Jin Hayes's goal did more than just narrow the deficit. It sent a jolt of electricity through the entire Chinese squad.
These boys were, after all, the so-called "geniuses" of their respective provinces, the ones who had triumphed in a gruelling, televised national talent search. Back home, they were stars. And like stars everywhere, each one had arrived in England believing they were the main character. The result, in the first half, had been a disjointed, selfish mess. A team of individuals, not a collective. It was the primary reason they'd conceded four goals before the break.
But Jin Hayes had changed everything. He'd done something they hadn't thought possible. He'd taken the ball to Everton, the all-conquering English academy side, and he'd made them look ordinary. He'd shown them that the boys in blue were not invincible. They bled. They panicked. They made mistakes.
Under his improbable leadership, something clicked. The arrogant young men, for the first time on the tour, were willing to defend. They held their positions, tracked their runners, and threw themselves into tackles with a ferocity that had been entirely absent. The question burned in every one of them: Why should we let them humiliate us?
With gritted teeth and a collective will that had been missing for seventy minutes, they withstood Everton's frantic response. And Everton, stung by the humiliation of being repeatedly carved open by a fifteen-year-old, had lost their composure. They swarmed forward with individual fury, not collective intelligence, their attacks becoming disjointed and predictable.
Turnover.
"WHAT A CHANCE! This is our break!" Huang Jianxiang's fist slammed onto the commentary desk, making his guest, the actor Su Xing, jump in his seat.
Two simple passes in midfield. The objective was clear, understood by every player on the pitch without a word being spoken. Get the ball to the kid. The fifteen-year-old in the number 24 shirt had become the attacking fulcrum for a team of players three years his senior.
Jin Hayes dropped deep, raising his hand to call for the ball. The pass was lofted towards him, a testing ball with a defender, Dansmore, tight on his back, jostling and leaning into him, trying to prevent the turn.
The contact was heavy. Dansmore, strong and experienced, used his body to try and pin Jin Hayes, to force him to play the ball back the way it came.
But as the bump came, Jin Hayes rode it, using the forward momentum to take a half-step towards the ball. In the same fluid motion, he cushioned the dropping ball with his right ankle, flicking it infield to his right, while his body pivoted sharply to the left.
Body and ball, separating in an instant.
Dansmore's brain, focused on the physical duel, short-circuited. By the time his synapses fired, Jin Hayes was already gone, leaving him grasping at air. Two more blue shirts converged, but they might as well have been chasing smoke. A nutmeg, a sharp double step-over, and he was through, bursting into the penalty area yet again.
Unstoppable.
Once was chance. Twice was a warning. Three, four times? Dansmore, watching the white shirt glide past his teammates, finally accepted the truth. The slender Asian kid possessed a level of technical ability that was simply in a different league. He was operating on a plane none of them could reach. The boys from the so-called "football desert" had made his team, Everton's proud academy, look like amateurs.
The defence panicked. Seven, eight players converged on Jin Hayes, a swarm of blue around a single point of white. The goalkeeper stayed rooted to his line, terrified of being the next to be embarrassed.
And then, the ball emerged from the crowd. A perfectly weighted pass, arcing out of the melee and rolling invitingly towards the right side of the six-yard box.
Jin Hui, the team's striker and the champion of the Beijing trials, was there. Completely unmarked. The goalkeeper, drawn towards Jin Hayes, had left the far post exposed. Jin Hui had three yards of space and an almost empty net.
The finish was simple, a calm, side-footed placement into the goal.
4-2.
The Chinese bench erupted. Players who had been slumped in despair minutes before were now hugging each other, shouting incoherently.
After the celebrations, Jin Hui jogged back towards the centre circle, falling into step beside Jin Hayes. His face was a mixture of awe and confusion.
"Why… why did you pass it?" he asked, his voice quiet. In his experience, the player with that much talent, in that position, would have taken the shot himself, glory or no glory.
Jin Hayes looked at him, a flicker of genuine bewilderment crossing his features. "You were in the better position. Who else was I supposed to pass to?"
Jin Hui opened his mouth to reply, but found he had no words. The answer was so simple, so utterly logical. And yet, in all his years of competitive youth football, he'd rarely seen it in practice.
They were swallowed by the next wave of celebrating teammates.
In the commentary box, Huang Jianxiang was struggling to maintain his professional composure. "A BRILLIANT TEAM MOVE! A goal born of collective belief and individual genius! This Chinese team, against all odds, has found a way back into this match! WELL DONE, LADS!"
On the touchline, coach Liu Yue stood motionless, a strange tightness in his chest. He glanced at the commentary box, where his old friend Huang was practically weeping with joy. It was a bit much, perhaps. But Liu Yue understood the feeling.
This goal, like the first, had been carved from pure individual brilliance. Jin Hayes, alone, had dismantled a professional academy defence with technique that belonged on the streets of Rio or Buenos Aires, not a training ground in Merseyside.
Liu Yue felt like he was dreaming. He'd taken this job as a favour, a paid holiday to mentor some kids on a TV show. He'd held no hope of discovering a genuine talent. The system back home was too broken, the environment too chaotic, the pathways too clogged with mediocrity and self-interest to ever produce a player of real world-class potential.
And now, this.
He watched the fifteen-year-old jog back into position, his face calm, his body language unassuming. The boy had just single-handedly transformed a humiliation into a contest, and he looked like he was waiting for a bus.
Liu Yue blinked rapidly, the sting in his eyes having nothing to do with the weak English sun. Among the millions of young players in China, the ones who fell through the cracks of a flawed system, the ones who never got a chance, the ones whose talent was crushed by the weight of expectation and poor coaching… maybe, just maybe, one had slipped through.
