Free Web NovelChapter 15: Chapter 15: Ten Minutes II
"So what can you actually do?" Alan asked.
Garcia had known the question was coming since the moment the father gave him ten minutes.
He took a breath. "Anyone who promises a contract after twenty minutes of football at a public trial is lying to you. I am not going to do that. A club placement, a specific trial, a signed deal — I cannot guarantee any of those things today, and it would be dishonest of me to suggest I could."
The father said nothing.
"What I can do is build a proper pathway," Garcia said. "A written assessment of Jamie’s right-back profile, a focused training plan around the specific things that need work, and the right trial environments. Not paid showcases, not open sessions where nobody relevant turns up. I know which clubs are currently looking at full-backs, and I know which youth setups would suit Jamie’s profile. That is the actual work."
He let that land before speaking again.
"But here is what I believe. Not what I can guarantee, but what I believe. I have been in football long enough to know what I am looking at, and I believe that if Jamie does the work and follows the pathway properly, I can develop him into one of the best right-backs this game has seen."
The silence stretched.
Jamie’s father looked at him with an expression Garcia could not read cleanly. It was not disbelief, and it was not belief either. It sat somewhere between the two, in the place where a person decides whether what they have just heard is madness or conviction.
"That is a very large thing to say," the father said.
"I know it is."
"He’s sixteen. He just got released."
"Yes," Garcia said. "And those two things are not connected the way you think they are. A release at sixteen means an academy made a decision about a player who had not finished developing yet. It does not close the road."
Alan Holt looked at his son for a moment. Jamie was still watching Garcia and saying nothing, which helped more than anything Garcia could have asked him to say.
"And if it doesn’t work?" the father said, turning back. "If this pathway of yours goes nowhere and Jamie spends another year following someone who turned out to be talking nonsense?"
"Then I have wasted my time and you have wasted yours," Garcia said. "I earn from Jamie’s contracts. If there are no contracts, I earn nothing. That means my interest and your son’s interest are the same thing. I don’t eat if he doesn’t work."
He let the answer stand without dressing it up.
"Are you signing him now?" the father asked. "Is that what this is?"
"No," Garcia said quietly. "That is exactly what this is not."
"Representation should not be decided beside a fence after a trial. You should know who I am, what G11 is, what the plan actually looks like in writing, and what Jamie would be agreeing to before anything gets signed. That takes more than ten minutes in a car park." He paused. "Jamie should have time to think about it. You should have time to ask me questions properly. If you want to look into my background and my licence, you should do that. That is not a problem."
The father looked at Garcia, then at the fence post where Garcia had set his notebook down, before his eyes came back again.
A car started somewhere in the car park behind them, and from the far pitch a coach’s whistle gave one short blast to call in the stragglers.
"Do you have a card?" the father asked.
Garcia drew one from the slim case in his jacket pocket and held it forward.
The father took it and read it.
Gabriel Garcia
Founder / Licensed Football Agent
G11 Sports Management Ltd
The man read it for longer than the card required. There was not much on it to read, because Garcia had made it simple on purpose: a name, a title, a company name, a number, and an email. Nothing to hide behind.
The father slid the card into his jacket pocket.
"We need to get going," he said, looking at his son briefly before turning back to Garcia. "Are you free tomorrow?"
Garcia kept his voice level. "Yes."
"Not here," the father said. "Somewhere we can actually talk. I want a longer conversation before anything else."
He did not give a location or a time.
"I’ll text you."
"That works for me," Garcia said.
The father nodded once, then put a brief hand on Jamie’s shoulder and moved with him toward the gate.
Jamie glanced back before they reached it.
Garcia gave him a single nod and held it until the boy turned away.
He stayed near the fence until they had cleared the car park gate and the grey jacket had disappeared between two parked cars.
He did not smile while Oliver was still twenty yards away finishing a conversation. Whatever this was, it was not something to show on his face in a public field.
No signature, no contract, only a card in a pocket and a text that had not arrived yet.
He had walked over with nothing but six years of scouting knowledge and a G11 business card, and Alan Holt had pocketed the card before asking whether he was free on a Sunday.
For today, that was enough.
The system appeared quietly in his field of vision.
[SIDE MISSION COMPLETED]
Mission: Convince Jamie Holt’s Guardian.
Objective Complete: Follow-up meeting secured.
Rewards:
— Negotiation SP +10
— Client Management SP +10
Garcia looked at the update for a moment, then let the panel close.
He turned back toward the pitch, which was almost empty now. A groundsman was walking the far touchline and picking up cones with the slow, unhurried pace of someone doing a job they had done a thousand times. The goals stood bare, the bibs were folded in a pile near the technical area, and every family that had stood along that fence for two hours had scattered. The whole thing that had held sixty-three players and a morning of football was already starting to look like an ordinary field.
There was no signature, no contract, and no text yet, but Alan Holt had taken the card, and Jamie had looked back before leaving.
Garcia picked up his notebook from the fence post, slid it into his jacket, and walked toward his father’s car.
He still needed to come back for Elliot Ward.
