bad choice of strategy considering Carragher’s mental fortitude.

  From the resulting free-kick, some 30-plus yards out, Robbie Fowler fired it straight into the top corner. Vujanic couldn’t blame his fear of water on this one – it was a great strike.

  We came back strongly with our legends Patrick Kluivert and Robert Pirès linking beautifully, before Pirès finished it sumptuously. 1–1. Game on.

  Daniel Cutting was busy trying to chip Peter Schmeichel every time he was through on goal, but the Great Dane wasn’t to be beaten. And then Kieran Brown, then known as FootballSkills98, finished well for Wanderers after some good work from Theo Baker … even if Vujanic may look back and feel he should have done better.

  True Geordie put it cruelly in his commentary: ‘One keeper is world class, the other is a YouTuber.’ Ouch. No one has it tougher on t
he field than a keeper.

  Speaking of world class, Jay-Jay Okocha was every inch the showman I’d both hoped and feared he would be, and he was running the show in midfield with some outrageous flashes of brilliance. He hit an absolute peach of a lob … which just sailed over. Close!

  But anything a former professional footballer can do, a YouTube star can do better. Or at least they could in this match. Theo Baker picked up the ball in his own half and provided the greatest piece of magic of the match when he slalomed through our entire team, Poet, Jamie Carragher and all – I tried my best to get there from right-back but just couldn’t quite make it in time to stop him – and finished smartly in what was surely one of the great Wembley goals (scored by a YouTuber). In fact, the goal was actually voted the best Wembley Stadium moment of 2016 in a public vote, beating playoff-final goals and Beyoncé concert performances in the process.

  My initial reaction, after busting a gut to try to tackle him, was fury. How did we allow that to happen? But once I’d caught my breath, I had to take my hat off to him. Even though it was against my team, I look back on that moment fondly, watching a 20-year-old kid live out his wildest fantasy in front of a crowd at Wembley. Amazing. True Geordie’s enigmatic commentary made it even better too – ‘You’ve done it, son.’ It gives me goose bumps whenever I watch it back, so I can’t imagine how Theo feels.

  Back to the game though, and we were 3–1 down. Not so amazing.

  But we weren’t out of it. Daniel Cutting had more luck as provider when he teed up Patrick Kluivert, who stroked a silky finish into the net from outside the box. The Dutchman wasn’t doing much running on the pitch, but he was still a Rolls-Royce of a player, and that finish positively purred. Come on, boys!