The Football Agent System

Chapter 25: Chapter 25: Crownbridge Pressure I

Oliver crossed the last of the open ground without hurrying.

He came from the reception side, past the organizers’ table, moving like the distance had already agreed to let him through. The first session was over. Balls were going back into bags, a coach was calling numbers, and the parents were starting to fold up the morning behind the rope. None of it touched Oliver. He walked through it as though it had been arranged for him.

Jamie was being moved back toward the accommodation block with the rest of the group. He slowed enough to look over his shoulder once, then kept walking when a staff member said something to him.

Garcia kept his face still and his hand closed a little tighter around the folder.

He is not here for the air.

Reece Mallory was Oliver’s player, and Reece had been one of the cleanest right-backs on the pitch all morning. That was the cover. It gave Oliver a reason to stand at this barrier, talk to staff, and walk through the part of the camp where G11 was still a name nobody had heard of.

Oliver reached Alan first.

"Mr. Holt." The smile arrived before the hand did. "Oliver Whitmore. Crownbridge Sports Group."

Alan took the hand. He did not smile back.

"I represent Reece Mallory," Oliver said. "The right-back in the group with your son. I’ve been keeping half an eye on that part of the pitch this morning."

Alan glanced toward the players walking off, then back. "Right."

"It’s a strong group this year. Better than last." Oliver said it easily, the way a man comments on the weather. "Some real talent in the wide areas."

"You came over to tell me that?"

Oliver laughed, short and warm, like Alan had said something clever. "No. I came over because I recognise a parent who’s taking this seriously. Most of them stand at the rope and pray." He let that sit for a second. "You’re watching like someone who’s been told something."

Alan did not answer that.

His eyes moved to Garcia, then came back to Oliver.

"You know him?" Alan asked, tilting his head toward Garcia.

Oliver looked at Garcia properly for the first time, and the smile stayed exactly where it was.

"We’ve crossed paths." He turned back to Alan. "Years back. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, because it’s true. Garcia has an eye. He always has. He was at Lille on Paulo Mendes before anyone outside Portugal could spell the name." He nodded as if conceding a point in Garcia’s favour. "Spotting a player was never the question with him."

Alan waited.

"What was the question, then?" he asked.

Oliver let the pause stretch a half-second longer than it needed to.

"Whether he’d still be around to finish the job."

Garcia did not move.

He felt the line land, felt it aimed past him at Alan, and he let it sit in the open air without reaching for it.

Alan was watching him now. Not Oliver. Him. Watching to see what a man did when someone opened him up like that in front of a father he was trying to win.

So Garcia did nothing for a moment. Then he answered without heat.

"He’s right about one part," he said.

Alan turned.

"Spotting a player is the easy half." Garcia kept his voice level, the same voice he had used in Alan’s living room. "Anyone with a good eye can stand at a fence and pick the talent. The work is everything after that. The training. The trust. The paperwork that gets a sixteen-year-old into a programme like this one without a single page missing. Picking the right trial, the right club, and keeping a player away from the wrong people while he’s still too young to know who they are." He paused. "That’s the half that matters. That’s why I’m here, and not at home telling people I once found Paulo Mendes."

Oliver’s smile did not break, but it adjusted, the way it had at Croydon when Charlotte said the name.

"That’s a fair answer," Oliver said. He did not push it. He did not need to. "All I’d say, Mr. Holt, is this. Crownbridge has handled boys like Reece for years. The structure, the contacts, the placements. It’s not glamorous, it’s just done." He glanced at Garcia, then back. "A father should keep his options open. Especially while his son hasn’t signed anything."

"Jamie hasn’t signed with anyone," Alan said. "Not him. Not Garcia."

Oliver gave a small nod, as if that was a useful thing to learn rather than the thing he had walked over to confirm.

He reached into his jacket and drew out a card.

"If you ever want a second opinion," he said, "you call that number. No pressure, no obligation. Just a conversation."

Garcia did not tell Alan to refuse it.

He watched Alan look at the card, then at him, and he understood the shape of the test before Alan had finished forming it.

"Take it," Garcia said.

Alan’s eyes came up.

"You’re Jamie’s father," Garcia said. "You should know every option in front of you before you trust anyone with his future. Including me." He kept his hands relaxed at his sides. "An agent who tells you to throw away another agent’s card is telling you he’s worried about the comparison. I’m not."

For the first time, Oliver’s polite smile thinned at the edges.

He recovered it almost at once, but the second was gone and Garcia had seen it leave.

"Sensible man," Oliver said, to nobody in particular. He nodded to Alan, then to Garcia, the nod a touch shorter than the one before. "Enjoy the week. It’s a good camp."

