Chapter 130: [130] "The Wall of Green and White 1"
Sunday afternoon arrived with a biting chill that hung heavy over Stade Valois, a contrast to the boiling anticipation inside the dressing room.
The thirty thousand seats were packed to full capacity. The fans expected a massacre. They had seen the revenge demolition of AS Garonne just almost aweek prior. They had witnessed the historic Cup victory against Paris.
They assumed Sporting Bretagne, a team languishing in eleventh place, was simply the next lamb being led to the slaughterhouse... whether they drew the first meeting with them or not.
But professional football rarely operates on the assumptions of the crowd.
Luc stood in the tunnel. He stared at the line of green-and-white jerseys standing opposite his squad. The Bretagne players did not look intimidated by the noise leaking through. They looked like a squad of blue-collar workers clocking in for a miserable, grinding shift.
He specifically locked eyes with their holding midfielder, that frustrating twenty-nine-year-old veteran named Morel...Luc had looked him up. Morel possessed a thick, dark beard and eyes that lacked any trace of pre-match anxiety. He had been a staple certainty in Ligue Alpha for nearly a decade...seven-plus years. He survived by breaking plays, disrupting rhythms, occasionally leaving late cleats on the ankles of flashy attackers, and the usual screening everything centrally. He wasn’t going to be dazzled by La Masia step-overs or an Americans pace.
Luc shifted his weight, testing the new equilibrium provided by the Physical Anchor passive. He felt heavy in the best possible way. Rooted to the floor, a percentage increase went a long way. He was currently sitting on twenty-three league goals, tied for the Golden Boot with Fresko. The media noise from the GQ magazine cover had been deafening all weekend, but down here in the belly of the stadium, none of that mattered.
Only goal twenty-four mattered.
The birthday dinner with Juliette was ticking in the back of his mind. He wanted to sit at that private, secured table on the twenty-eighth as the undisputed top scorer in the country.
Klaus Becker murmured, standing just behind Luc in the line. The veteran was adjusting his shin guards, his voice almost a low, gravelly hum. "They will try to drag the game out and force us to play their way."
"That’s not even a new thing," Luc replied, not breaking eye contact with Morel. "We keep the ball moving. We make them run until their lungs have no air and their legs give out from defending our attack."
The referee stepped out of his dressing room with the match ball tucked firmly under his arm. He blew a short but sharp blast of his whistle, signaling the two teams to march out onto the pitch.
The roar of the home crowd washed over them as they emerged from the tunnel. The grass was impeccably manicured, completely free from the coastal wind and torrential rain that had ruined their away fixture against this exact team months prior.
SC Valois was operating on their own turf, under their own conditions.
The referee blew the whistle for kickoff.
Piii
Within the first ninety seconds, Coach Henri’s tactical prophecy materialized into frustrating reality. Sporting Bretagne didn’t even attempt to press high or contest possession in the midfield. The moment Valois took the kickoff, all eleven green-and-white jerseys sprinted back into their own half, assembling a rigid, impenetrable wall.
It was a classic, deeply cynical 4-3-3 low block. Their wingers dropped so deep they practically operated as secondary fullbacks, creating a flat line of six men across the top of the penalty area. Just in front of them, a three-man midfield swept side to side like a synchronized unit, orchestrated entirely by Morel.
Hugo Blanc received the ball near the center circle. He looked up, scanning for passing lanes to split the defense. There were none.
Every single blade of grass in the attacking third was occupied by a defender.
Hugo played a short, horizontal pass to Bense Baini. The Algerian tried to thread a needle to Gabriel Assis on the right flank, but the Bretagne left-back stepped up aggressively, intercepting the pass and immediately booting it out of bounds for a throw-in.
No counter-attack followed. No ambition to score.
Luc jogged into the penalty area, taking up his position between the two Bretagne center-backs. Instantly, he felt the physical toll of his role as a lone striker. The right center-back drove a shoulder into Luc’s shoulder under the guise of jockeying for position, while the left center-back stepped heavily on his heel, testing the referee’s line of sight.
A cross floated in from Kévin Aubert, the Valois right back on the right side.
Luc moved to attack the flight of the ball, but Morel had dropped back into the box, placing his body in Luc’s path. The veteran midfielder didn’t even jump for the header, he simply backed his hips into Luc’s thighs, legally disrupting his leverage and preventing him from elevating. The ball sailed harmlessly over their heads and was cleared away by a sweeping defender.
The referee was watching and his whistle had nothing to say.
"You are not getting a clean look today, kid," Morel muttered, jogging away as the ball was cleared up the pitch.
Luc gritted his teeth. He recognized the strategy. They weren’t just parking the bus, they were building a cage specifically designed for him. Every time Valois gained possession in the final third, Morel abandoned his midfield duties and dropped between his center-backs, forming a three-man vice around the American.
By the fifteenth minute, the frustration inside the stadium was palpable. The home fans, accustomed to high-scoring thrillers over the past few weeks, were beginning to groan as Valois circulated the ball endlessly from left to right, unable to penetrate the green-and-white barricade.
"Wider!" Henri screamed from the technical area, waving his arms frantically toward the touchlines. "Gabriel! Dário! Put your heels on the chalk! Stretch them out!"
Luc heard the manager’s command and understood the general scope of the problem perfectly. As long as Gabriel and Dário kept cutting inside early to look for shots, they were compressing the play, bringing more defenders into the central channel where Luc was already fighting for his life.
Minute eighteen.
Klaus Becker intercepted a rare, lazy clearance from the Bretagne defense. The German veteran didn’t take a touch to settle the ball, rather he fired a blistering, low diagonal pass straight out to the right flank.
Gabriel Assis received the ball. This time, the Brazilian didn’t try to beat his man and cut toward the penalty spot. He stayed wide, hugging the touchline, trapping the ball firmly under his sole and waiting.
The Bretagne left-back hesitated. He couldn’t allow Gabriel the time and space to measure a cross, so he reluctantly stepped out of the defensive block, breaking the rigid flat line to engage the winger.
The moment the fullback stepped out, the structural integrity of the low block fractured.