Chapter 102: [102] "Real test of the new lineup"
Idriss Konaté.
The Ivorian striker was holding his bag, his face a mask of restrained intensity.
"You played well today," Idriss said. The words sounded like they tasted bitter in his mouth, but he forced them out. "The new system fits you."
"You--," Luc thought very well if he should say what he wanted to say.
"What?"
"You played like premium dogshit. I have never seen you play as bad. What the fuck was wrong with you, huh? You want me to be the starting striker? You must love being a benchie."
"I don’t understand--"
"No more pity for you. Talk to me when you’re serious about being my rival." Luc said flatly, turned, and walked out of the locker room.
Idriss watched him go. The camaraderie they had built in the first half of the season wasn’t exactly dead...at least not yet, but it had been shoved into the backseat by the brutal reality of elite football. Only eleven men could start.
And Idriss didn’t play like he deserved to be one of them.
[System Notification]
[Warning: That was incredibly mean. You thanked the team cohesion by yourself.]
[Locker Room Cohesion: 55% (Well done...being sarcastic)]
---
Saturday evening. February 3rd.
Matchday 20.
In the first fixture against Corse in their own stadium earlier in the season, Luc only had 9 league goals. He was entering this match with 19.
The 2-1 victory was also memorable because Cillian got his first league goal to win them the match.
Stade Valois was vibrating. The night air was freezing, but the thirty thousand fans packed into the stands didn’t care. They had spent the last three days reading headlines about Valérie Laurent’s multi-million euro spending spree. They had seen the photos of Bachra Goza, Bense Baini, Alex Sordell, and Leo Hernandez holding up the black and gold shirt.
They were here to see their new team and how well they would play.
In the tunnel, the noise from the stadium was cinematic as it channeled itself down the concrete walls.
Luc stood at the front of the line, the captain’s armband tight around his left bicep. Behind him, the new formation lined out. Klaus looked bored, cracking his massive knuckles. Sordell was adjusting his hair, projecting total arrogance. Gabriel was bouncing on his toes, wearing short sleeves despite the cold temperatures. Hernandez and Amadou stood side-by-side, an intimidating wall of youth and Ligue Alpha experience.
The SC Corse players, lined up on the opposite side of the tunnel, looking visibly up for the challenge. They were a bottom-table side... currently 17th and battling relegation, but they were built on grit, the same team that poured their heart out more than they played winning football. Most of them were looking at the sheer wealth of talent Valois had assembled in January, grit didn’t seem like enough.
Luc turned around to face his team.
The tunnel went quiet. Even the new signings, men who had played in the Stadium Siro and the Alliance Arena, looked at the twenty-year-old American wearing the armband.
"Listen to me," Luc said, his voice trying to ease through the pre-match tension. "The media thinks we bought our way out of our problems. They think we’re just a collection of expensive names that won’t know how to play together."
He looked at Sordell, then at Baini, then down to Hugo.
"Today, we show them that they are dead wrong. We hold our shape. We run for each other. We press with intensity, we pass around them. We choke them out in the midfield, we stretch them wide, and we execute in the box."
Luc turned his gaze to the Corse players standing just feet away, ensuring his voice carried over to them.
"This is our house," Luc said coldly. "Let’s do whatever it takes not drop points in our house."
The Corse players were making faces at him.
The referee blew his whistle, signaling for the teams to walk out.
Luc turned forward and marched out of the tunnel.
The roar of Stade Valois hit them like a tidal wave. The floodlights blazed down on the grass.
It was the first match of February. The first true test of the 4-3-3... against Corse’s own 4-3-3, unchanged from earlier in the season.
The wager with Fontaine was practically over, but the war for the league had just begun. Luc took his position, the lone striker, the captain, the focal point of Valérie Laurent’s ultimate team.
He put his foot on the ball to start the kickoff.
Piii.
The match officially began.
