Football singularity

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[02-07-2021 | DFB Hotel, Saint Petersburg, Russia | 06:00 BST]

[Rakim POV]

My eyes opened a full three minutes before the alarm was set to go off, the morning sun hitting my face. I lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, listening to Wirtz snore like an industrial machine in the next bed, and then I swung my legs out from under the duvet and reached for my gym bag.

Today was game day, the Quarter-final against Spain to boot. It almost felt like getting ready to go to war. I dressed quietly in the dark, pulling on shorts, an Adidas-sponsored team compression top, and a hoodie, before slipping my feet into a pair of trainers. I grabbed my headphones, checked my phone one last time, and found a message from May sent at some ungodly hour.

It read {had the craziest night, call you after the game, love you, go score, don’t do anything stupid}. I smiled at it, typed back a heart and {Odds are I will}, then muted the screen and slipped out the door.

The hotel gym was empty at this hour, just me and the low hum of the air conditioning. The grey Saint Petersburg dawn bleeds through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the morning. I didn’t do anything heavy and merely ran through Simba’s matchday activation circuit from memory.

It consisted of resistance bands, hip mobility work on the mat, a few sets of explosive step-throughs to wake up the fast-twitch fibers, and a long, patient stretch for the hips to avoid cramping. Twenty-five minutes in, the door opened, and Goretzka wandered in, looking mildly annoyed to find the gym already occupied.

"Of course it’s you," he muttered, dropping his towel on a bench.

"You should be used to it by now," I said, mid-stretch. "When have I not been the first in the gym?"

"Do you even sleep?"

"Sure, I do, I’m still part human."

He shook his head and started his own routine on the far side, and we worked in comfortable silence after that. By the time I racked the last band and toweled off, the grey light had turned pale gold, and my body felt loose, warm, and awake. Ready, or as close as I was going to get ten hours before kickoff.

~~

[07:40 BST — Hotel Restaurant]

Breakfast consisted of the usual carefully calibrated spread that the nutritionists who traveled with us instructed. Laid out in buffet style for us, foods containing carbohydrates and moderate protein. I loaded my plate with scrambled eggs, grilled chicken, avocado, my portion of overnight oats, and the protein shake.

Wirtz slid into the seat across from me, looking like he’d been resurrected against his will, his hair a disaster, dark circles under his eyes. "You look like shit," I told him cheerfully.

"You kept me up," he grumbled, stabbing an omelet. "I couldn’t fall back asleep. While you fell back asleep like a baby, did you have sleeping pills in that tea because that’s not possible?"

"Well, who told you to wake up in the first place?" I said, and Kimmich, two seats down, snorted into his coffee. "What? You got some sage advice for him?" Kimmich Merley shrugged and focused on his plate. The table was quieter than it had been before the Switzerland game.

~~~

[09:30 BST — Training Ground]

Morning training was light, as it always was on the day of a match. Bosz would’ve called it a switch-on session, and Löw ran it much the same way: activation drills, rondos, some patterning work with the ball, nothing that would leave a single gram of energy on the grass that we’d need tonight.

The tactical work after was brief. Löw walked us through the shape without a ball, the positions, the pressing triggers, and how we’d sit against Spain’s midfield triangle. The focus was on breaking up the cohesion of Spain’s midfield trio as they broke into the final third.

I figured that the thought process was that pressing high against them would have us gassed in the later portions of the match. Despite Madrid arguably being the most successful club in Spain, it was the Barca system that was implemented. Which made sense since they built it from the ground up, starting with the academies, while Los Blanca was a survival system of the greatest stars who clocked into the same squad.

~~~

[14:30 BST — Gazprom Arena]

Still tired from my noon nap, I followed the rest of the guys into the waiting Gazprom Arena. The enormous, empty sixty-eight thousand-seat steel structure waited to be filled, the pitch a perfect green rectangle under the closed roof. We walked it in tracksuits and slides, trying to acclimate to the space where we would battle in two hours.

"It’s kinda amazing that countries that are not popular for football build such amazing stadiums," Flo muttered in awe as we stood at the center circle, the walls of the spherical dome hugging us. "The beautiful game really has no borders."

"Yeah," I said, tilting my head back to take in the full sweep of the roof arcing over us. "Makes you want to score more goals, right?"

"I’d settle for some playing time for now," Flo complained, though he was still turning in a slow circle, phone up, recording a video he’d probably never post.

"Don’t we all," I shrugged, walking a slow lap of the center circle, feeling the give of the turf through my slides. "So long as it doesn’t rain, this pitch is perfect."

He gave me a look that told me he was thinking something stupid, and I let it go. The rest of the walkthrough was the usual, keepers testing the run of the ball off the goal frames. What I always found odd was the way the trainers inspected the grass as if it were their own yard.

It wasn’t like they had spent hard-earned money to create it. Plus, unless the pitch was covered in snow, ditches, or drenched with puddles, the match had to be played. Yes, certain ways of cutting and maintaining the pitch affected how fast the ball moved, similar to how the golf green operated.

But they were all professional, and a majority of us have played on horrible pitches at least once or twice in our early careers. Adapting to the environment was a basic requirement to play the game. Fifteen minutes later, we filed back out, and the empty bowl swallowed our footsteps behind us.

~~~

[15:05 BST — Home Dressing Room, Gazprom Arena]

The dressing room quickly became busy with players, trainers, and coaches getting ready for the pre-match training. I promptly changed into my training kit, leaving the joggers on and lacing up my purple S1’s. A loud tapping on the large tactical board at the front of the room resounded, and the chatter died down to a low murmur as Löw stepped in front of it.

He didn’t say anything at first, just let the chatter die down in the silence. Bauer, behind him, began writing up the starting eleven with a marker in the formation we would adopt. I scanned, trying to see if there would be anything different from the same old; we’ve had all tournaments.

Low seemed to have the favorites that he trusted to get the job done, and he wasn’t wrong, as they were mostly stable players. Being players with experience in the major five leagues also helped. ’Wait a minute,’ My brain momentarily short-circuited after seeing Wirtz listed as the left wingback and Kai and Jaml playing the two cam roles.

’(Sigh) Guess I’ll be catching up on a nap,’ Releasing whatever negative emotions that bubbled up, I tap Wirtz on the shoulder. "Good luck."

"Rakim, Leon, Leroy, Timo," Löw’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I looked up to find him looking at me for a moment before moving on. "You start on the bench tonight. This is not a punishment, and it is not a statement. Spain will control the ball, that is a certainty, and the first sixty minutes will be about structure, patience, and not losing our shape chasing possession we will not get back. I want experience and legs that can hold a line against Pedri and Koke for an hour."

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TO BE CONTINUED...