CHAPTER 2 — THREE CONVERSATIONS
**Copenhagen, Denmark — April 1990**
The office was small enough that Mikkel could touch both walls if he stretched his arms wide, which he'd done exactly once out of curiosity and never again out of embarrassment. A shared floor with a small accounting firm and what appeared to be a man who imported Norwegian furniture and spent most of his day on the phone arguing about shipping costs. The desk cost DKK 800 a month. The coffee machine in the hallway was communal and perpetually burnt.
It was, by any measure, an underwhelming headquarters for a football empire.
Mikkel didn't care. He had a telephone, a notepad, and a head full of thirty years of football history that hadn't happened yet. That was enough.
The system had unlocked the Scout Network feature the morning after Schmeichel signed — a quiet chime, a new tab in the mental interface, and suddenly when he thought carefully about a player, the information came through structured and precise. Not magic. More like muscle memory that belonged to someone else.
He pulled up his three targets.
---
**⚙ SCOUT REPORT — Lars Elstrup**
*Position: ST | Nationality: Danish | Age: 27 | Club: Odense BK*
*Overall: 76 | Potential: 80 | Talent: ⭐⭐⭐*
Finishing 81, Off the Ball 79, Composure 74, Heading 77, Pace 72, Work Rate 83.
*Agent Status: Unrepresented | Contract Expires: Summer 1991 | Wage: DKK 160,000/yr*
*System Note: Elstrup is approachable. Motivated by security, not ambition. Lead with stability.*
---
**⚙ SCOUT REPORT — Kim Vilfort**
*Position: CM | Nationality: Danish | Age: 27 | Club: Brøndby IF*
*Overall: 78 | Potential: 82 | Talent: ⭐⭐⭐⭐*
Passing 82, Vision 80, Tackling 76, Stamina 84, Composure 86, Leadership 79.
*Agent Status: Unrepresented | Contract Expires: Summer 1992 | Wage: DKK 175,000/yr*
*System Note: Vilfort is deeply skeptical of agents. Approach intellectually, not emotionally. He responds to logic.*
---
**⚙ SCOUT REPORT — John Sivebæk**
*Position: RB | Nationality: Danish | Age: 28 | Club: Monaco (FRA)*
*Overall: 77 | Potential: 79 | Talent: ⭐⭐⭐*
Crossing 80, Pace 78, Tackling 75, Positioning 76, Stamina 81, Decision Making 73.
*Agent Status: Weak representation (informal only) | Contract Expires: Summer 1991 | Wage: DKK 310,000/yr*
*System Note: Sivebæk is considering his options. Monaco stint winding down. Open to conversation but will need to see competence before committing.*
---
Three different men. Three completely different approaches needed. Mikkel planned the order carefully — Elstrup first, lowest resistance, good for building rhythm. Vilfort second, hardest sell, needed the most preparation. Sivebæk third, by phone since he was still in Monaco, which was a disadvantage but unavoidable.
He picked up the telephone and started dialling.
---
Odense Boldklub's ground sat in the middle of Funen like it had always been there and always would be — unpretentious, functional, the kind of place that smelled like grass and liniment and didn't apologise for it. Elstrup met him in the car park after training, tracksuit on, kit bag over one shoulder. He was shorter than Mikkel expected. Compact. He had the look of a man who worked very hard and wanted you to know it without him having to say so.
They sat in Elstrup's car because it was cold and neither of them had suggested anywhere better.
*"I've heard of you,"* Elstrup said. *"Someone at Brøndby mentioned your name."*
*"Schmeichel,"* Mikkel said.
*"He didn't say much. Just said you were straight."*
Mikkel took that as the opening it was. He laid it out simply: Elstrup was 27, in the best form of his career, and his contract at Odense was running into its final year. He was earning DKK 160,000 annually. He had no professional representation. If Odense chose not to renew — or offered an insulting figure — he had nobody in his corner to push back.
*"I'm not promising you a big move,"* Mikkel said. *"Not immediately. What I'm promising is that when your contract comes up, you're not sitting across from the club secretary alone with no idea what you're worth."*
Elstrup was quiet for a moment. Outside, two youth players jogged past without looking at them.
*"Fifteen percent?"* he said.
*"Of any deal I negotiate. Nothing unless I earn it."*
Another pause. Then Elstrup nodded, slowly, like a man agreeing to something he'd already half-decided before the meeting.
*"Fine. But if you bring me something stupid, I'm walking."*
*"Fair enough."*
---
**⚙ SYSTEM UPDATE**
*New Client: Lars Elstrup (Odense BK)*
*Contract: 2 years | Commission: 15%*
*Total Active Clients: 2 (Schmeichel, Elstrup)*
*Reputation +12 → 27 / 1000*
*Funds Unchanged: DKK 9,600*
---
Vilfort was harder before it even started.
He'd agreed to meet, but the tone relayed through a Brøndby administrative contact was more *I'll hear him out* than *I'm interested.* He was a man who read people carefully and trusted them slowly. The system's note had said lead with logic, and Mikkel had spent four days preparing accordingly.
