Chapter 66: Volume 1, - 66: Real Again
It was mid-afternoon on Friday at the video room at the Academia Cristiano Ronaldo, and the projector hummed against the back wall, casting a sharp blue glow across the whiteboard where João Tavares had pinned the tactical sheet for Saturday morning’s match.
On the screen, old video played on a loop. It was footage from earlier that season. Rayan’s first start against Real SC.
Rayan sat in the third row of padded chairs, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the fifteen-second clip.
The player on the screen was wearing the green-and-white hoops, but every movement looked foreign. The pitch was heavy with rain, and the boy on the left wing was chasing a ball that had already cleared his head. His shoulders were high, his stride stiff. When the ball finally landed near his feet, he didn’t check his shoulder; he dragged it inward, head down, body bent with visible desperation, right into the path of Real SC’s captain, Dário Fernandes.
Fernandes had stepped up without breaking stride, dispossessing him with a clean shoulder charge that sent the winger stumbling onto the wet turf.
Rayan watched himself scramble back to his feet. In the video, his head snapped immediately towards the touchline, checking for Tavares, checking for the bench, his body language practically screaming panic before the referee had even signalled a throw-in.
’Poor positioning. Forced actions. Fear.’
Next to him, Duarte Faria leaned back in his seat, spinning a roll of white sock tape between his palms. "Look at the space behind Salvador Rato back then," Duarte muttered, pointing at the pause frame. "Twenty metres on the switch and we didn’t hit it once."
Rayan didn’t answer. He couldn’t stop looking at the boy in the video.
Part of him felt an immediate, sharp pride. He wasn’t that player anymore. His touch was cleaner now, his posture upright, his decision-making sharper. He had held his own during a difficult Under-17 assessment session. He had three official assists on his record now, and his very first had come against this same Real SC side. He had earned his place in Tavares’s starting eleven.
Then the pride curdled, replaced by a cold, unsettling weight in his gut.
Before, when he was the worst player on the pitch, failure was expected. Nobody looked at him with anticipation. If he lost the ball or made a clumsy pass, it merely confirmed what everyone already believed. There was a strange, grim safety in having nothing to lose.
Now, people expected things.
His teammates passed to him in tight spaces expecting him to hold the ball. Tavares expected him to stretch the opposition backline. Sofia spent her evenings quietly shifting her work schedule around his matches because his progress was suddenly real enough to matter.
’What if it vanishes?’
The thought hit him like a cold drop of water down his neck. What if Saturday morning was the match where all the recent work stopped holding up under pressure, proving to everyone and to himself that the improvement had only been temporary?
A bad performance before was just another disappointment. A bad performance now felt like an exposure.
Tavares clicked the remote, cutting the video stream. The screen flashed white before settling on the tactical diagram for the upcoming match.
"Real SC hasn’t changed their structure since April," Tavares said, his voice cutting cleanly through the quiet room. "Four-three-three. Rafael Coelho in goal. Dário Fernandes and Martim Cruz holding the central channel. Salvador Rato at right-back, Tiago Félix at left-back."
Tavares picked up a black whiteboard marker and tapped the diagram.
"João Azevedo anchors midfield, Guilherme Sousa helps him in the build-up, and Bernardo Lima plays highest of the three behind Leonardo Silva. Up front, Isaac Furtado and André Correia stay wide."
He looked around the room, his eyes sweeping over the squad.
"Our lineup for tomorrow morning: Diogo in goal. Miguel, Duarte Lopes, Afonso, and Nuno across the back. Nunes, Tomás, and Matias in the middle. Duarte Faria on the right, Tiago through the centre, Rayan on the left. Bernardo on the bench."
Bernardo, sitting two rows ahead of Rayan, didn’t move or complain. He simply stared at the board, his jaw set.
"Pitch three. Ten minutes for boots, then final tactical drill."
The late-afternoon sun was beginning to dip behind the pines surrounding Pitch Three when the team lined up for eleven-versus-eleven shadow play.
The second team pushed high, simulating Real SC’s aggressive pressing trap. Nunes received the ball from Duarte Lopes near the centre circle, scanned the pitch, and played a crisp pass out to the left touchline, straight into Rayan’s path.
Rodrigo Neves, playing the role of Salvador Rato for the second XI, closed the distance quickly, but there was space behind him.
Rayan checked his run. Instead of taking the space or driving at the defender, he laid a simple, safe pass back to Nuno at left-back.
Nuno took the return pass and had to reset the attack under pressure from the opposition right-wing.
"Again!" Tavares shouted from the touchline, a whistle held between his fingers. "Nunes, restart from the centre circle."
The ball went back to Nunes. Again, the midfielder played it wide to Rayan.
This time, Rodrigo stepped tighter, leaving two yards of space down the touchline. The open line was begging for a driven pass into Tiago’s feet, a pass Rayan had completed a dozen times in training over the last fortnight.
Rayan held the ball for an extra second, hesitating. ’If I lose it here, it starts a counter.’
He played another safe, rolled ball back to Matias in central midfield. The attack stalled.
Tavares blew his whistle. The shrill sound echoed across the open complex, bringing twenty-two players to a halt.
The head coach didn’t walk out onto the pitch. He stood by the bench, hands tucked into the pockets of his dark blue Sporting track jacket. His sharp eyes fixed entirely on Rayan.
"Rayan," Tavares called out.
Rayan stopped, tugging the training bib away from his chest as he caught his breath. "Yes?"
Tavares walked three steps forward, stopping at the edge of the painted touchline.
"You’re playing like you’ve got something to lose," Tavares said, his tone dry and uncompromising. "Don’t spend tomorrow protecting what you showed last week. Play the game that’s in front of you."
The coach turned away before Rayan could answer. "Nunes. Ball to the centre. Again."
Rayan stood on the grass, his chest rising and falling. Tavares had seen it instantly: he was playing not to make mistakes.
By eight o’clock that evening, the Olivais apartment was quiet. Sofia was in the kitchen, the quiet clatter of cookware and the soft hum of the radio filtering down the corridor.
In his bedroom, Rayan had cleared the top of his wooden desk.
Folded neatly on the surface was his official Sporting Under-16 kit for Saturday’s match. Green-and-white horizontal stripes, fresh from the club laundry, with the white number 11 printed cleanly on the back.
He sat on the edge of his bed, looking at the fabric.
He remembered the weeks earlier that season when number 11 had felt less like his shirt than something Sporting could hand to someone else at any moment. Every squad announcement had felt temporary. Every appearance had felt borrowed.
He ran his hand over the embroidered club crest over the left breast.
He had thought that once he improved, once he earned his place through performances and assists, that constant, hovering sense of fragility would fade. He had believed that competence brought security.
It hadn’t.
If anything, the shirt felt even more temporary now. Before, he was waiting to be exposed as a bad player. Now, he was terrified of being exposed as a fake one.
Rayan stood up, smoothed down the collar of the jersey, and laid his shin pads beside it. Then he turned off the desk lamp, stepped over to the window, and looked out at the streetlights illuminating the quiet Lisbon avenue below.
Tomorrow morning, Real SC was waiting.