The halftime dressing room at The Apex was a wall of noise, adrenaline, and the beautiful, earthy smell of mud.
The 1-1 scoreline against a team four leagues higher felt like a victory, but Leon knew the job was only half-done.
His players—his postman, his baker, his call-center worker, his teenage Dutch giant—were sitting on the benches, their chests heaving, their eyes shining with a wild, defiant belief.
But Leon's mind was a thousand miles away, in a quiet, sterile office in Nyon, Switzerland, in a future classroom where he would be forced to raise his hand.
Julián Álvarez. His classmate. Cristian Chivu. His professor.
He had stared at the email on his phone for a full, disbelieving ten seconds before a single, sharp, slightly hysterical laugh had escaped his lips. The sheer, beautiful, cosmic absurdity of it was too perfect. His life wasn't just a soap opera anymore; it was a high-stakes comedy written by a madman.