He turned and walked back the way he had come, unhurried, already lifting a hand toward someone near the reception building.

He had not raised his voice. He had not insulted anyone to their face. He had crossed the grass, planted what he came to plant, and left without leaving a mark anyone could point to.

That was the part Garcia respected and disliked in equal measure.

Alan held the Crownbridge card for a moment, then slid it into his jacket beside the G11 one.

"Is he good at his job?" he asked.

"Yes," Garcia said.

"Is Crownbridge bigger than you?"

"Much bigger."

Alan looked at him, waiting for the part where Garcia softened it. It did not come.

"Then tell me why I shouldn’t sit down with him properly," Alan said. "He’s got the contacts. He’s got the name. He’s standing here with a player who looks better than mine."

"You should sit down with him, if you want to," Garcia said. "I told you that at your house and I meant it." He let the next part come slowly. "But before you do, ask him the same three questions I asked you to ask. What he saw Jamie do before Jamie touched the ball this morning. What Jamie has to fix before Friday. And what the step after this camp looks like, exactly, not in general." He paused. "Then ask me the same three. Don’t pick the one you like more. Pick the one who answers with football."

Alan studied him for a long moment.

There was a coach somewhere behind them calling the last group off the far pitch, and the flags above the fence moved once and went still.

"You don’t make this easy on yourself," Alan said finally.

"Loyalty isn’t an argument," Garcia said. "I’d rather you trusted the work."

Alan gave a short nod and let it go. He did not say which way he was leaning, and Garcia did not ask.

But the trust window was still open. Oliver had only stepped inside the frame of it, which was worse than being shut out, because now he was somewhere Garcia could not see.

The next morning began with stopwatches and cones laid in straight lines.

Day Two was physical testing and technical assessment, and the camp ran it like a production line. Sprint gates. Repeat-sprint sets. Change-of-direction drills marked out in tight squares. Then receiving stations, passing patterns, and finishing channels, each with a coach holding a sheet.

Garcia watched from the approved area with Alan a few feet to his left and Rafi on his right. The rope kept all three of them off the grass, and the camp staff ran everything inside it. Rafi kept his voice low enough that only Garcia caught most of it.

"He’s tight again," Rafi said, the first time Jamie received under a coach’s gentle press and played it square. "Same as Croydon. The ball gets to him before his head does."

Garcia said nothing and wrote the station number down.

It was not pretty viewing. Beside the sharper academy boys, Jamie’s ball work was ordinary. His first touch under pressure still betrayed him at the wrong moments, and twice the safe pass came out of his feet before he had finished looking for anything better. The coaches did not stop the line for him. The line did not stop for anyone. The mistake simply travelled to the next station with him.

Reece was a different picture entirely.

He received clean every time, opened his body before the ball arrived, and moved the ball on under pressure without it ever looking like pressure. The coaches used his name inside the first hour. By the second they were using it the way you use a benchmark.

"That one’s a footballer," Rafi muttered. "No argument."

Then the repeat sprints came.

Jamie’s first number was good. His third was better than players who looked twice as strong. By the sixth he was still hitting the gate while bigger boys faded a stride behind him, and one of the coaches looked up from his sheet, found the lanyard, and wrote something down.

"There it is," Rafi said. "He’s better chasing than receiving. Always has been."

It was not praise. It was not dismissal either. Garcia wrote it down anyway, because it was true.

The finishing drill brought the noise.

A striker called Dylan O’Connor had taken over the channel, and he was loud about it. He bullied the smaller defenders off the ball, leaned into every duel, and put two clean finishes past the keeper in the first set. A father two spots along said his name to the man beside him, and one of the organizers glanced over more than once.

Garcia watched him with more interest than he expected to feel.

Dylan was strong and certain, and at this age strength and certainty looked a lot like talent. He had scored. People had noticed. That was usually enough to start a conversation by a fence.

Garcia waited until Dylan jogged back toward the cones, well inside thirty metres, and confirmed the scan.

[GOLDEN EYE: PROSPECT APPRAISAL — SCAN 1 / 3]

Name: Dylan O’Connor Age: 17 Position: Striker

Current Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1.8) Potential Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2.5)

Key Strength: Physical aggression in duels Key Weakness: Poor movement when marked tightly Recommended Training Focus: Off-ball separation runs

[Weekly Uses Remaining: 2 / 3]

Garcia read it once and felt the first small drop.

Two and a half stars. A useful player. The kind who would score against soft defending and disappear against good defending, who would bully a trial and struggle in a league. Worth a place at the camp. Not worth being G11’s first serious gamble.