Valois immediately asserted dominance, but it was brief, hollow dominance. They held the ball in the middle third, circulating it with ease, but the final pass, the one that needed to pierce the wall of Corse jerseys, remained elusive.
Ten minutes in, frustration began to set in.
Hugo, operating in the central attacking midfield position, looked for the killer ball, but every lane was blocked. The new 4-3-3 formation was designed to provide width, but the wingers, Gabriel and Dário, were finding it difficult to operate. The Corse fullbacks were sitting too deep, almost hugging their center-backs, denying the Brazilian the space he needed to utilize his Olympic pace.
Gabriel looked frustrated, his yellow boots kicking at the turf as he retreated to receive the ball at a standstill.
"Gabriel! Keep the width!" Henri shouted from the touchline, his hands cupped around his mouth.
Gabriel nodded, but he was getting agitated. He was a player designed for forward-ever momentum, not for static back passes or standing-still trickery against an awaiting defender.
Luc moved across the front line, trying to pull the Corse center-backs out of their comfort zone. He dropped deep, he drifted wide, he sprinted into the channels, but their organization was rigid. They had clearly spent the entire week studying their game. What else could a relegation team do.
They knew exactly where the Valois trap was.
Minute twenty-eight.
The breakthrough came from the least expected source.
Bense Baini, the veteran free-agent signing, picked up a loose ball after a botched Corse clearance. Baini didn’t try to force the play. He took one touch to settle, looked up, and instead of passing to Hugo or Luc, he drifted a long, looping ball toward the flank.
It was a pass with no ego. It was a pass that simply recognized the only open space on the pitch at the moment, the far side, where the Corse right-back had been momentarily distracted by a run from Luc who drifted away from the center.
Alex Sordell, the signing from Intermilani, was there.
Sordell didn’t dance, nor did he do step-overs. He took the ball on his chest, pushed it forward with his right boot into the open space, and drove a low, searing cross into the box before the defense could react.
Luc had timed the run. He hadn’t been watching the ball, he had been watching the Corse center-back. He knew the moment the ball left Sordell’s foot, the center-back would commit his focus entirely to the ball.
Luc peeled off the back of him.
He didn’t need to jump. He didn’t need to head it. He arrived at the edge of the six-yard box, adjusted his feet, and volleyed the ball with the inside of his right boot.
It struck the bottom corner of the net before the goalkeeper could even finish setting himself.
Goal!!!
1-0.
The crowd went wild. This was their team now. The IT team.
Luc turned and pointed directly at Baini, recognizing the composure the new midfielder had brought to a chaotic situation.
"That is how we play!" Luc shouted to his teammates. "We don’t force it! Not until its necessary."
Klaus Becker jogged over, clapping his hands. "A goal of quality."
The momentum should have been theirs, but football rarely followed a linear path.
---
Minute thirty-five.
Corse won a free kick on the Valois right side of the pitch after a clumsy challenge from Gabriel who made an effort to track back. It was a soft foul, the kind the referee gave to compensate for the lack of calls he should have been making but waved away, but it was a set-piece nonetheless.
The delivery was long, whipped into the heart of the Valois box.
Hernandez and Amadou challenged for the header, but the Corse striker, a massive player who had been anonymous for thirty minutes, climbed above both of them.
He didn’t win the header cleanly, but he was able to knock it down into the ground.
The ball ricocheted off a leg, then off a shoulder, and fell right into the path of a Corse winger. He poked it home from two yards out.
1-1.
The stadium went from jubilant to furious in three seconds.
Henri stood on the touchline, looking like he had aged five years in a single moment.
"Get your heads up!" Luc bellowed, grabbing Amadou by the jersey as he walked back for the reset. "It’s just one goal! They aren’t in full control!"
[System Notification]
[Balance: 8 General Points | 8 Skill Points | Predatory Aura ×1 | First touch goal ×1]
[Equip skills. The armband is not just a piece of fabric. Lead by example]