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La Discoteca


haze.13

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La Discoteca

Football Manager 2008 (8.0.2)

Running too many leagues running to remember right now, umm Italy, England, Spain and a few more. My only attempt to publish an FM08 story, many more were started but never made it far enough for my liking. The working title for this was 'Too many balls on the dance floor', but I have gone with the more classic title that you now see. Let the fun begin.

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Draining a bottle of iced water. Sweat rolling down his cheek and dripping off his chin. Raising his hands to the small but rampant crowd, Pecs queued up his laptop and threw a scratched-up old LP on the decks (it was one of favourites), a guaranteed crowd favourite. The climax.

Click.

(The acid beats kick in softly at first before rising, rising to the... 3 and 2 and 1)

Whir, click.

'Tonight you're mine completely,

You give your love so sweetly...’

Will you love me tomorrow. Could there be a more apt track for this night? The Shirelles doing Carole King, fifties cool layered over a tingling beat. It may not have been the biggest club (or ‘disco’ as they liked to call them on the continent) that Pecs had played, but it was New Year’s Eve, he was being paid and he wasn’t about to become choosy. It was five minutes to midnight. 2008 was finally coming to an end and Pecs couldn’t wait. Sure this past year had been the best of his life but the future was so much more exciting than the past.

Javi was in the crowd as the final track before midnight was easing down. He was more than likely the only one in the room that was not off his face, but that mattered little. Javi was a professional. He took what he did seriously and that included New Year’s Eve in Milan, he knew most of his team mates would be out on the town as well, and he knew that they probably weren’t being so careful about what they were doing. Besides, Javi had set his eyes on a blonde waif-like figure that had been gliding around the club in a yellow dress. Javi knew what he was going to be doing to bring in the New Year.

Pecs had a pretty good idea that Javi would be looking after himself. Glancing out over the crowd he spotted his Spanish friend, they had been living together for the past six months and Pecs was warming to his dry wit and innate ability to do the right thing. Something Pecs certainly did not possess. “Ah yes, the blonde. So there will be company for breakfast then. Swedish?” Pecs was talking to himself out loud but with the noise of the club he may as well have been thinking it. It was a habit he had found himself doing more and more lately.

The inevitable countdown came and went. Pecs blasted out a corny jazzed up version of Auld Lang Syne for the punters. There was gratuitous pashing on the dance floor and the revelry continued into the dark night of the concrete Milanese winter. Pecs packed up his decks at four am. It had been a good show, he was happy. Javi left the club at one-fifteen with his wit fully about him and a blonde in a slinky yellow dress by his side.

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Signor Lupo Affamati was a bit of an enthusiast you could say. After seventy-seven years in this world Affamati had done it all, and if you speak to him he would tell you that he’s seen it all too. More money than sense is a term that is knocked around when the successful businessman comes up in conversation, although that could be misconstrued as Affamati has indeed earned every Lira (and subsequent Euro) that he has to his name this day. A gentle man of nearly six foot despite his age, as a younger man he will tell you that he once cleared six foot, though it appears age has shaded him slightly. Fashion is non-negotiable with Affamati, after all he made his living alongside the fashionista of Milan. Commercial property was (and still is) his game, the nightclubs were no doubt his biggest career move. La Discoteca (as he called them) came along at just the right time and worked hand in hand with the burgeoning disco movement. Affamati made millions in the seventies out of his nightclubs. At the height of the disco revolution he owned as many as five in Milan alone, these along with a handful more in Rome, Florence and Naples made Affamati a player of the biggest order. He was successful, wealthy and in his own world of glamour and glitz he was pure celebrity.

Affamati loved the eighties, however the eighties never loved him back. A time of excess, sitting just on the wrong side of fifty he chose to celebrate in style - some called it a mid life crisis - he merely felt that he was reaping the rewards of his good business of the previous decade. His red Maserati was the favourite toy of his very healthy garage. It all started to go wrong when some mismanagement begun to creep into Affamati’s clubs. La Discoteca began to crumble. The hands on approach that had grown the empire was now responsible for its failings. Affamati was nowhere to be seen. He spent weeks on end at his home on Lake Como, he drank to excess - lived it up - everyone saw what he and his red Maserati were up to. You couldn’t miss them. There were weeks, even entire months when he never set foot in Milan, let alone his clubs. The signs were there for all to see.

As things soured for the Affamati empire the funds began to dry up. The first signs of desperation kicked in midway through 1983, Duran Duran’s hit song Hungry Like the Wolf had made it to number three on the American Billboard charts and the band was reportedly raking it the profits. Affamati wanted a cut. The thing was, at the height of the Milan disco movement Affamati was widely known as the Wolf. No-one dared to cross his path for fear of fatal retribution, history tells the story a little differently. As it happened Affamati actually paid well to have his reputation enhanced, enhanced by the spawning of a few urban myths relating to those (often fictional) characters that had dared to cross him. As the Wolf, Affamati took offence to Simon Le Bon and Duran Duran’s use of his name and the reputation he had built/bought throughout the seventies.

The lawsuit unfortunately didn’t exactly go as planned, after a long six months of appeals and further appeals Affamati was forced to pay Duran Duran’s legal fees (along with his own), it was decided that Le Bon and his band had no case to answer. There was little substance to Affamati’s claim and any similarities were coincidental. The hungry wolf had lost his latest battle and the decline would be set to continue.

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