Chapter 86: [86] "First step in breaking"
He marched toward the referee, screaming in German, gesturing wildly at his shin.
"Get back in position!" Luc yelled from thirty yards away.
Klaus ignored him, continuing to berate the official until the referee finally produced a yellow card...not for the Vannes player, but for Klaus, for dissent.
The home crowd roared in delight.
[System Notification]
[CRITICAL ALERT: Locker Room Cohesion Dropping]
[Current Cohesion: 38%]
[Penalty increased: -20% Spatial Awareness. -15% First Touch Efficiency. -10% Peripheral Vision.]
Luc hissed, pressing a gloved hand to his temple as the familiar, sickening headache hit inside his head and right behind his eyes. The pitch, usually so clear and crisp in his mind, suddenly blurred. The peripheral vision he relied on collapsed inward, making the field feel claustrophobic and chaotic.
TES was punishing him for his inability to control his own player.
"Hugo!" Luc shouted, fighting through the thick sluggishness in his brain. "Drop deeper! Cover the center!"
---
Minute fifteen.
Klaus, enraged by the lack of respect from the opposition and the referee, abandoned his holding position entirely.
When SC Valois lost the ball in the Vannes half, instead of dropping back to protect the defensive line, Klaus sprinted forward into a reckless, isolated high press. He chased the Vannes center-back, leaving a gaping fifty-yard hole in the middle of the pitch.
The Vannes center-back simply chipped the ball over Klaus’s head.
The Vannes attacking midfielder received the ball in acres of space, turning and driving directly at Hadj and Ekberg. It was a three-on-two counter-attack!
"Fuck!" Luc shouted, sprinting back from his striker position.
Ekberg stepped up to delay the attack, but the Vannes midfielder slipped a pass to his striker. The striker hit it first time from the edge of the box.
Blažek made a desperate, sprawling save, tipping the ball onto the post. It bounced out for a corner.
The away end held its breath.
Klaus was jogging back slowly, shaking his head at the defense as if they were to blame for the collapse.
Luc’s vision swam, the cohesion penalty digging its claws into his now normalised stats. He realized with cold, absolute clarity that Valérie had been right in wanting the villain as the face of the team. You couldn’t ask an ego like Klaus Becker to conform politely. You couldn’t reason with it.
You had to snap it in half.
Luc walked up to Hugo, grabbing the teenager by the shoulder of his muddy jersey.
"Freeze him out," Luc whispered, his voice deadly serious.
Hugo wiped rain from his eyes, blinking in surprise. "What?"
"You, Cillian, hell even Mateo’s ghost, I don’t care. Tell the backline. Do not pass him the ball. If he asks for it, look past him. If he’s open, play the harder pass. We play with ten men until he begs to be part of this team."
Hugo looked at the massive German veteran, then back at his captain. The teenager gave a single, sharp nod.
---
Minute twenty-two.
SC Valois built from the back. Ekberg had the ball. Klaus dropped into the space to receive the pass, clapping his hands together. "Ball! Give me the ball!"
Ekberg looked right at him, then deliberately played a longer, riskier pass out wide to Aubert.
Klaus threw his arms up in frustration.
---
Minute twenty-eight.
Cillian recovered a loose ball in the midfield. Klaus was standing five yards away, completely unmarked, pointing to his feet. Cillian didn’t even hesitate. He turned his back on the Champions League winner and whipped a cross-field diagonal pass to Bastien.
Klaus stopped running. He stood in the mud, staring at Cillian with a look of pure, unadulterated disbelief.
"What are you doing?!" Klaus screamed across the pitch. "I am open!"
Luc was already moving, drifting into the channel. "Keep playing!" Luc barked.
For the next ten minutes, it was a tactical execution. SC Valois played around Klaus Becker as if he were a training cone. They passed through the lines, utilizing Hugo’s rapid one-twos and Cillian’s endless engine. The ball zipped across the terrible surface, bypassing the German entirely.
The Vannes players noticed it too. They stopped marking Klaus, realizing he wasn’t going to get the ball. He became a ghost on a freezing, muddied pitch in the middle of nowhere.
---
Minute forty-one.
Hugo drove through the center, drawing two defenders. He slipped a pass to Idriss. Idriss held off his man and cut it back to the edge of the area.
Luc arrived perfectly on time. The cohesion penalty was still throbbing in his head, but muscle memory took over. He didn’t try to place it. He just drove his laces through the heavy, mud-soaked ball.
It rocketed past the Vannes keeper and tore into the top corner.
Goal!
1-0.
Luc turned and jogged straight back toward the center circle, passing Klaus on the way.
The German was standing with his hands on his hips, his chest heaving, his face a mask of humiliation. He had been completely ostracized from a goal sequence by players he considered entirely beneath him.
Luc stopped two feet behind him. The two men with their backs to each other.
"You think you’re too good for us?" Luc asked, his voice low enough that only Klaus could hear it over the angry home fans. "You think this league is a joke? Look around you, Klaus. You just spent majority of the first half minutes running in the mud while a bunch of amateurs did your job for you."
Klaus’s clenched his jaw, the veins on it were showing. "You arrogant little--"
"I am the captain," Luc interrupted, "I control the shape. I control the ball. If you want to touch it again, you fall into place, you play one touch, and you cover Hugo when he moves forward. Or you can stand there and watch me win this match without you."
They stood like that for three agonizing seconds.
Klaus looked at the scoreboard and at at Hugo, who was already resetting his position. He looked at the mud covering his expensive boots.
The German gave a slow, grinding nod.
"Good," Luc said coldly. "Welcome to France. I’ll be putting you to work."
[System Notification]
[Locker Room Cohesion: 55% (Stabilizing)]
[Penalty Reduced: -5% Spatial Awareness. -10% Peripheral Vision.]
[Current: -15% Spatial Awareness. -15% First Touch Efficiency.]
Luc’s headache reduced slightly. The mud cleared from his peripheral vision.