AXA Training Centre — KirkbyLiverpool, England9:44 AM
The conference room on the second floor of Kirkby's main building was used for exactly this — small meetings, private ones, the kind where laptops replaced projectors and doors stayed closed and the conversation wasn't for the hallway. Three chairs sat around one end of the long table, and a Dell laptop was open at the center showing a paused video frame — Demien mid-turn at the sixty-eighth minute, Bennacer's bodyweight going the wrong way, the ball already rolling free.
Jörg Schmadtke sat nearest the laptop and his hands were flat on the table in front of him, while Barry Hunter was in the chair beside him with a printed document face-down to his right and a pen he hadn't used yet between two fingers. Jürgen Klopp stood near the window with a coffee in one hand and the other in his pocket, looking out at the training pitches that were empty at this hour.