They met in a café near Glostrup. Vilfort arrived exactly on time, ordered water, and sat with the particular stillness of someone who had no intention of filling silence unnecessarily.
Mikkel didn't waste time. He pulled out a single sheet of paper — handwritten, which felt more deliberate than typed — with a breakdown of Vilfort's contract situation, his market value relative to comparable midfielders in Belgium and the Netherlands, and a projected negotiation timeline for his 1992 renewal.
Vilfort read it without expression.
*"You did this yourself?"*
*"Yes."*
*"Where did you get the Belgian wage data?"*
*"I have contacts at a Brussels-based intermediary. I've been building a network."* Partially true. Mostly he'd pulled it from memory and reverse-engineered it into something presentable.
Vilfort set the paper down. *"I don't like agents,"* he said, with the directness of a man stating a weather fact. *"I've seen what they do to players. They create anxiety where there wasn't any. They push moves that serve the percentage, not the person."*
*"That's accurate for most of them,"* Mikkel said.
*"And you're different."*
*"I'm not asking you to believe that. I'm asking you to watch for six months and decide then."*
Vilfort studied him. *"A trial period."*
*"Informal. No contract yet. I work on your behalf, no charge, for six months. If at the end of that you don't think I've added value, we shake hands and you walk away owing me nothing."*
That landed differently than anything else Mikkel could have said. The slight recalibration in Vilfort's expression was almost invisible, but it was there.
*"Six months,"* Vilfort repeated.
*"Six months."*
They shook hands. No contract yet. But the system registered it anyway.
---
**⚙ SYSTEM UPDATE**
*New Contact: Kim Vilfort (Brøndby IF)*
*Status: Informal Trial — 6 Months*
*Commission if converted: 15%*
*Reputation +18 → 45 / 1000*
*System Note: Vilfort's trust is worth more than a signed contract. Don't rush him.*
---
Sivebæk was last, and by phone, which was never ideal.
The line crackled — Monaco to Copenhagen in 1990 wasn't bad, but it wasn't clean either. His voice came through with a slight delay that made everything feel oddly formal, like a diplomatic call between two people who didn't quite trust each other yet.
He was polite but measured. He'd heard Mikkel's name through a Danish football contact that Mikkel had specifically cultivated two weeks earlier, knowing this call was coming. Sivebæk was 28, his Monaco stint entering its final phase, and the question of what came next had been quietly turning over in his head for months.
*"My situation at Monaco is complicated,"* he said carefully. *"I'm not going to pretend otherwise."*
*"I know. The new coaching setup there isn't building around the same profile as before. You've had limited minutes this season."*
A pause. *"You follow Monaco closely."*
*"I follow Danish players closely."*
Sivebæk asked two sharp questions — what clubs Mikkel had already contacted on his behalf, and whether he had real relationships at English or German clubs. Mikkel answered honestly: nothing on Sivebæk yet, but Schmeichel's pending situation was already generating correspondence with First Division clubs in England, and those same lines of communication opened doors.
*"I want to stay at a good level,"* Sivebæk said. *"Not drop down."*
*"That's what I'd be working toward. England, Germany, or a top Belgian side. Realistically DKK 280,000 to 350,000 annually depending on the league."*
The line hummed for a moment.
*"Send me something in writing. I'll read it and call you back."*
Not a yes. But a door held open.
---
**⚙ SYSTEM UPDATE**
*New Contact: John Sivebæk (Monaco)*
*Status: Interested — Awaiting Written Proposal*
*Reputation +10 → 55 / 1000*
*System Note: Sivebæk requires demonstrated competence. Close the Schmeichel deal first — it will do your talking for you.*
---
By mid-April Mikkel sat back at his desk and looked at what he'd built in five weeks. Two signed clients. Two warm contacts. A reputation score sitting at 55 that the system flagged as *"above average for month one, exceptional given zero starting capital."*
Outside the Norwegian furniture man was arguing about a delayed shipment again.
Mikkel pulled out his notepad and wrote the names down. *Schmeichel. Elstrup.* Then below, the ones still to come. *Vilfort. Sivebæk. Laudrup. Larsen. Jensen. Christofte. Piechnik.*
The 1992 squad was taking shape in his head like a formation drawn on a tactics board. He just needed to be the man holding the pen when it mattered.
The Danish market was opening. And nobody else had thought to walk through the door yet.
---
A gossip column in BT ran a small item that week — barely four lines, buried between a transfer rumour about Lyngby and a piece on the national team's upcoming friendly. It mentioned a young Copenhagen-based intermediary reportedly working with several Superliga players, quoted an unnamed Brøndby source calling him *"unusual — he actually knows what he's talking about,"* and moved on. Mikkel read it over coffee and said nothing. At Brøndby's training ground, one of the squad's fringe players mentioned it to a teammate while lacing his boots. The teammate shrugged and said that if Schmeichel wasn't worried, maybe there was something there. It wasn't much. But in football, that was how reputations started — not with announcements, but with whispers that nobody bothered to deny.
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