And he was standing right there, on a rain-soaked pitch in Halewood, wearing a number 24 shirt.
>>>>
The final scoreline read 4-4.
For the final twenty minutes, Jin Hayes had been untouchable. Even when two, three, or four blue shirts surrounded him, he would find a sliver of space, a moment of clarity, to wriggle free. If the path to goal was completely blocked, he would simply draw the defenders in like moths to a flame and slip a perfectly weighted pass to a suddenly unmarked teammate. For the first time on the entire tour, the Chinese team began to string together coherent attacking moves, playing with a confidence that had been utterly absent.
Everton, for their part, had abandoned football.
Frustration boiled over into something uglier. The tackles grew late, the shoves in the back more blatant. It descended into a grappling match, the kind of cynical, physical intimidation that youth teams are taught to avoid but often resort to when humiliated. The Chinese players, not blessed with the same natural physicality, began to wilt under the pressure. Jin Hayes bore the brunt of it. His pristine white jersey was now a patchwork of green grass stains, the legacy of countless desperate lunges.
If not for that strange, heightened awareness that seemed to hum in his veins, allowing him to anticipate and evade the worst of the challenges at the very last second, he would have been carried off on a stretcher.
"Hey! What is this?!" The Chinese coaching staff were on their feet, protesting to the fourth official. They were being roughed up because they couldn't be beaten fairly.
On the Everton sideline, Ray Hall, the academy director, could only offer helpless shrugs and half-hearted shouts to his players to calm down. The fouls became marginally less frequent, but no less cynical. He caught the eye of Liu Yue and offered a weak explanation. "This is the Premier League. The physicality is part of the game. The referee isn't going to blow for every little tug."
Liu Yue bit back a retort. Little tug? They're auditioning for WWE out there.
The final whistle blew on the 4-4 draw. The handshake that followed was a study in contrasts. The Everton players, scowling and muttering, couldn't hide their disbelief. They'd been 4-0 up against a team of trialists from a nation with no footballing pedigree, and they'd been forced to a draw by a single, slight fifteen-year-old. The Chinese players, heads held high, shook hands with the air of victors. In their hearts, they knew: they should have won.
As the teams filed off, the coaches exchanged a few words.
"Number 24," Hall said to Liu Yue, his voice low and earnest. "He's a special talent. We at Everton would be very interested in discussing his future. There could be a pathway here, maybe even a place in our youth setup."
Liu Yue gave a non-committal nod. "That's a decision for him and his family. I can't speak for them."
"Please, just talk to him. Persuade him. Everton is a Premier League club with a proud history. We would not treat him unfairly."
"I'll pass on the message."
Liu Yue walked away, his expression troubled. He knew the reality of these "exchanges" all too well. The "Football Kids" program had a loose, preliminary agreement with the clubs, nothing more than a marketing gimmick. There was no contractual pathway, no guarantee of a trial, let alone a contract.
Even if a club like Everton made an offer, navigating the red tape, the agents, the FA regulations, and the simple, brutal odds of a young foreign player making it in English football was a mountain few ever climbed. It was a way for the clubs to tap into the Chinese market, to sell kits and build a fanbase. The dreams of the kids were just a convenient vehicle.
In the cramped away dressing room, the atmosphere was entirely different. A portable speaker was blasting Jay Chou's latest hit, the melody filling the small space as a group of teenage boys celebrated like they'd just won the World Cup. They sang along, off-key and full of joy. They had faced the best a Premier League academy could throw at them, and they had not been broken.
In the corner, away from the chaos, sat Jin Hayes. He had a towel draped over his head, his eyes closed, but he wasn't resting. He was replaying everything. Every touch, every feint, every moment of the last thirty minutes.
Is this real? he wondered. Do I actually have this now?
The feeling had been indescribable. The ball wasn't an object he was controlling; it was an extension of his body. He knew its exact position without looking. In the most chaotic, high-pressure situations, his instincts provided a calm, clear solution. Dribbling moves that he'd previously only been able to execute successfully in slow, solitary practice, moves that would fail in a real game, had become as natural as breathing. He'd danced through Everton's vaunted academy players as if they were traffic cones.
If he wanted to, he realised with a jolt, he could probably have dribbled the ball from his own box into theirs, untouched. The only thing that stopped him was the physicality, the cynical fouls. And even those, he could now sense coming a split-second before they arrived. It was terrifying. It was exhilarating.
What if I played against a senior team? The thought surfaced, unbidden. What if I played against the best in the world? He imagined himself facing the legendary Italian defence that had just won the World Cup. Could he…
"Jin Hayes."
The voice cut through his reverie. He pulled the towel from his head to find Coach Liu Yue standing over him, his expression a mixture of pride and concern.
"There's something I need to tell you before the organisers do. They'll want to talk to you formally later."
Jin Hayes looked up, his mind still half on the pitch. "What is it, Coach?"
Liu Yue hesitated. "I don't know how you feel about Everton, but their academy director was asking about you. He said they're interested. It's not a guarantee of anything, you understand, but…"
Before he could finish, a sharp knock on the dressing room door cut him off. It swung open before anyone could respond.
A plump man in a slightly old-fashioned fedora and a well-cut suit stepped inside. His face was flushed from the cold evening air, and his eyes scanned the room with the practised efficiency of a man used to finding what he was looking for. They landed instantly on Jin Hayes in the corner.
A smile spread across his face. He walked over, ignoring the curious and suspicious stares of the other boys, and extended a business card.
"I apologise for the intrusion," he said, his voice calm and confident. "Please, allow me to introduce myself."
Jin Hayes took the card, his eyes scanning the text.
Steve Rowley
Chief Scout
Arsenal Football Club