Chapter 90: [90] "Departure’s Gate"
The morning of January 13th.
The kocker room was beginning to look a bit empty.
Not the whole locker room. Two stalls of it to be precise. But two stalls was enough to change the structure of the room, the same way two load-bearing walls going missing changed the structure of a building.
Henri gathered the squad for the last time ahead of kickoff with the current full group intact.
He didn’t make a speech. Henri never made speeches about departures because Henri fundamentally believed that football was a business and everyone in the room already knew that, and discussing too much about that would be insulting their reasons for leaving.
He said instead, "Noé(Lacombe) and Yusuf(Dermici) have served this club with commitment and professionalism. We thank them for it. The squad moves forward."
That was it.
Cillian made a noise in the back of his throat that was not quite a word.
Dermici was gone but Lacombe stuck around till the last day his medical had allowed.
Idriss walked over to him and embraced him briefly. The two had been quiet rivals within the squad, both men who had arrived at this club with ambitions that didn’t quite match the minutes they were given, both men who had ultimately chosen different answers to that problem.
Luc stood near the door.
Lacombe paused beside him on the way out.
"The winger Valérie signed," Lacombe said, keeping his voice low. "His name is Gabriel Assis. A Brazilian. Twenty-two. I’ve seen him play. He’s fast, Luc. Genuinely fast and skillful. The kind that makes defenders recalculate their careers."
"Where did you see him? I haven’t heard from her yet."
"A friend sent me something. He was at Santos B, tore up the Brasileiro youth series, then three seasons at Werder in Germany. He had a falling out with the Werder manager over his directness. Or lack of track back."
Luc looked at him. "You’re doing my scouting now, huh?"
"Consider it a parting gift." Lacombe walked out.
The door swung shut.
"Valérie and signing troublesome players." Luc thought to himself.
---
MD18. Away. AC Nord. January 13th, 2024.
The second half of the league season was officially starting but the fixture felt like a repeat that would produce the exact same result.
AC Nord, still with their one point all season. They were playing their home matches in a half-empty stadium. But Luc had seen what happened when SC Valois underestimated any side.
Garonne. Four-nil. The worst loss of the season. Then they were a fourteenth-place team that had dismantled them because Valois arrived with its head full of the scoreline before the whistle had blown.
He was not doing that again...plus he remembered the Nord keeper having the match of his life last time.
The bus to Nord’s stadium was quiet. Bastien was indeed starting ahead of Dario. Henri had made the decision without Luc’s prompting, which either meant he was satisfied with it or the tactical logic had become undeniable.
Klaus sat three rows ahead, headphones on, his massive frame taking up significantly more seat than the bus’s design intended.
Hugo was reading something on his tablet. He had the expression he got when the content he was looking at was more tactical rather than recreational... the slight forward lean, the stiffness in his shoulders.
While Cillian had fallen asleep, which was Cillian’s primary coping mechanism for away travel.
[System Notification]
[Objective: Win MD18 cleanly like the initial leg. No drama. No repeat Garonne.]
[Reward: +3 General Points]
[Penalty: Upcoming system upgrade will be cancelled. TES store won’t restock till further notice.]
"That would be a real punishment, there’s nothing in the store to actually work with right now" Luc thought.
He pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the bus window.
Nord’s city passed outside, it was January-specific in its lack of charm. A city that had poured its identity into a football club that was currently losing every week and doing it with a dignity that the table didn’t reflect.
---
The match itself was a controlled, professional demolition.
Klaus was operating with discipline, he had decided that performing well was better than performing alone, he anchored the midfield with calm authority.
From playing Champions League to finding a lower-than-second-division cup tie at Vannes to be the most disorienting experience of his career.
He didn’t press when he shouldn’t. He held the line even when the temptation of a forward run presented itself. He received from Ekberg and distributed in one touches to Hugo with the same efficiency he’d shown in the second half of the Vannes match, the version of Klaus that thirty-five million euros had actually paid for.
Hugo dismantled Nord’s defensive shape in the twelfth minute.
A disguised through-ball between Nord’s right center-back and their holding midfielder, the lane so narrow that the pass required the kind of spatial confidence that most twenty-five-year-olds never developed. Hugo was seventeen and he found those passes regularly.
Bastien arrived onto it at the edge of the area.
He didn’t try to be clean about it. He drove it with his right foot, low and hard to the near post, the way you hit a ball when you’ve given up caring about aesthetics and only care about the net moving and retaining a starting position.
The keeper got a hand to it. It went in anyway.
1-0.
Bastien turned and pointed at Hugo before wheeling away in a celebration.
---
Luc scored in the thirty-first minute.
Klaus found him with a diagonal ball over Nord’s defensive line, the kind of pass that required reading the runner’s momentum even before the runner had decided to run. Luc had done exactly that. He arrived onto the ball at full stride inside the penalty area with one center-back committed to covering Idriss’s run on the opposite side.
One touch to kill the pace.
Second touch, left foot, inside the far post.
2-0.
He walked back to the center circle with his finger pointing at the captain’s armband around his bicep.
The second half was professional management, something SC Valois had learnt a lot of during the break.
Hugo dropped deeper to protect the two-goal cushion, his positioning becoming so reliable in defensive duties that the seventeen-year-old was now effectively doing the job of a full central midfielder in both phases.
Klaus won every second ball in the center of the park. Every single one. Seven aerial duels in forty-five minutes.
Idriss scored in the seventy-fourth minute from a Bastien cutback, a composed side-foot finish from eight yards that raised his tally for the season.
3-0.
Final whistle.
Piii Piii Piiii.
Away game. Clean sheet. Three points.
The locker room was compact and efficient in its celebration.
No music. No speeches. Three points against the bottom side away from home deserved exactly the level of celebration proportional to its difficulty, which was moderate pride and a quiet confidence.
"Nord at home, Nord away," Cillian announced. "We’ve now beaten them twice this season. Does that mean we get a trophy for that specific achievement?"
"No," Hugo said.
"Worth asking."
Henry announced, "one or two of the owner’s new signings lands soon. One is currently signing paperwork, the other signed the paperwork from Brazil via his agent’s office this morning. Gabriel Assis, a winger."
"A Brazilian?" Cillian shouted.
Gabriel Assis.
A Brazilian winger who didn’t like to track back.
[System Notification]
[Objective complete]
[Reward applied: +3 General Points]
[Balance: 5 General Points | 5 Skill Points | Predatory Aura ×1]