Youth League Opening #2
"Did you watch the match?"
"Yeah. They got completely overrun."
The next day, the players who showed up for team training were busy talking about the match from the day before. Roma's opening fixture against Sampdoria had ended in a thorough thrashing — a 2–0 defeat — and the team's performance was the talk of the pitch. More than anger, though, what the boys felt was a quiet kind of disappointment.
Had they been ordinary fans, they might have spent the whole morning cursing the club and the players. Maybe some of them were doing exactly that in their heads. But as long as they wore Roma colors themselves, they knew better than to let it show. Everyone was careful to keep their opinions to themselves.
Yohan felt the same pang of regret as his teammates. And yet, he also found the match fascinating. There was so much to learn from it. Losing hurt — it really did — but after studying tactical theory with the coaches, he had started to notice things he had never seen before when watching Roma games with his friends. Team movement. Players' fields of vision. Details like these were beginning to register, and he found himself wanting to keep watching.
Where he once had only followed the ball, he now took in the entire pitch. It felt like his eyes had been opened, and that alone was enough to make him happy.
"Gio, did you even hear me?"
"Huh?"
Yohan had been replaying yesterday's match in his head when a teammate's voice snapped him back to the present.
"Sorry. What did you say?"
"I asked who played the worst."
"Hmm… we lost, so doesn't that mean the whole team played poorly?"
"Come on… so if we win, the whole team played well?"
"Exactly. That's what a team is."
"When you put it that way, I guess you're right."
Some words lodge themselves so deep in the mind that time cannot dislodge them. For Yohan, who had only just joined the club, those words belonged to Coach Mauro: you win as a team, and you lose as a team.
Physically, technically, mentally — every single day, Yohan was absorbing something new, packing it into his head and his body alike.
Time passed, and the opening day of the youth league drew near.
The senior team had lost three straight through the first three rounds, and the atmosphere around the club had grown thoroughly bleak. It was the worst start Roma had endured in years, and already the talk — both inside the club and out — was full of calls for the manager's head.
That sour mood was seeping down into the academy, and even into the youth league itself. Everyone could sense that this season was shaping up to be a rough one, and the worry showed. The younger boys in the youth teams even fretted about being mocked by players from other professional clubs once the league got underway.
The Pulcini coach said nothing about ignoring the situation. The concern itself was proof that the children felt a genuine sense of belonging. He only stepped in when competitive fire threatened to boil over — because that was when injuries happened.
"Our opponents are a side called Ostia Football Club. They're amateurs, but they've beaten professional teams before, so they're a cut above the rest. I don't have much advice to give you — learn by experiencing it yourselves. I'll only step in now and then to adjust your positioning. And I'll say it again: this league is essentially a series of friendly matches. Don't get overheated."
"Yes, Coach."
Once the coach finished speaking, Yohan and his teammates discussed their individual roles while they waited for the bus to reach the sports ground. When it finally pulled up at a facility with a beautiful stretch of coastline nearby, they filed off in a line and headed inside.
The opposing team had already arrived and was warming up. Dressed in emerald green kits, they watched with sharp, curious eyes as the Roma boys — Yohan among them — walked in.
Yohan wanted to go over and say hello, but their stares were so intense that he couldn't quite bring himself to approach. I'll at least give them a nod or a wave when the match starts, he told himself, and went back to warming up. Before long, the referee arrived.
Pulcini league matches were overseen by a single referee. There simply weren't enough qualified officials to cover every youth fixture, and with small-sided games and no offside rule, assistant referees weren't needed anyway. Amateur referees were common at this level. Their decisions weren't as precise as a professional's, but coaches rarely complained. Just as the young players grew through this league, so did everyone else involved. Mutual benefit — that was the perfect phrase for it.
The referee gathered the players and spoke briefly about fair play, and then the match was ready to begin.
Yohan started up front. Roma had won the kickoff, and he stood at the center circle with a mild tension humming through him.
Tweeeet—!
The whistle blew. Yohan immediately laid the ball off to a midfielder and dropped deep, ready to receive it again. But a voice from the touchline made him flinch.
