Plymouth smelled blood.

  Their midfield realized within ten minutes that ours couldn’t hold water in a bucket, never mind a football in pressure. Every time Milner or Okafor received it, a white shirt jumped in, another cut off the lane, and the person who was supposed to be their right-side striker, Hurst, hovered just behind like they’d been briefed on our fear.

  Both of their wingers abandoned the chalk on their boots and drifted into the half-spaces, tight channels where neither Milner nor Okafor ever bothered to track. It was textbook ‘bait the double pivot, then knife through the gap’ football. They’d probably spent weeks drilling this, and we were the unfortunate mannequins providing confirmation.

  Sure enough, Okafor took a touch too heavy, and their nearest midfielder pounced. The moment the ball popped loose, the next pass was instant.

  A through ball. Straight into Parron’s path. My heart jumped, but the weight wasn’t right. It skipped off the turf, carried half a yard too far.

  Reeves swept across, slid with perfect timing, and hooked it away like he was clearing a spider off a wall. Kowalski got the ball and passed left to Palmer who made a run forward, relieving the pressure.

  Relief washed over me, but only for a second. I’d seen the pattern: Win the duel in midfield → winger in the half-space → Parron timing his run between lines → first-time ball over the top.

  Mitch must’ve seen it too. He had to. If he didn’t adjust soon, the scoreboard would.

  Parron jogged back past me, checking over his shoulder, nodding as if to tell the midfielder, Right idea. Next one’s mine.

  In my head, I was already drafting the instructions: push our mids up to challenge their mids, drag our wingers closer to the center, and form a compact diamond that surrounds their mid pair. Cut off the source of distribution. If we could get the ball back in their own half, Dom and Rothschild could do their thing—quick one-twos, little rehearsed patterns I’d seen them drill plenty of times in training.

  But Mitch wasn’t calling for it. What was he even waiting for?

  We didn’t have the ball enough to play our football. Every time we tried to string a sequence together, it felt like moving through quicksand. Still, we pushed wide to Rothschild again, hoping to stretch them. He took it cleanly, rolled it back to Reeves, who immediately looked for a forward pass. Dom was free for a moment, opened his body, tried to carry it past their center-backs—but the Plymouth duo was glued to him, perfectly positioned, never a gap to exploit.

  Reeves reset, passing back to Dom, and for a heartbeat, I thought maybe we’d finally break through. But it wasn’t enough. The ball was sucked back into their half, and the pressure hit us again. Their right-back got the ball off Rothschild cleanly, and as soon as he did, he lifted his head up to look for their left central midfielder, Eagles. I stared at Eagles and saw that he had a Composure of only 70. With enough numbers, we could totally get him to panic and lose the ball in his own half.

  But nobody challenged them. Okafor had already jogged back, probably thinking about intercepting the eventual through ball instead.

  I yelled before the pass could be made. “Okafor! Step up! Pressure him!”

  Too late. The ball had already left the right-back’s boot, sliding cleanly to Eagles, who made a crisp first-time pass to Hurst. Kowalski was marking Hurst, but that meant Hurst had dragged Kowalski out of position like a curtain being pulled aside. He was going to go for a one-two with Schwarzer, and I couldn’t allow that. I darted into the space Kowalski had vacated, fully intending on wrestling Schwarzer and making it as hard as he could for him to get through.

  And then Schwarzer did something ridiculous: a cheeky backheel straight to Parron, who had timed his run perfectly. I didn’t anticipate it, and I had zero chance to intercept.

  Yet, for all the bright ideas Schwarzer had, his passing had let him down.

  Schwarzer’s pass was heavy and sloppy. Parron had already sprinted past it, so the ball rolled harmlessly behind him.

  Reeves was already there, scooping the loose ball, pushing it forward while Rothschild drifted inside, pulling the defenders with him. Dom slid into the half-space on the right. The triangle we’d drilled a thousand times practically formed itself: Reeves at the base, Dom and Rothschild linking in the channels. Finally, some order amid the chaos.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Pressing on the right was the right option after all, because Parron couldn’t be bothered to track back. That meant we could overload them on this side, recycle possession, and force their backline into uncomfortable positions. Every time we turned it over, we could punish the channels they’d left exposed. He looked sturdy enough at first glance, but there was something in his positioning that made me pause. He wasn’t stepping out aggressively when Rothschild received it inside, and he was drifting wide too often, leaving gaps between him and his centre-back.

  I checked their LB’s stats.

  His decision-making is ass! We can overload! Do it! Rothschild and Dom, make runs at him!

  They did.

  The sudden double run at Kassa scrambled their center-back’s internal compass instantly. You could see the hesitation—as if he couldn’t decide whether to follow Dom into the channel or cut across to close Rothschild’s inside lane. Donovan on the left sensed it too and surged forward, dragging another white shirt with him. For the first time all match, their back line didn’t look like a brick wall, but looked like someone had yanked one brick out and the rest wasn’t sure whether to shift or stand still.

  If there was ever a moment Mitch actually did shove numbers forward, it was when he smelled a scoring chance. The rebound off Kassa’s shin spun back toward Dom, awkward height, awkward angle. Dom tried to shape a pass toward the striker Roberts, and Roberts tried to bring it down with his back to goal, all limbs and no leverage.

  The lanky frame helped him win the initial touch, but not the second. He cushioned it back, almost apologetically, straight into the pocket where Milner was charging.

  Finally. Someone arriving from midfield.

  Milner struck through it, low and true, but it clattered off a defender’s thigh and skidded loose to Okafor. Okafor swept it left, tidy enough, to Donovan, who had stayed high and wide. Donovan took a touch, shaped for the cross, but his delivery smashed straight into the centre-back’s shins.

  The penalty area turned into a pinball machine. Bodies, ricochets, shouts, legs stabbing at whatever moved. I genuinely couldn’t tell what was going on anymore. Instinct pulled me a couple of steps toward the kickoff zone, just enough to shorten the sprint if everything collapsed. I kept my eyes glued to Schwarzer drifting on the far shoulder. One lucky bounce, and he’d be off like a hare on a motorway.

  Somehow, the ball inexplicably rolled neatly toward Milner at the edge of the box. It was one of those situations where no tactic could ever prepare you for it—pure chaos resolving into a gift-wrapped miracle.

  Come on. Hit in low and left. You know their keeper hates shots down there.

  Milner stepped in, opened up, and lashed a skimming drive, hopefully toward the bottom-left. The exact zone we’d picked out in the pre-match briefing. Their keeper needed a week’s notice to get down that side.

  Has to be a goal—

  Except it was Milner’s left foot. His non-dominant, decoration-only left foot.

  The ball launched skyward like it had been sworn into NASA, soared over the bar, over the stand, and began a new life somewhere in orbit. It was never seen again.

  Kowalski, hands on hips, shouted upfield, “Oi, Milner! The goal’s the other direction!”

  Kowalski’s shout was still echoing when I realized this was my window; probably the only one I’d get. The ball had bounced into touch and everyone was resetting. If I was going to get to Mitch without looking like I was undermining him in front of the lads, it had to be now.

  I jogged. Mitch clocked me coming and rubbed his nose impatiently immediately. From what I learned of him, he probably hated the implication that anyone else saw the game clearer than him.

  A familiar blue shimmer clouded my vision.

  I swear I could feel my heartbeat sync with the UI ping.

  Great. A persuasion check. Against Mitch. The same man who’d just told me to stay in my lane the other day. Surely I could make it out of this alive.