Chapter 109: [109] "Paris Royal Part 5"
Gabriel Assis was not a man who appreciated being told what he could or could not do on a football pitch. When Luc had cornered him in the rain, attacking his pride and threatening him with the prospect of humiliation, Gabriel had taken it personally.
As he tore down the right flank of the Parc des Royals pitch, the jeers of sixty thousand Parisian ultras ringing in his ears, Gabriel felt nothing but fiery adrenaline.
The Paris Royal left-back, a highly decorated international player who was widely considered the best in his position in Ligue Alpha, was tracking back with immense speed. But Gabriel was a different breed of fast. He didn’t just have top speed, his acceleration from the second touch was explosive.
Gabriel dropped his right shoulder, taking a heavy touch toward the corner flag to force the defender wide too. The moment the left-back arrived beside Gabriel and committed his momentum toward the byline, Gabriel chopped the ball inside with the inside of his right boot.
The defender slipped, his cleats tearing up a chunk of turf as he desperately tried to put the brakes on.
Gabriel didn’t wait. He didn’t do any unnecessary or flamboyant tricks. He looked up, spotted the charging figure of his American captain entering the box, and whipped a devastatingly paced cross directly into the corridor between the penalty spot and the six-yard box.
Luc was sprinting through the center. He had the Paris Royal center-backs on either side of him, two towering, deeply experienced defenders who had kept clean sheets in the Champions League.
"TES," Luc thought, his eyes locking onto the trajectory of the ball. "Activate Predatory Aura."
[System Notification]
[Predatory Aura — Activated.]
[1 use remaining.]
[Effect: You are the absolute center of their defensive anxiety. The gravity of your presence is overwhelming.]
The shift was terrifying. To the Paris Royal center-backs, the trajectory of the cross suddenly seemed secondary to the presence of Luc Beaumont. They had spent the entire week reviewing tape of Luc’s goals. They knew how lethal he was.
Panic overrode their tactical discipline.
Instead of holding their zones to intercept the cross, both center-backs collapsed inward, stepping simultaneously toward Luc to sandwich him before he could make a play on the ball.
It was an overcommitment born of pure psychological warping.
Luc felt the dual impact of the defenders closing in on him. He didn’t try to outmuscle them both to head the ball. Instead, he abruptly stopped his run, planting his cleats into the grass and dropping his weight.
The two center-backs, anticipating a forward jump, collided with each other in the space Luc had just vacated, their momentum carrying them past the flight of the ball.
The cross fell perfectly into the space behind them.
Luc simply stepped around the tangled defenders, letting the ball bounce once on the Parisian turf before driving his right boot through it on the half-volley.
The strike was an absolute missile. It tore through the freezing night air, bypassing the Paris Royal goalkeeper before he could even raise a glove, and smashed into the roof of the net.
Goal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1-0.
In minute three!!!!!
Parc des Royals went from a deafening cauldron of noise to the absolute silence of a graveyard in the span of a single second. The only sound was the jubilant roar of the SC Valois players.
Luc ran toward the corner flag, pointing directly at Gabriel Assis. The Brazilian sprinted over, a massive, arrogant grin plastered across his face as he leaped into Luc’s arms.
"I told you I was faster than him!" Gabriel shouted in his broken English, slapping Luc’s back.
"Keep burying him in the dust!" Luc roared back, as Klaus, Hugo, and Idriss piled onto them.
On the touchline, the Paris Royal manager was already out of his technical area, screaming furiously at his center-backs for the amateurish defensive collision. Henri, standing a few yards away, simply tucked his hands into his pockets, his face only showed serene composure.
The match reset. Paris Royal was a wounded giant, and they immediately sought to impose their will.
For the next twenty minutes, the pitch transformed into an absolute war zone, centered entirely in the midfield. This was where the match was truly going to be decided.
Hugo Blanc, operating in the number ten role behind Luc, found himself in a deeply personal nightmare. Everywhere he moved, every pocket of space he tried to drift into, Bastien Leroux was already there.