"Lee! You've dropped too far! You're overlapping with Fonti's run — play higher up!"
"Ah, yes!"
"Don't answer me — if you heard me, get up there!"
"Yes…! Wait, I mean—"
For a split second, Yohan's mind went blank. While he stood there frozen, an opposing player sprinted in to challenge for the ball his teammate was holding. Then Yohan snapped out of it and shifted his position just a step to the side.
Tok.
A short pass came his way at the same moment. Taking a clean second touch exactly as the coaches had drilled into him, Yohan scanned his teammates' coordinated movement, thought quickly, and made his decision.
Thump—!
The result of Yohan's unofficial debut: 5–1.
The match ended in a Roma victory. It had been a dominant performance — one that would have been perfect if not for a late goalkeeper error. The team's chemistry had been that well blended.
Looks like the senior team's results had an effect, the coach thought, watching the boys exchange handshakes with their opponents and wipe the sweat from their faces. He was certain of it. Even against an amateur side, the performance had left almost nothing to criticize. Kids who normally played selfishly had put the team first, obsessed not with personal glory but with the collective win.
That's exactly the mindset the senior team ought to have…
As things stood, Roma's first team was a shambles of mismatched parts. A flood of new signings had left them short on chemistry, and there were even reports of a player under transfer speculation deliberately underperforming after the club refused to let him leave. When problems piled up all at once, unity became nearly impossible. Children, teenagers, adults — it was the same wherever people lived.
At times like these, the attitude of the manager and the board mattered most… and looking at Roma's current manager, the coach doubted a quick fix was coming.
He shook off the thought, shook hands with the opposing coach, and called his boys together. Then he offered praise — the carrot — before bringing out the stick.
"You all did well. The level of play was far beyond what you'd expect at this age. The only problem was that emotions nearly boiled over in the second half."
He made no mention of the goal conceded through the goalkeeper's mistake. Pointing it out in front of the whole squad would only crush the boy's confidence. For now, it was enough to address what the team had done well and what it hadn't; individual shortcomings could be ironed out in training.
Watching the match, he had spotted areas for improvement across the board…
Except for that one.
Yohan — who had been beaming until he noticed the opposing team still hadn't left, then hastily composed his face — was the exception. His rate of improvement was astonishing, his comprehension excellent, and the football he produced from those gifts drew nothing but admiration. Seasoned. Far beyond his years.
At this point, teaching him a little more of the fundamentals and then fast-tracking him wouldn't be strange at all. No — the coach was already confident Yohan would adapt just fine if moved up to the Esordienti team right away. Fundamentals were ongoing work regardless, and the training content at Esordienti would be much the same.
With one goal and two assists, Yohan had made it clear just how important he was — to the Pulcini team, and to the Roma of the future.
The one concern was that Esordienti, filled with boys aged eleven to thirteen, could be dangerous for a child growing as rapidly as Yohan. Physically, Esordienti players were far superior to those in Pulcini, and the technical gap — built through accumulated training and match experience — was even wider. Yohan was already on the slight side compared to his peers. If he stepped up into Esordienti, where natural physiques were beginning to take shape, he might get knocked around so thoroughly that he couldn't play his game at all. The risk of injury was high enough that the decision would have to wait until they saw more of his physical development.
If Yohan's growth turned out to be ordinary, physicality would become a genuine weakness… but children grew at unpredictable rates, and football had never been a sport where size alone determined excellence. There was no need to think too darkly about it.
The coach cleared his head, offered a few more pieces of advice, and gathered the children once more.
"Eight of you stand in the back. Seven sit in front. Arms around each other's shoulders."
It was for a commemorative photo — so that parents browsing the youth academy website could see their children in action. Following the coach's instructions, the boys lined up in two rows. When the coach told them to smile, they obeyed, even through their exhaustion.
And Yohan, seated front and center, broke into a wide, genuine grin.
It was that sweet. His first victory playing in Roma colors. Unimportant league or not, he had been a central figure in a team win — how could he not be happy?
And so the fifteen-strong Pulcini team, still soaked in sweat, took their first commemorative photograph together.