The Football Agent System

Chapter 46: Chapter 46: They’re Talking About Jamie

The development group came straight back.

Their number eight demanded the ball off the restart and lifted the tempo on his own, and Kade changed his approach. He stopped trying to out-think Jamie and went at him with his body instead, shoulder first, leaning into the space near the touchline, trying to bully through where the football had not worked.

Jamie felt it. Kade was older and heavier, and the shoulder moved him half a step off his line.

But he did not panic and lunge the way he would have on Monday. He took the contact, found his feet again, got his body back across the inside, and forced Kade to give it backward.

His chest was heaving now. The week was in his legs and the older bodies were heavier than anything he had defended against before, and every recovery cost more than the last.

"Liam, drop. Drop now."

Liam moved before Jamie finished the sentence.

"Noah, inside’s covered, go."

Noah checked over his shoulder and stepped out.

Jamie pointed, called, then bent for one breath with his hands on his thighs before forcing himself upright again. The goal had only made the older side come harder, and the next attack was already coming.

Jamie won one more ball, this time off the overlapping left-back, and shepherded it out for a throw with the last of what he had.

Then he heard his name from the touchline.

"Jamie. Come in."

He looked over, confused. The match was still alive. He still had legs, just about, and he wanted the next ball.

He opened his mouth to say he was fine.

Then he saw Mercer’s face, and the words did not come. There was nothing to argue with there. It was not a question and it was not a punishment.

"That’s enough for today," Mercer said.

Jamie jogged off with his lungs burning and his legs gone heavy. When he reached the touchline, Mercer took the bib from him and nodded toward the bench without another word.

Jamie looked back once.

Kade was already standing with his hands on his hips, waiting for the restart. The development coach was still holding his sheet. Mercer did not send Jamie back out.

Noah gave him a small nod as he passed.

Finn tapped his shoulder.

Liam said nothing. But he did not look away either, and from Liam that silence said more than a word would have.

The match did not stop because Jamie had.

The boy who came on for him was not bad. He could run, and he put himself in roughly the right places. But he did not read Kade the way Jamie had learned to over the week, and the development group felt it almost at once.

Kade started getting the ball wider, with more time on it. The overlapping left-back found space that had not been there twenty minutes ago. The U18s began dropping deeper on that side, defending the lane instead of owning it.

Garcia watched without saying anything.

Before Jamie came off, Kade had kept turning back toward his centre-backs. Now he was receiving on the half-turn, lifting his head, and pointing the left-back into the space behind.

Beside him, Alan saw it too, even if he could not have put it into the words Garcia would have used.

"It’s different now," Alan said quietly.

"It is."

Garcia did not say more than that, and he did not need to. Jamie stood on the touchline with the folded bib in his hands, watching Kade get the next ball with room to run.

The goal came late.

The development group worked it down the right, Jamie’s right, and this time nobody took it away from them. They pulled Liam too deep, forced Noah to slide across to cover, and opened the inside.

Kade combined with the left-back and pulled it back from the line. The number eight arrived late into the box, and the cutback found him through a tangle of bodies.

THWACK.

It went in through legs the keeper could not see past.

2–2.

On the touchline, Jamie watched it go in with the folded bib gripped in both hands. His jaw set, and his eyes stayed fixed on the patch of grass near the corner where Kade had received the first pass.

Alan glanced sideways at Garcia.

Garcia did not look back at him. He kept watching the clock.

The last few minutes broke loose.

A pass bounced off Noah’s shin and rolled behind Finn. The development centre-back sliced one clearance straight into touch. Mason shouted himself hoarse at the back post, then had to throw himself across it when one long ball dropped over everyone and almost stole the match.

Boots dragged through the grass. Players stopped checking their shoulders early. The next pass was rushed before the first touch had settled.

Then the whistle.

PHEET. PHEET.

2–2.

There was no celebration and no collapse, because nobody had won anything to celebrate. Players tapped hands. Some bent over with their hands on their knees. The coaches were already folding their sheets and talking quietly to their staff, the way people do when the watching is the work and the watching is over.

Jamie stood at the edge of it and did not know what 2–2 meant.

He looked at the scoreboard, then at the right side of the pitch, then down at the folded bib in his hands.

The players went inside.

Jamie collected his bag from beside the pitch and walked toward the building with the rest of them, glancing back once.

Garcia gave him a short nod.

Jamie waited half a second, as if there might be something after it. There was not. He turned and followed the others in.

Then it was just Garcia and Alan, near the approved area at the edge of the grass.

Alan started toward the nearest member of staff almost the second the boys were gone.

"Don’t," Garcia said, low. Not sharp. "Not yet."

"I only want to—"

"I know. So does every parent who’s ever stood here." Garcia kept his eyes on the building. "Let them come to us. The first thing they learn about Jamie shouldn’t be that his people couldn’t wait an hour."

Alan’s jaw tightened. He looked from Garcia to the staff member, then back toward the door Jamie had gone through.

His foot settled back beside the rope.

It was a few minutes before one of the academy staff came over, a clipboard under his arm, his tone friendly and giving nothing away.

"Good week," he said. "He’s done himself no harm at all."

"Thank you," Garcia said.

"The football staff will sit down and go through the whole week properly before anyone says anything firm. We’ll come back to you once they’ve spoken."

"And Jamie?" Alan said. "Where does he—"

The man looked toward the door the coaches had gone through, then back at Alan.

"Jamie’s one of the players they’re sitting down to talk about," he said. "That’s as much as I’ve got for you today."

Then he nodded to both of them and walked back toward the building.

Alan let out a long breath and shifted the strap of Jamie’s bag higher on his shoulder, gripping it tighter than he knew.

Garcia watched the door close behind the staff member, the same door Mercer and the development coach had gone through, where the decision was already moving without either of them in the room.

His hand twitched once near his phone, then stopped.

Beyond the glass, two coaches had already sat down at a table. One of them placed a sheet flat in front of him. Another leaned back, arms crossed, and said something Garcia could not hear.

Garcia stayed where he was.

"Come on," he said to Alan. "We’ll hear when we hear."

Behind the glass, the coaches were already sitting down.