Bastien knew Hugo’s game intimately. He knew what shoulder Hugo liked to drop before receiving on the half-turn. He knew that Hugo preferred to pass with the outside of his boot when under pressure. Bastien, wearing the deep blue of Paris Royal, wasn’t just marking Hugo, he was dismantling him.
Minute fourteen.
Baini played a sharp, vertical pass into Hugo’s feet. Hugo attempted a quick flick to redirect the ball to Idriss on the left wing. But Bastien had anticipated that. He stepped across, reading the play perfectly, and intercepted the ball with a hard and physical shoulder barge that sent the lighter seventeen-year-old stumbling to the turf.
"You can’t use that trick on me, Hugo," Bastien said quietly, advancing the ball up the pitch.
Hugo pounded his fist into the grass, frustration boiling over. He scrambled to his feet, chasing after his former teammate, but Paris Royal was already cycling the ball.
Minute nineteen.
Bastien received the ball again, looking to dictate the tempo. He took a touch, preparing to launch a diagonal pass over the top to Fontaine.
Before Bastien’s foot could connect with the ball, a literal wall of black and gold slammed into him.
Klaus Becker didn’t tackle Bastien, he erased him. The massive German veteran arrived with the force of a freight train, executing a perfectly legal but entirely brutal sliding challenge that swept the ball cleanly away and sent Bastien flipping through the air.
Bastien crashed onto the grass, wincing as the impact rattled his bones.
Klaus stood up slowly, brushing a blade of grass off his shorts. He looked down at the young midfielder.
"You wear blue now, boy," Klaus rumbled, his voice cold and commanding. "But you do not dictate the pitch when I am standing on it. Not today."
The referee was undecided whether to blow the whistle he had already raised to his lips...the tackle was indeed clean.
Bastien glared up at Klaus, rubbing his shoulder, but he didn’t say a word. The hierarchy of the midfield had just been violently re-established.
As the battle raged in the center, Valérie Laurent’s "tactical lie" was executing itself flawlessly.
Whenever Paris Royal won possession and attempted to build out from the back, they found themselves facing an impeccably disciplined 4-4-2 defensive block. Idriss Konaté, a man who believed playing anywhere but front and center was a sin against the striker’s code, was sprinting back to form the left side of the midfield bank.
On the right, Gabriel Assis was playing like a man possessed. The Paris Royal left-back tried to overlap three times in the space of ten minutes. Every single time, Gabriel was there, matching him stride for stride, throwing his body into challenges, and suffocating the space.
Up in the VIP director’s box, Valérie Laurent sat with a glass of champagne, surrounded by furious Paris Royal executives. She took a slow sip, a deeply satisfied smirk playing on her lips. Her forty-million-euro man was defending like his life depended on it, and her team looked impenetrable.
But impenetrable didn’t exist when Olivier Fontaine was on the pitch.
---
Minute thirty-two.
Paris Royal circulated the ball around the perimeter of the Valois defensive block, probing for a weakness that wasn’t there. Bastien, having learned to avoid Klaus’s territory, drifted slightly wider to receive the ball. He played a rapid, one-touch pass into the feet of Fontaine, who was standing twenty yards from goal, tightly marked by Amadou Fall and Leo Hernandez.
Fontaine had his back to the goal. Amadou was pressing him tightly, giving the King absolutely no room to turn.
Fontaine didn’t need room.
As the ball arrived at his feet, Fontaine executed a microscopic feint. He dropped his hips, giving the absolute perfect illusion that he was going to lay the ball off to the overlapping winger. Amadou shifted his weight a fraction of an inch to cut off the passing lane.
That fraction of an inch was all Fontaine required.
In a single, fluid motion, Fontaine rolled the ball backward with his sole, spun 180 degrees, and slipped right between Amadou and the arriving Hernandez.
He didn’t take an extra touch to set himself. From eighteen yards out now, Fontaine curled a devastating, perfectly placed strike with the inside of his right foot. The ball bent around the outstretched, diving frame of Blažek and kissed the inside of the far post before hitting the net.
1-1.
The roar that erupted from Parc des Royals shook the stadium foundations. Blue and red flares were ignited in the ultras section, casting a demonic glow over the pitch.
Ofcourse he did his signature...
Tick.
Tock.