Free Web NovelChapter 39: [39] "Rose Part 3"
FC Normandie arrived at Stade Valois with the confidence of a side that had nothing to prove and nothing to lose.
Thirteenth in the table. Two wins from twelve across all competitions. A squad assembled from free transfers and optimism. Their manager was a 57-year-old Frenchman who had been relegated twice in the last decade but he wore it like a badge. He had a whole lot of fighting spirit.
They were not supposed to be a problem.
[System Notification]
[Objective: Score. You are one behind in the wager. Every Open Play goal matters now.] ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
[Reward: +5 General Points]
[Penalty: If SC Valois loses this match, TES will permanently restrict Predatory Aura usage to once per match]
"Normandie," Luc said to himself, clipping his shin pad. "Let’s play ball."
---
The pitch was dry but the surface was good. No wind, no mud and no excuses written into the conditioning of the pitch.
Normandie set up in a 4-5-1. With five across the middle. Their lone striker pressed the center-backs aggressively to force long balls. Their wingers tucked in, narrow and deep.
They weren’t trying to play football. They were trying to make football impossible.
Luc recognised it in the third minute and began switching between his role and the second-striker role without instruction.
Henri hadn’t asked him to. He did it anyway.
Cillian Doyle was in Hugo’s place again. He ran, he contested for 50-50’s and he gave Mateo cover.
But he still was not the Hugo the team needed.
The passes that Hugo would have found in the blind spots between the Normandie lines, Cillian couldn’t find. The beautiful game that Hugo read by instinct, Cillian had to calculate, and the calculation always came half a second too late.
Minute 21. Luc dropped into a central pocket, peeled off the Normandie holding midfielder and received the ball from Mateo.
Immediate double press. Both central midfielders of Normandie came simultaneously, which was a disciplined and practiced play.
Luc managed to get the ball out. But barely. It ran off to Lacombe with too much weight and the Normandie left back intercepted it cleanly.
The counter was fast.
Three passes. Their lone striker broke ahead of Ekberg’s recovery run. Blažek came out but the striker was clinical.
1-0.
The stadium went quiet, the crowd had seen this before. There wasn’t any shock in the stands rather resignation. Their team had been putting in a lot of bad performances lately.
Luc walked back to the center circle.
The Tunnel Vision Suppressor allowed him to pick up a wider scope of movement in the channels. The right foot was sharp and his Vision had permanent upgrades behind it.
None of it mattered much because he could only shadow an actual creative midfielder, he wasn’t one in principle.
The next thirty-five minutes were a war of attrition that SC Valois were heavily losing.
Normandie held their shape with a discipline that was almost insulting. They didn’t press high. They didn’t take risks. They simply held their five-man midfield and dared SC Valois to break through it.
Without Hugo, the daring yielded almost no response from SC Valois.
Lacombe worked. Cillian worked. Idriss, starting again in a wider position this time, ran channels that Luc pointed at, and arrived at crosses a yard too late.
Luc himself created two half-chances and one shot that was blocked inside the box. He created a chance from a cutback that Cillian arrived onto at the wrong angle and skied the ball over the bar. They were working without reaping any fruit.
Half-time. 1-0.
---
Henri’s instructions in the locker room were thorough. His ideology was slowly shifting from a defensive and compact structure to something that now relied on individual brilliance.
He spoke about second balls and shape compactness. He changed the pressing instructions too. He moved Lacombe deeper and asked Idriss to push higher.
The tactical shift made sense on the board. In the fifty-third minute it fell apart.
A Normandie corner. Very well-rehearsed near-post routine. Hadj tracked the wrong runner and the center-back who arrived unmarked at the far post didn’t miss.
2-0.
Hadj put both hands on his head and stared at the ground.
The home fans in the stadium found a lower level of silence. They had watched their lower mid-table projected team evolve throughout the first half of the season. It wasn’t the same team they were witnessing now.
Luc tried again and again. The last thirty-five minutes were the best individual performance he had put in for quite a while. He dropped, he turned, he threaded, he drove. He pulled the last Normandie center-back out of position twice and put balls into pockets that should have been converted.
Idriss hit the post in the sixty-eighth minute. Mateo had a header cleared off the line in the seventy-fourth.
Normandie held on. It was just one of those games.
Piii Piii Piiii
The final whistle sounded.
2-0.
---
The locker room wasn’t loud, infact it had the worst kind of silence instead. Everyone had done what they could and it still wasn’t enough.
Cillian sat with his face in a towel. Certainly not crying.
Idriss was already undressing with the steady, practiced efficiency of a man compartmentalising.
Mateo sat with his elbows on his knees and his captain’s armband on the bench beside him.
Henri came in, looked at the room, and went straight to his office. He closed the door without a word. He also knew they tried, what more could he tell them, ’put in more effort’? ’try harder next time’? They did all that already.
Luc dressed quickly. He didn’t shower. He pulled on dark joggers, a plain black jacket, and walked out before the post-match media had finished setting up.
[System Notification]
[Objective failed: Did not score]
[Penalty active: Predatory Aura restricted to once per match (permanent)]
[Updated Wager Tally: Open Play Goals — Beaumont 9 | Fontaine 11.]
[Fontaine scored twice against Belleville tonight. One composed penalty and one Puskas worthy finish. He is now two Open Play goals ahead]
He read it while walking towards the car park.
Fontaine had eleven.
Two clear from his nine now.
He put his hands in his jacket and pushed through the heavy exit door with the side of his shoulders into the cold night air.
The car park behind Stade Valois was half-empty at this hour. His Porsche was parked near the far end, under one of the working lights.
Most of the crowd had already gone. A few lingering supporters near the barrier, some staff in high-visibility vests packing equipment.
Luc walked with his bag over his shoulder and his head not down, never down, forward and forward only. Already thinking about the Phocéen game. Already thinking on the angles and spaces he needed to create without Hugo. Already calculating.
He was ten steps from the Porsche.
"Luc!"
The voice came from his left. Sharp and unplanned, not the shout of a journalist or the controlled call of a club employee.
He stopped walking.
The voice was a woman’s. It was close, not from outside the barrier.
He turned.
She was standing near the wall, maybe fifteen feet away. Long pink hair visible at the bottom of a dark cap she pulled low on her head. A plain grey face mask sat across the lower half of her face. She wore a dark coat carrying no club colours. No press lanyard(badge or identification). No phone raised for a photograph.
She had clearly been waiting for him. The way she was standing, weight forward on her front foot, hand slightly raised from her side, she had been building to this for however long she had been standing there.
She walked toward him.
The pink hair moved with her. The cap stayed low. In the light of the car park she was not dressed for an encounter she had planned well. She was dressed for a made up scenario that she was now set to face.
She reached him.
She was slightly out of breath. Not from the walk but from finally making the decision to talk to him.
Her eyes were the only thing Luc could read, and what was in them was a woman who had made a choice that had surprised her as much as it was surprising him.
They looked at each other.
She took one short breath.
"Hi."
